Day 2: BOO(!)
Blog pressure is the worst. No one even reads this, so there is actually no pressure at all, but I feel like there is. Why can't I feel this self-generated stress for completing my grad school essays? It's just that I know I check blogs all time for updates, so it's not very polite of me to demand updates from others when I don't do one myself. Right?
Tomorrow I go to the City Council of Pittsburgh to watch a councilperson proclaim November 7 -12, 2005, Creative Nonfiction Week in the city of Pittsburgh. The journal (Creative Nonfiction) is hosting the 412 Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Festival during those dates. The proclamation should be a good time. Word has it they say "Whereas" a lot.
Pittsburgh. It's a surprisingly great literary city. There always seems to be a cool lecture series, fun visiting speaker or neat writers conference type thing going on. Last weekend the National Association of Science Writers had a meeting here, and next week, as mentioned before, is the best creative nonfiction festival ever. I've enjoyed talks by Maya Angelou, Alice Siebold, John Irving, Maureen Dowd, and Salman Rushdie in intimate settings during my short stint here. Nice job with the writing stuff, P-burgh. But you still can't make chicken wings for anything.
The libraries here are amazing. The university facilities are fantastic, but the public libraries are just as spectacular. They recently renovated two of the biggest branches, and, really, they're gorgeous. More importantly, they aren't closing like the Buffalo & Erie County Public Libraries. That makes me so, so sad.
Back to me. I got my official GRE scores in the mail today. I got a 5 on the writing section. Eh. It's ok. It's on a 0 to 6 scale, in .5 increments. The schools that ask for my GRE scores are American, UC-Riverside, Minnesota and Vanderbilt, but none of the others do. It's all about the writing sample. As it should be, I suppose. So that means I have one month (Damn you, U of Arizona and your early-ass deadline) to learn how to write. Or, convince an admissions committee that I know how to write.
Tomorrow I go to the City Council of Pittsburgh to watch a councilperson proclaim November 7 -12, 2005, Creative Nonfiction Week in the city of Pittsburgh. The journal (Creative Nonfiction) is hosting the 412 Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Festival during those dates. The proclamation should be a good time. Word has it they say "Whereas" a lot.
Pittsburgh. It's a surprisingly great literary city. There always seems to be a cool lecture series, fun visiting speaker or neat writers conference type thing going on. Last weekend the National Association of Science Writers had a meeting here, and next week, as mentioned before, is the best creative nonfiction festival ever. I've enjoyed talks by Maya Angelou, Alice Siebold, John Irving, Maureen Dowd, and Salman Rushdie in intimate settings during my short stint here. Nice job with the writing stuff, P-burgh. But you still can't make chicken wings for anything.
The libraries here are amazing. The university facilities are fantastic, but the public libraries are just as spectacular. They recently renovated two of the biggest branches, and, really, they're gorgeous. More importantly, they aren't closing like the Buffalo & Erie County Public Libraries. That makes me so, so sad.
Back to me. I got my official GRE scores in the mail today. I got a 5 on the writing section. Eh. It's ok. It's on a 0 to 6 scale, in .5 increments. The schools that ask for my GRE scores are American, UC-Riverside, Minnesota and Vanderbilt, but none of the others do. It's all about the writing sample. As it should be, I suppose. So that means I have one month (Damn you, U of Arizona and your early-ass deadline) to learn how to write. Or, convince an admissions committee that I know how to write.
posted by Maria | 12:00 AM
1 Comments:
Howdy!
I saw the link to your blog on J.J. Gittes' blog... thought I'd take a peek. Very interesting. VERY interesting.
I, too, supposedly created TWO (cripes!) blogs in an effort to get my ass moving on various creative initiatives. Ostensibly concentrating on comic books ( http://blog.myspace.com/cattleworks ) and movies ( http://www.livejournal.com/users/cattleworks/ ).
You are invited to check them out.
You'll probably go crazy if you're expecting updates quicker than... uh... any sort of regularity. We are in the early stages of development.
I think it's neat you're in Pittsburgh! More than two freakin' decades ago I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I LOVE Pittsburgh! I left Pittsburgh, to return to Buffalo, the year they were starting to displace little businesses downtown to make room for the construction of the new PPG building. I returned to the city only a few years ago and finally saw the building all finished. The city's still cool. It's a small big city. It looks like a collage of buildings taken from larger cities when you enter into town. Weird.
Here's a writing related question, kinda sorta: does Lewis Nordan still teach at the University of Pittsburgh? I read that on the inside covers of one of his books. I haven't read any of his novels, but I'm fond of his Sugar Mecklin stories and I've read his two collections of short stories, The All-Girl Football Team and Welcome to the Arrow Catcher Fair.
Nuts... I'm rambling away now.
Anyways, best of luck to you in your gettin'-your-ass-movin' -and-writin' endeavors. In a related note, my wife, is anxious to begin her second NaNoWriMo in a row (National Novel Writing Month) which starts today. So, in various degrees, you ain't alone, sister!
Ciao!
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