Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser McAlpin

S'Up

I tried not to slouch or think about how I had to leave early to get my driver's license renewed.  This was the fourth day of our ten-day winter residency for grad school.  My classmates were scattered around the room, many looking withered from last night's festivities, where they went out on the town and blew off some steam.  We were sitting in on a panel of speakers who drifted in late at different times, the result of bad winter roads and some miscommunication or other.  I was tuned in one minute and out the next, exhausted from early morning workshops, late afternoon readings and long drives home in rush hour traffic.

The woman speaking was the last to arrive, and, shunning a seat beside the other panelists, she stood at the podium behind them to deliver a well-planned summary of her online publishing endeavor.

"The more you publish, the more the search engines pick you up, the more hits you get and the more you are promoted," she said.

Uh oh, I thought, sitting up in my chair and staring straight ahead, eyes wide.

Uh oh, indeed.  That one sentence may be the only sentence I retained during the entire afternoon and is the sole reason why I am posting on my blog today.  This is my first post since Thanksgiving weekend.  I hadn't thought about it much until now.  I've been busy. 

Either post or shut it down, I thought.

I decided to post, and then I renewed my driver's license.

Biting the Dust and Sending it to Ireland

On Friday, I emailed my end-of-summer packet to my mentor.  I had everything typed, proofed and spell-checked, and all six attachments lined up in their proper order: letter to mentor (4 pages), main manuscript (45 pages), second manuscript part 1 (10 pages), second manuscript part 2 (5 pages), book review 1 (5 pages) and book review 2 (3 pages).  I was rooting around for the SEND button, when a vision popped into my head.  There he was―a World War II Japanese kamikaze pilot whose mission was to fly his plane into an American aircraft carrier, loaded up with just enough gas to get there, but not enough to get home.

“Oops, I value my life after all and I think I’ll head back to the base and let my commander know,” he thought, as he plummeted downward toward ship and sea.

“Oh, for God’s sakes, Louise,” I scolded myself as I pressed SEND, “It’s your writing, not your life.”

Right?

Oops

Oops and Seriously?!  Those two words sum up too much of my life.  They are famous last words for which I am well known.  My latest error in judgment seems to be my impression that, since my first MFA packet was completed and submitted on Aug. 8, I could take a break for the next week and a half, and sit back and wait for comments from Prof. Mentor in Ireland to arrive in my email box, which will in fact occur in the next ten days, before plunging back into my reading and writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.  Then I happened to glance at my school schedule.  My next 20-40 pages with 2 book reviews and extra essay/letter and more new stories for a second manuscript are due September 5.

“Good Lord,” I said to myself, rolling my eyes.  “Like I can afford to take a break.  Oh, yes, I think I will hang out at the pool and do nothing all week.  Maybe I'll even get a massage and have my toenails and fingernails done and get my legs waxed and guaranteed-to-last-two-weeks false eyelashes applied, just for the heck of it.”

What.  Was.  I.  Thinking?  Sometimes my ability to miss crucial points amazes me.  I guess I'm not quite used to grad school yet.  More famous last words.

Listful Paragraphing

Today packet no. 1 for grad school is due, about forty pages of typewritten, double-spaced ideas, thoughts, beliefs, facts, BS, stories, conversations, opinions, memories, imaginings, outright lies and other information formed into scenes, dialog and description broken into fragments and sentences and lines and paragraphs and headings that represent God knows how much time, worry, paper that ended up being recycled, extra printer cartridges, back strain, eye strain, headaches, loss of appetite, panic attacks, chewed fingernails, compulsive eating and sleepless nights.  Once the packet is on its way to Prof. Mentor in Ireland, I intend to celebrate with a Vocelli's pizza, a bag of Oreos, a carton of Ben & Jerry's butter pecan ice cream, a chocolate malt from my neighborhood ice cream store and an evening of TV, with maybe a smidgeon of knitting thrown in for the heck of it, and of course my mastiffs, where the phone , doorbell and computer will be silenced, and all will be well with the world.  Oh, yeah.  And God will be in his Heaven too, which would be a grand thing. 

On to the weekend (and the next deadline)!  Have a good one.

From Louise

Blessing From a Grad Student

My first packet of MFA writing, due August 8, is to include a 16 to 40 page chapter of my primary manuscript, plus an undefined but respectable amount of raw material for a second manuscript, plus two book reviews, one on Alice Elliott Dark (5 pages) and one on Alice Munro (3 pages), plus a 1,000-word essay, which Prof. Mentor insists on calling a letter, describing the problems and joys of this endeavor.

Since my Wednesday blog so thoroughly and accurately describes some ongoing issues I have with my writing, I've been tempted to submit it as my essay/letter; and while Prof. Mentor may be amused, I don’t think he would be impressed enough with my wit and humor to give me a passing grade.  So I think I’ll pass.

I know that pun was trite, obvious and lame, but given the amount of work I've been cranking out and polishing up this week, I simply must be tolerated and maybe even forgiven.

Hail to the weekend full of grace....

From Louise

Wednesday Working

Today was a big writing day because I needed to pull my month-long writing efforts into a cohesive packet to email to my MFA mentor, Prof. Mentor, by August 8.  Since I have been working on it in short spurts, I cleared my calendar and prepared for eight glorious, uninterrupted hours of work.  I could hardly wait to get started.

My alarm woke me at 6 am, and after my first cup of coffee, I opened my laptop and booted it up to discover it was infected with some weird virus cleverly disguised as Adware and it had sent out a round of toxic emails to my entire contact list.  So between the Norton Antivirus support people and my computer guy named Boy Computer, I worked on it till 11, when I had to run to the grocery store for lunch items.

In the checkout line, I realized I had left my wallet at home because yesterday when I picked up my messages off my machine, I learned that all my medical insurance would be canceled if the insurance provider didn’t hear from me by the end of that day, so I frantically called their office, even though it was after 5 pm; but yes, the same voice who left me the message in the first place answered the phone and agreed to accept a credit card payment right then and there, which was why my wallet was pulled out of my purse in the first place.

I scuttled home, grabbed my wallet and zoomed back to the grocery store; but my grocery cart with all its groceries had disappeared and I had to start all over again.  After restocking a new cart, I paid for my groceries and was on my way out, when I ran into Mrs. Whatchamahoobie and her son, and she wanted me to meet her son’s very first girlfriend who was smoking a cigarette outside near the coke machine; and yes, she was cute, except for her smelly cigarette, and I could have done without the nose ring, but I really had to rush off; so I did, and when I arrived home, I had missed lunch and it was time for dinner and my computer was fine, except for the thirty or so emails from people wanting to inform me that I was sending out viruses; so I fired off a round of benign emails, explaining what the virus was and how to fix it, and apologizing profusely; and I finally sat down to dinner, which was really lunch and which I was too stressed to eat.

After choking down some salad, I took my stomach-ache back to my laptop to discover that all my thesis files had vanished into the same black hole that ate my grocery cart earlier.  So I had to extract them from a back-up external hard drive that I hid from myself, burglars and fires in one of my desk drawers.  I took it out, hooked it up and began to transfer.  The only work I lost was yesterday's writing, which was unfortunate and lucky at the same time; and once I was ready to write, with all my restored files in place, I realized I felt like a wet dish rag that had been wrung out and flung across the kitchen faucet to dangle dry and wanted to do nothing but light scented candles, eat ice cream (preferably a whole pint), and watch a movie, which I did.

I had eight whole hours set aside for my writing.  I wonder why my first drafts aren't finished.

With Onion Dip

This is my Carlow Univ. MFA Creative Nonfiction group, with mentor Brian Leyden, as of the June 2008 residency in Ireland.  Aren't we somethin' else?  Yes, sir, all that and a bag of chips.

Carlow College Color

“Close your eyes for a few minutes and think about this classroom,” Sean Hardie, our guest lecturer, said.  After several minutes of clock-ticking silence, he asked us to open our eyes and write, but I had already wandered off.

Stone―rough stone―encased in stone.  Walking on stone.  Hard stone on the winding stairwells, glistening with silver specks.  Up and twist around, up and twist around.  On the second landing sits a granite sculpture on a wooden pedestal of a round woman, holding a child.  At the top, I never know which way to go until I hear my classmates talking and laughing on my left.

Thank you to Carlow University, Pittsburgh and Carlow College, Ireland for the opportunity to study with such an exceptional and talented group of writers.

May your weekend be filled with laughter and mindful meandering!

  From Louise

Emails Among Friends

The program has been great!  Our mentors have kept us working constantly; hardly any time left for exploring ancient ruins and such, although we did go to one castle and the bus drove off without me (don't worry, it came back) and we did enjoy Bloomsday in Dublin, and took the James Joyce Walk and went to the Yeats exhibit and saw Trinity College and the Book of Kells and the Trinity Library, which is to die for.  And we saw a play at the Gate Theatre―The Weir.  And a few days later, we went to to an Irish caeli (social gathering), and watched and clapped and ate homemade foods and danced and laughed and saw singing in Gaelic and English and we listened to instrumental performances and our group was invited to sing, but nobody did, and I think this was my favorite activity of the whole trip.  This program has been incredible, the mentors are fabulous and we've had readings and workshops given by stunning writers: Carlo Gebler, Mary O'Donnell and Ann Enright, to name a few.  My mentor Brian Leyden wrote The Home Place, which I'm hoping to finish reading on the flight home.  It's been quite the experience.  I have major work due July 11, Aug 8 and so on and so on. :::gulp::::  By the way, loved the cool postcard.

--L

Sounds like a first-rate program, though you'll probably need to schedule a vacation if you want to do any sightseeing.  Just don't let them steal your Lucky Charms! ;-)

--M

Lucky Charms intact.  Leaving for home tomorrow.  Have fallen in love with the Irish.

  From Louise

Inside and Out

He recited a passage in old Gaelic and paused, peering over the rims of his reading glasses.  “Anyone?”  We sat at our desks in various poses, leaning forward with furrowed brow or gazing off to contemplate the Irish greenery outside our window.  Carlow's lawn stretched away from the building like a kelly drop-cloth, almost obscuring its Celtic cross on one side and ancient rock on the other.  It was bordered in pink, yellow and white roses.

“I’ll let you hear it again,” he said.  His glasses slid further down his nose and he peered at us with ice-blue eyes.  He repeated the passage, more slowly this time, letting the ancient rhythms roll over the class like a wind waves over a wheat field, swooshing softly while it skims overhead.

“Still no one?” he asked.  Heads shook around the room.  Our mentors, side-by-side in the second row, glanced at one another and shrugged.  My creative nonfiction mentor moved to the edge of his seat and cradled his chin in his hand, ear crooked toward our afternoon guest speaker.  The room waited.  Still and silent.

“It’s from the Gospel according to Mark,” he said.

“Well, no wonder,” I thought and looked outside to watch the leaves curtsy and bow to the rhythm of the rain.  Around me, the room murmured and rustled back to life.

The Other One

Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I've been watching a ton of documentaries on Ireland, losing myself in the images―brilliant green pastures spattered with grazing livestock, long country roads stretching for miles, and friendly, white cottages topped with thatched roofs and chimneys breathing out a single, slow curl of smoke.  There were castles guarding seashores, shorelines cradling boulders, giants' causeways heading toward Scotland, horses racing across the beach, sheep, cathedrals, and on and on and on.  I smiled at fishermen with cracked faces standing on piers and young folks in pubs, having the craic, and toothless, old women in long skirts, gazing out from peeling doorways.  A journey back in time.

Then I discovered Wikimapia, only to learn that within blocks of my school, in addition to several other schools and Carlow Cathedral, there is a shopping mall, a retail center, a Penney’s, a McDonald's, a Godfather's Pizza, a Domino's, a KFC, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian restaurant.  Also three or so nightclubs, classified according to degree of raunchiness, a strip club and a plethora of buildings close together sitting on dusty-looking squares and rectangles. 

I sat for a moment at my computer, letting an eraser brush back and forth across my expectations, swishing from side to side the way my high school teachers did when they wiped down the blackboards before class, the backs of their arms and rear ends jiggling like jello.  Class always began with a clean slate and muffled clouds of chalk dust that disappeared to nothing.

“I don't want to go to that Ireland,” I told my friends, the McKennas, over lunch last week.  “I want to go to the other one.”

“No, no!” they laughed.  “It's all part of it, the old with the new!”

Phooey.  I guess it would be a good adjustment for me to face my eiry adventure expecting nothing and ready to experience everything, like a human sponge.  So I'm putting down my eraser, turning away from the chalk board and my computer, and saying goodbye until next time.  It seems I have some exploring to do.

From Louise

Lightbulb!

Every time I set out to write a new blog, I find myself wondering why I never have any new material.  I think I've been reworking the same old stuff over and over for weeks now, maybe months.  I know I have a good excuse, since I'm getting ready to graduate and getting ready to pursue further study in Ireland this summer and have about hundred jillion books about Ireland to read and about a thousand jillion more books to read that were written by Irish authors in Irish settings.  I suppose it would help if I actually wrote something in my journal now and then, instead of digging up rejects from the corners of my computer's basement and reworking them.  Oh, the challenge of breathing some semblance of life back into dead scrolls.  I may love the rewrite, but it keeps me from producing anything new.  And today, on the brink of graduation, with spring going nuts outside my window, blossoming here, bursting out there, I'm all about new.  Maybe this is the reason my "Memoir Writing" instructor required three pages in our journal for every day of the term last fall.  He was trying to cultivate healthy writing habits, yes?  Oh.  I get it.

Have a terrific weekend and may you discover something fresh and new while you're having it!

From Louise

Carlow, Warm Baths and Chocolate

I have surprised myself by being accepted into Carlow University's low-residency MFA Creative Writing program, which offers two 11-day writing residencies per year, one in Carlow, Ireland in June and one here in Pittsburgh in January.  And while I may sound all matter-of-fact and reporty about it, I am actually bouncing off the walls, fighting for my composure, since I am in the throes of planning a writer's residency in Ireland this summer!  At the moment, it is 4:45 am, I have been awake and tossing around in my bed since about 3, and have so many questions, excitements, worries, concerns, ecstasies and yearnings that I can hardly think.  Should I put on my coffee pot and get an early start to my day, or soak in a warm tub to lull myself back to sleep, or knit, or read a book to pass the time until I know what to do with myself?  And why the hell is there no chocolate in this house when I need it?

a Bit o' Luck, a Lot o' Skill

St. Patrick's Day is much more meaningful to me this year, since it's a celebration not only of the beloved saint, but also of Ireland, and I am hoping to go to the emerald isle this summer to write under the tutelage of Carlo Gébler, as part of the Carlow University's low-residency MFA Creative Writing program.  I just finished reading Father and I: a memoir and I am awestruck by his writing.  How terrific it would be to continue working on this with such a memoir master looking over my shoulder.  So while today may be the day for green, shamrocks, pots of gold at ends of rainbows, leprechauns, magic and the luck o’ the Irish, I am wishing for every ounce of writing skill existing in my body, mind and spirit to form compelling, stunning, breath-taking ideas and sentences and paragraphs and descriptions and titles in my head and come pouring out of my fingers onto the keyboard, to be flashed onto this flickering screen in front of me, so I can edit and rewrite what I hope to be the most ingenious, knock-your-socks-off, wickedly beautiful and introspectively haunting 25 pages of creative nonfiction I have ever written.  Because, you see, Ireland beckons. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you, yeah.