…the state of my writing progress & my hoped for focus in the spring semester:

I am working steadily on the grief-focused novel I applied with and a batch of short stories that also center on grief, diaspora (Romanian-American), and the psychosomatic (especially as it relates to the absurd). Theatre/actors who have psychological breakdowns feature strongly (and often they are Romanian-Americans). In short, the short-stories all have to do with risk and seeing/not-seeing something important.

As such, my top choice for workshop is Furst, given his theatre background and the way he constructs sentences.

For seminar, it now feels imperative to delve deeply into the psychology of the sentences, and to do the ‘thing’ that Fischer notes in Grammaphilia of unlocking the voice and the underneath/belly of the thing that’s trying to be said but isn’t being said because the syntax is blocking it.

My second seminar choice is a poetry seminar (w/Skillings) and it feels very topically apt for most of my writing: an absent center and seeking to say the thing that is buried deep.

Then, my third seminar choice is the international-writers course with McDonald that feels like a structural home for all of the non-U.S. voices and sensibilities in my own writing, at least in my attempts at writing them.

In case ‘workload’ is a concern: I’ll note that I’ve already read a handful of the books in the McDonald course, and it seems that the reading/writing workload for the other two seminars is not particularly high (in comparison, at least, to some of the other seminar options).

List of (top choice) preferences in one place:

Furst on Wed. @ 9:30 (workshop)

Fischer on Tues. @ 4:15 (Comma Sutra)

Skillings on Wed. @ 4:15 (Hole Theory)

McDonald on Mon. @ 4:15 (The Peripheral Writer)

I know you’ve got a lot of students to accommodate and to please…and I appreciate all the luck that might come my way.

Kindly,

Mădălina