Yesterday I talked about my recently roughly sketched out five-year plan. It has not really been something that has been on my mind, all of the ideas just came together during a quiet moment after an extremely loud, but fun day. However, I guess some of these things have been reoccurring in conversations for a few months. I just lost sight of what I really wanted in the long run and started looking at the more practical what can happen now things in life.
For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a novelist. Even when I could not put a sentence together correctly to save my life (or spell any of the words), I wanted to tell imaginative stories. I wanted to be the author of a book that someone would read over and over and over again because they loved the plot, the imagery, and they wanted to get lost in a story, my story. Back when I was growing up, before Harry Potter and Twilight, in the middle of the Gossip Girl book series, there was not much to the young adult fiction world that was well written that was not just, well Gossip Girl. I had been lucky enough to find a few good books that I loved that fit well in the young adult world, it was fantasy and it was not a Jane Austen novel (not that I could really read to understand any of the parody behind her work), but it was well written and I felt like I learned something about the human condition from it. You can learn about the human condition from Gossip Girl novels, too, but that is more like reading People magazine or OK Weekly as opposed to Vogue or Harper's Bazaar. I think you get my point, I wanted more from my books that I could not find in the young adult section, but I definitely had some trouble finding what I wanted from the adult section. After all, I did not really want to read those scandalous sex scenes. I tended to skip those parts because the rest of the book was at least decent. Adults used to have a much higher standard than the young adult section. That is not so much the case anymore. You can find (or really, I have found) books that are equally has horribly written, plotted, cliched, etc in both sections.
In college, when I finally decided on an English major I did so with graduate school in mind. I was planning on taking a year off and then applying to creative writing graduate schools (with no where in particular in mind). When I finally graduated a semester early, I was so sick of school there was no way I was going back. I was tired of classes, tired of homework, tired of putting forth effort. But most I think it was the migraines talking, my whole last semester I felt horrible. Now that I have some distance between graduation and now, I do not want to give up on my dream. Everyone talks about going to graduate school, until they actually graduate from undergraduate and then (from people I have talked to) a good many of them change their mind. I did. And now I am changing it back.
Graduate school, in general, scares me. I worry about not being a good enough writer to get in, not having good enough grades, not being experienced enough, just not being good enough in general. I think I am worried that if I can not get into graduate for creative writing then maybe I should not be a writer. I think fear is the main reason I changed my mind in the first place. But the only way to conquer your fear is to face it. So that is what I am going to do.
My five-year plan is that I am going to work (a real job) for a few more years (roughly two or three) and then I am going to start applying to graduate schools for creative writing (in the fiction genre). I will also be applying for teacher assistantships and other fellowships. Right now, I have a few places in mind that are my top choices (Wilmington, NC or somewhere UKish) but just because those are my favorites does not mean I will get in nor will they end up being the places I go if I do get in. I will most definitely weigh all of my options and choose the right place for me. Then again, who knows if I will even make it to that part. A lot can happen in two to three years.
Title: "Inside Out" by Katie Costello
Labels: Adult Life, Books, Career, Education, Music, Plans
