update

I've been feeling a bit off this past week. First, I got a rejection letter which was accompanied by a bit of commentary that made me second guess the way I've been presenting my work. Then I read over my course evaluations for TA-ing last semester. Some of the comments were really positive, which made me glad that I had helped many students, but many were quite harsh (which made me vow to never write rude things on a course evaluation in my life). Then I've basically been hibernating each morning (maybe in preparation for the snowfall?), and not getting up until noon-ish. All of this has made me feel very lethargic and annoying.

But life goes on. Maybe I've been feeling weird because I'm now 100% not applying for graduate programs next year. No mfa. No phd.  I am taking a year off (for the first time ever). Ideally, I'm planning on travelling.... to Europe. I want to see the Acropolis and old churches and paintings and stuff. I barely want to type this out loud it sounds so cliched. None of this is planned yet. I have some money saved and a travel-buddy, who happens to have a year off from school as well. So we're sort of stumbling through the next year, uncertain of where we will end up afterwards. I was thinking of teaching esl, but it turns out you typically need qualifications and a visa for that type of thing. (You'd think a masters in creative writing and mediocre course evaluations would be good enough??) So we'll see.

One thing I was reflecting on: Last semester's creative writing class is when I started my riddle project.
Now this semester's creative writing class is when I've started writing a short story sequence. I've written three stories about the same character, and one story from my honours project which could be altered slightly to fit into the same universe as these stories (changing a couple names and ages). I'm hoping to work on this collection over the next while.

But I'm sort of wondering about genre definitions as I go along... Every review I read about short stories usually favours "variety." If the stories in any collection are all too similar, this is usually seen as a bad thing. So where does a short story sequence, or a collection of stories dealing with the same character fit in? So far, I think the main thing I need to keep in mind is that each story must be complete or stand on its own. I think I can achieve this with Poe's idea of "a single effect," Munro's idea of the "feeling" of a story, or some coherence in the form of each individual story. (or something).

Hope everyone's weeks are going well!!