I came home from an inspirational (ok, also my first) writer’s retreat this weekend with a finished ten-page article in my hip pocket that just needs revising and a good query letter to find its way into a glossy writer’s magazine and the fuel to get cracking on that short story I’ve been stalled on a for a few weeks. But first I had a speed bump in the road to creative and harmonious bliss…
My thesis proposal.
I still like using the word thesis, even though it’s dated and, when combined with my recent stories of how my Barry Manilow CD collection was stolen from my car (no joke…I can’t smile without them), makes me sound about as hip as an 8 Track player. Somehow thesis makes me feel scholarly and educated when the truth is that my ability to write makes it slightly easier to pass total bullcrap by in literature reviews and research design essays that dot my path to the MA Ed. I’d better finish by next fall. To say I’m completing my thesis sounds impressive. To say I’m finishing my final project sounds like I’m waiting for mom to pick up a posterboard and markers on the way home from work so I can get out the glue and glitter. Call me old fashioned. Everyone else does!
But back to the roadblock. I came home from school yesterday (the job), raring and barely able to contain my creative energies toward cleaning up the article and starting a killer query (don’t hate me because I like writing queries), but had one slight hitch in the process: my thesis proposal is due today. And I still had the methodology to finish.
Yikes.
Nothing takes the wind out of a creative writer’s sails than having to write something academic and dry. Luckily, I’d finished a portion of my methodology for my midterm so it was a matter of cutting, pasting and adding in more details. Not the details I liked, though. But the good student in me persevered, limited my action verbs and told instead of showed.
I like to think that the academic writing teaches me exactly what not to do in fiction. I’m sure it does. But what it’s done for sure is tossed a wrench in my creativity. You know, like the person who tries to drive a stick for the first time and you hear that bone-rattling grind of gears when they just don’t quite master the clutch? That’s how my creative mind is working now. Crunched gears.
Here’s hoping a sunny day in Ohio is the oil I need to get out of this bind…
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