my life 2007

Thoughts at the end of a TDY.

I typed up a long, chatty piece a couple of days ago which had an embedded url my blog software doesn't like, and the software lost my piece. I was too ticked to retype.

So anyway. Here goes a second try, but the "whole new day" aspect of writing guarantees my ramblings today will bear little resemblance to the piece I wrote then. We can only hope I do a better job this time.

I told, no doubt, about my new friend, Gwen Roland. Gwen found me in the lobby of the Sheraton while I sought the preregistration desk for the conference. I was alone, probably looking slightly lost and (no doubt) poorly dressed (common for me). Gwen has supported herself through her writing since the 70s, when she finished her master's degree and, deciding she was "unfit for civilization," moved to the swamp with a male friend and lived on a houseboat for 10 years. She began writing about their lives and methods of agriculture they developed supporting themselves then, and by the time she left the swamp, was offered various writing jobs through the years. A couple of years ago, Louisiana State University Press asked her to publish a book about her swamp life all those years. They asked her twice before she agreed to write it--as a historical record. It is also, of course, partially a memoir. She loaned me a copy and I read through it fairly quickly. Her writing is delightful and her subject, unusual and therefore interesting. The book's called Achafalaya Houseboat. (The link to the book and NPR's writeup broke this software last time, so you'll just have to Google her this time.)

I came to this conference as my "freebie" (sponsored by the department so I could see what a conference is, basically). I'm impressed by the level of discourse and the vast majority of writing I've heard.

Given my 'druthers, I'd read nonfiction over fiction almost any day. I also have a natural ability and desire to write nonfiction. Thus, I'm looking into the possibility of doing my graduate work on nonfiction literature specifically. I'm tossing around studying the nature of trauma nonfiction at the moment: why there's so little of it, considering how many people have worthwhile stories to tell; why it so often fails to communicate the experience adequately; what mechanisms interfere with the communication of such important information, both with the writer and the reader.

I know...I'll probably have another brilliant idea I want to pursue tomorrow, and it may have nothing to do with this idea at all. I should just take Maj Mac's suggestion: "Don't sweat it; in the first year, you'll do nothing but coursework, and while you do it, you'll decide what you want to write your dissertation on. If you make up your mind before you go, you may overlook the options available you may have been happier with." She's probably right. But...she wasn't a literature PhD, either. I've heard the timeline for lit folks is a bit more unforgiving than other areas of English studies.

I listened to speakers and attended panels for the past three days, and I'm utterly inundated with wonderful ideas and questions to pursue in my writing. They talk about everything from the ethics of writing nonfiction to the problems of writing about trauma and the question of genre jumping (writing fiction and nonfiction).

At one point this morning, I had both a prof here at Iowa and a prof from the University of Minnesota courting me to consider their programs to pursue my PhD. Interestingly, both are top choices for me, so we had a long discussion, and I have contacts to pursue with both.

Also--in other news--I went for a run here a couple of times, and I am Wonder Woman at this altitude. I ran five miles at a very fast pace, sustained. In neither case was I sprinting outright, but I was definitely running, not jogging. I hardly got winded.

I have some new friends, some contacts, some inspiration, and...I'm ready to go home. :)

d