I’ve noticed that I’ve been really hate-y of my MFA program lately. My mom mentioned to me the other day when I told her about how I was so sick of my MFA program and its bullshit, that she noticed a pattern with me. She said that every time I start to get ready to leave something, I tend to hate it. Maybe she is right. I have done this from a young age, from pre-school up until now and since my mom knows me, she’s seen it. I get into this mode where I have to look at all the shitty things about something I’m involved in and say what they are. This means I must go through some initial phase of idealization with the thing before I get involved or at the beginning. It’s kind of silly, really.
It must be because I am in the final throws of my thesis. I am revising half of my rough draft and expanding it and turning it in to my director at the end of the weekend. The more I look at what I’ve written, the more I don’t know if it’s done or if it needs more work.
It’s hard when you have to go into the minutae of editing mode, to really keep focus of the big picture, the inspiring part of the first draft that got you writing the story in the first place. Everything feels like lock-step at this point, and I am starting to lose the joy of the prose. However, on the plus side, I can see sloppy parts that I had neglected to fix, thinking they were poetic, and fine-tune them now, where I couldn’t before. Also, I am working on weaving together two very different peices to come up with my page limit.
I feel like I don’t know what it means to write a “finished” piece of fiction anymore. By finished I mean, a publishable peice of fiction, not just one I don’t feel like working on anymore. I don’t know what it feels like to “finish” a story or a novel because I haven’t experienced the feeling before. I had always anticipated that I would end with a confident flourish, like how I’ve seen the authors write their last words in the movies, and then judiciously put their quill pen back in the inkwell, closing a large tome slowly with a sigh of satisfaction. But I’m starting to get the picture that maybe this is not what one feels like at the end of a peice. I saw my friend on the day she finished the first draft of her memoir. She said that she started crying many times during the day for no reason. I sat and ate with her and she looked like she had seen a ghost. She was a psychological mess. I saw her a few weeks after that and she was back to her old self. But, it gets me wondering. What’s it like when you’re done with a peice of writing? Do you know when you are finished? Do you ever really feel done? Maybe I still haven’t experienced enough to really begin to answer this question.
3 responses so far ↓
jadepark // February 24, 2007 at 8:18 pm |
…or maybe this is your way of coping with any anxiety about your impending “separation” from the entity. ie., this way “you won’t miss it.”
the years in our MFA program are a treasured, albeit wholly imperfect, time in our writing lives. i can see how it might be hard to leave.
you, my friend, are an epicure who also loves to start things more than finish them, too. it’s just who you are, and that’s ok.
Susan // February 28, 2007 at 11:40 pm |
I totally hated my MFA program when I graduated, too. Which is coincidentally the same MFA program I believe you are in. But I also think sometimes it makes it easier to leave something when you see its flaws.
And re finishing a book- 13 years later, I’m still trying. Urgh.
wildguppy // March 5, 2007 at 7:05 pm |
Jade, you’re right. Thanks for calling me an epicure. I had to look that one up. Now I use it all the time.
Hmmm….It’s funny how we both hated our MFA programs at the end, Susan. I find it ironic.
Leonessa, thanks for the giant hug. I will need it by the end of this.