Done with the semester!
Well, done with my college students at least. Today was my last day at Earlham until August, and I got my grades turned in. That feels great! Most of my students are singing in an end of the semester music dept. recital on Saturday, and for the first time in five years of teaching there I have a conflict and cannot attend. :( I hate not to be there to hear them and just provide moral support, but I am sure they will do fine. I will be in rehearsal for Turandot all day Saturday. I did get to hear all of them perform their pieces in a master class yesterday, which was a dress rehearsal of sorts for the recital.
Between end of the semester stuff and opera rehearsals, my writing time has been limited to nonexistent. But I have done some thinking about my Dryad story which I think I am going to try to finish next week and send to my novel group in place of a novel chapter for the May meeting. I have to decide if the story is over when the protagonist makes a startling realization, or if he needs to act upon that realization. I have to submit another piece for Odyssey by May 26 and need to have the story pretty polished by then.
I submitted an excerpt from my novel for my writing class with Dan Barden, which is probably going to get workshopped in another couple weeks. I have a feeling there will be some things that the group thinks I should slim down, as I wrote this rather wordily and have not edited it significantly. However, I am certain that the conflict is evident. This is what we talked about in class last night - whether or not the conflict was clear in each person's submission. From what they have said I get the sense that most people in the class don't really like fantasy, so it could be a rather tough audience.
I've had some other random thoughts about my writing and about some other things I would like to fix in the novel, and fortunately I have at least managed to write them down in my workbook so I can go back to them when I actually have time.
My high school students in the music magnet program are giving a recital tonight, so it will be, as usual, a music-filled day!
Between end of the semester stuff and opera rehearsals, my writing time has been limited to nonexistent. But I have done some thinking about my Dryad story which I think I am going to try to finish next week and send to my novel group in place of a novel chapter for the May meeting. I have to decide if the story is over when the protagonist makes a startling realization, or if he needs to act upon that realization. I have to submit another piece for Odyssey by May 26 and need to have the story pretty polished by then.
I submitted an excerpt from my novel for my writing class with Dan Barden, which is probably going to get workshopped in another couple weeks. I have a feeling there will be some things that the group thinks I should slim down, as I wrote this rather wordily and have not edited it significantly. However, I am certain that the conflict is evident. This is what we talked about in class last night - whether or not the conflict was clear in each person's submission. From what they have said I get the sense that most people in the class don't really like fantasy, so it could be a rather tough audience.
I've had some other random thoughts about my writing and about some other things I would like to fix in the novel, and fortunately I have at least managed to write them down in my workbook so I can go back to them when I actually have time.
My high school students in the music magnet program are giving a recital tonight, so it will be, as usual, a music-filled day!