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A Peek at My Next Novel
February 19, 2012
I just finished the first draft of the script for the first chapter of my new novel. It’s going to be an incredible story. Here’s a super-brief synopsis:
A Polish icon painter in the 10th century is separated from his young daughter and taken prisoner when Vikings ransack his village. He finds himself a slave in Moorish Spain, a culture that decries his talent of iconography. His faith challenged, his worldview shaken—will he ever find a way to escape? Will he ever see his daughter again?
You may noticed I said “script,” not “manuscript.” That’s right—the story is going to be presented in a hybrid graphic–text novel. If you’re wondering how this might pan out, check out the work of Brian Selznick. (Literary Agent Bree Ogden turned me on to his work when I pitched my idea to her. Big shout-out to her; Selznick’s work is great.) I’m not doing the same thing as Selznick, but it’s similar.
Why the strange format? Well, it will make sense when you get the whole story, so it’s not just a gimmick. But on a deeper level, I’ve been looking for ways to push the storytelling possibilities of the written word—I want to show that books can do things that movies, plays and music cannot do. In Worse Than Getting Caught I did this by assembling a sort of epistolary story wherein several of the characters, unannounced, take turns narrating. Now I’m trying out a new technique wherein the story is told through pictures and words. And I’m so very excited.
Training Begins!
January 17, 2012
This year I’m planning to run three marathons: Green Bay (May), San Francisco (July) and Bilbao (October). Both my brother and my mom are running in San Francisco also—it’ll be their first marathon! And then my family and I are thinking about doing the Goofy Challenge (a half and full marathon in the same weekend) at Disney World in January.
I took last week off from running, chocking it up to “recovery” from my last marathon. (In reality, though, I was fine since Tuesday.) It was nice having a few days off, but I’ve been itching to go for a run.
That was when I began to experience a new level of smoothness and ease, often feeling as if I were skimming along on a conveyor belt. As I worked on technique, my sense of running more smoothly and efficiently gradually began to replace that old feeling of working hard to run. My breathing became less labored, my muscles were not getting sore, and many times I would feel better at the end of a run than I did when I started. I could go out for a thirty-mile run and come back without any major discomfort: an exhilarating realization. “Postrun recovery” began to take on a whole new meaning—hours instead of days, and sometimes no time at all.
Judging from the testimonials of people who’ve taken his classes and read his book, he’s not unique in that. It all seems pretty incredible, and I’m excited for what this can do for my running. I had my first training run today—a 30-minute tempo run—and it felt fantastic.
Interested? Check out the book on Amazon.
Revelation
July 14, 2011
I was going to sleep last night, my head all full of Book of Mormon songs and Vik Muniz’s words. I was thinking about my art and what I’ve done, and how I’ve never been fully satisfied with my work. Something about it, especially the air balloon pieces, always bored me in a way…
That dissatisfaction, tied with the mediocre performance of my Etsy store, fueled my decision to take a break. I was pretty much constantly stressed out for the past four years because I couldn’t seem to find time to paint, even though I knew I should. To keep myself from stressing out, I decided I’d take a year or so off of painting, until after I earned my TESOL certification.
The past several weeks have been dismal for me. I swear, if I weren’t training for my marathon, releasing all these endorphins, I’d be depressed all the time. Even with the endorphins I’ve had a lot of gloomy days.
First I started thinking about writing again. I have a great concept for a novel that I can’t wait to get started on, but I want to wait till I’m in Spain to get into it, and that won’t be for a while. A few days ago I decided to turn one of my old short stories into a full-length novel…. to delve into it a little deeper.
So that’s where I’m at from a literary perspective, but the visual side of me has still been malnourished. Watching the Book of Mormon and Waste Land by Vik Muniz, I realized I had to do something. First, that I couldn’t take a break from painting. It was killing me. And second, that I had to figure out what edge I could give my work that would make it stand out and stop boring me.
A few weeks ago, the thought crossed my mind that I should combine my writing and painting by illustrating my written works. I liked that idea a lot. I was trying to think of how that’d play into my Etsy store… maybe I’d include the page from the manuscript that verbally paints the picture with the picture itself?
But doing things that way would seem to create a barrier to my work. People would have to read my writing first to really get the picture… the paintings couldn’t stand alone entirely.
And then last night, as I was about to fall asleep, I realized the piece I’d been missing: I need to combine my writing with my painting. Not just display them side-by-side, but combine them. A million images flashed through my head, scenes from my writings that’d been collecting up in my mind for years, overlain by snippets of the passages that they were tied to.
With words becoming part of the composition, the illustrations could both stand alone as stories in themselves and also be supplemental to my writing. Both disciplines of mine could promote each other while still being strong individually.
I’m not sure if this makes any sense, or even if there’s anyone reading this to make sense to… I’m busy for the next few weeks, but I’ve already got a number of images in mind. I just have to find the time to make them.
Statement of Purpose for TESOL
May 19, 2011
…for UWM’s TESOL Certification Program. The product of some recent soul-searching… and I made a vision board (finally). There’s some good stuff on there (a recurring theme is Rio de Janeiro). Maybe I’ll put up a pic when I get back to my place.
Anyway, here’s the statement:
I studied abroad in Warsaw last spring semester, where I enrolled myself in a basic Polish language course. Perhaps ironically, it was while taking that course that I realized how much I love English and how proud I am to be an English speaker.
Since then, I’ve been searching for ways to manifest my love for English. I’ve long been a writer—I began to realize that my propensity for writing was probably driven by my love for language, but I wondered whether there were any other possibilities. One that came to mind: teaching. Through teaching, I reasoned, I could spread my linguistic knowledge and pride to others, and I wouldn’t be limited to affecting those who already speak my language.
Alight with this fervor, I resolved to obtain a tesol certificate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I’m a second-semester senior at Marquette University, and my ideal post-graduate plan would keep me in Milwaukee for at least a year, so the uwm program was a godsend. And though it may seem contradictory, what most excites me about this program in particular is the internship aspect, which, as I understand it, can be completed abroad. This is good because I’m addicted to traveling: I’ve gone somewhere new every summer since I graduated high school—and I’m always eager to visit and learn about new places.
Though I have no formal background in linguistics, I think I’m a good candidate for uwm’s tesol program because I’m passionate about language in general, I’m a quick learner and, in a way, I’ve long had an interest in English linguistics—I just never put myself in an environment where that interest could cultivate. From time to time, for example, I find myself musing over the pages of my condensed copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, entranced by the origins of words and phrases, or navigating endlessly through Wikipedia articles on Middle English spelling and declension.
What it boils down to is I’m always on a quest to answer the question why. I’m discovering that nearly everything we cast off as inexplicable or nonsensical can be explained and demystified with a little (or a lot of) research, and language is no different. The tesol certification program at uwm will help me, for myself and for others, explain and demystify the English language.
