As in, wow, I've been busy. Today I: had my critique with non-writing faculty, went to a Japanese paper store on Belmont, went to an Art paper store on Chicago, went to the letterpress studio, sprouted tons of new zits under the muck and grime of things, spent nine hours ripping paper and setting pages, and then went and bled all over my pants (girls, surely you got my back on this, right? unlike the giggling girls who walked behind me up the stairs in the subway and tittered about "does she know?").

That's a day for you.

Critique went good-o, by the way. I had a pretty interesting group of folks: Claire Pentacost (my favorite), Candida Alvarez, Mike Nourse, Rebecca Dalvesco, David Phimlee, and two other students, one of whom I knew. They were all overwhelmingly positive while still voicing why they thought I had "copped out on the ending" of one piece, and underdeveloped the other. They were somewhat right in both accounts, not that I had copped out, but that the ending isn't yet working how I want it, which means I need to earn the pathway there. And the other piece is just composed of short blips of something that could be much much longer. In fact, I got the impression that my panel thought I had a novel project on the sly... I've been thinking this as well, and it's one that might do me better than the "novel attempt" I've been working on this semester.

Claire was really strong at seeing potential conceptual moves that I could make, and also voicing her perspective that I was doing ok by being a little distanced sometimes in the writing of these pieces. Her most avid devil's advocate in the group was Rebecca, who was actually quite hard on me... went through and actually circled all the times the pronoun "I" showed up in my short pieces. But um, they're in first person. And unlike in my novel-attempt piece, the narration is almost never reporting about the narrator.

I think I'm heading over to Beth Nugent's first-person short story right now and counting the I's on the first page. Um...: 19. And on my first single-spaced page: 19. Eerie. (I didn't count before I did the test; that would be cheating.)

R also said, several times, that I need to "pay more attention to [my] words / language / prose" than I'm doing. This was a little snarky for the first of the two pieces I gave them because it's a short prose piece that's much more about language than the second one, and while there are a few things I'd change, I have gone over it and over it in terms of language. But the second piece could use quite a bit of language racheting, I have to admit...

Other than bristling ever so slightly over most of the things Rebecca said, and basking whenever Claire or David said anything, admiring the sharp directness of Candida (don't try to put anything by her!), and being quite taken with the others as well... all of whom had obviously read my work and were really helpful... it was just a nice feedback session and not a moment over the rack. I hope actually that I can meet enough people to keep this up after school. I felt embarressed that I didn't attend all day and see other people's critiques like we were supposed to, but there is still time and that time did not include today!

Anyhow, I've included pictures of the suffering I'm doing as a result: messy-messy house with no cleaning up in site, eggs for dinner at 11pm, and cranky face. Roaaaaahr. Oh, and speaking of cranky, haha, Bush is planning on trying to push through tax cuts! Um... in school, ten-to-one he was always that stupid arse who was messily trying to do his homework on his lockers two minutes before class. It may have worked every once in a while (I know), but keep doing it, baby, and it catches up to you, especially when it involves a nation. In other words, just try to drive up your goddamn 36% approval by poor-babying us over gas prices and taxes for a year until the sonofabitch of a semi-truck deficit slams into us. WHAAAAAM! Do your math before watching television, dumbass.