Hey, all. As stated in the title, I got my master's. I owe a lot to this site's community to keep me going and safe from being gaslit.
If it would help people, I would love to share my knowledge and experience about graduate school, writing spaces, or anything that might interest you. Here are some details that might invite questions (that won't doxx me):
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My focus was Prose/Fiction
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To complete the master's I had to turn in a novel as my thesis.
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I volunteered in the anti-racist program in my Creative Writing Department and handled some cases of in-class discrimination issues.
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Some of my peers are boomers and/or libs and I workshopped with them.
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I took courses on teaching Creative Writing, if you want some general advice.
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I was only made aware of the CIA's history of influencing writing programs during my final semester.
If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them or go into more detail.
Why do I lose interest in writing anything 1/3 of the way through?
Writing is like pregnancy. Really fun and engaging at the beginning. Mildly uncomfortable and time consuming in the middle. Horribly painful at the end. And then you have to live with the thing you produced, waffling between pride and disappointment.
I spent two years banging out a 30-page game supplement because I absolutely hated the process of reviewing my work and making incremental changes. That's before wrangling the layout in Word and finding a friend or two who was willing to read it and swallowing their criticism. Wanting to get something to the point where you assume someone else might try and read it is a slog.
It's just a very emotionally exhausting process to go from "What a great cool new idea I have!" to "How the hell do I write dialogue that doesn't sound like it's coming out of the mouth of a 3-year-old?" to "Fuuuuuck, time to edit my 3rd draft again."