This is a topic I'm kind of weird about talking about right now, so I'll probably rewrite this entry later. I know that's not much of an excuse, but this + my past entry are being heavily colored by a project for another class that left me very, very uncomfortable with talking about writing. I'll get over it! Just need a few days to sort my thoughts! This has been an excuse.

This time last year I would have told you with one-hundred percent certainty I was going to grad school, at Rowan if possible, but things change, and unlike a lot of people, I was raised with the idea that "school will always be there." It's the sort of thing I need to give some background on: After high school I went to Europe. After community college I worked at a special education preschool, did freelance graphic design, made clothing for wrestlers, and worked another job that I loved like crazy (but can't mention online). When I first came to Rowan, however, I was trying very hard to be someone different than that. In some ways, I felt a little guilty that I was going to college while my then-long term boyfriend worked a "real job," all my friends worked "real jobs," and I felt like I was getting left behind. I wanted to get everything done--college, grad school, the whole thing.

When things fell apart with all that, at the beginning of last semester, I tried to keep it up, but then I realized that I really was not being left behind. I've always tended to do things differently, and right now my focus, outside of school, is working on making livable money writing romance again, working on a horror novel, and looking into moving once the semester is over. I love Rowan, but I'm more interested in a change of scenery than a graduate degree. I have no doubt I will go for an MA eventually, but I don't want it to be right after getting my BA, that's all.

It have always seemed like a precarious situation to me, sharing one's writing with family and friends. As such, I've never done it. Not my parents, nor my best friends--not even my best friend who is also a published writer. In fact, it's a rare day where I even discuss writing with writers, and even while in class I tend to talk more about the business of publishing than I do the art of writing.

I like listening to people talk about writing. I like reading their tips and tricks, and occasionally sharing them on twitter (even if I'm not too fond of twitter anymore). But when it comes to talking about writing I am not confident about my ability to talk about it. I can, easily, talk one's ear off about publishing, however, and I find myself fairly lucky that I happened to pull the discussion leader job on the day we're talking about publishing. Publishing is something that makes sense to me in a way that seems to reflect why, when I was getting my graphic design degree, my favorite classes were math classes--when you spend so much time dealing with imagination, uncertainty, and self-doubt, it's nice to look into something that makes sense. Two plus two always equals four, and limits in calculus always follow the same rules. Publishing is looking at what readers want, at money and market values, and occasionally makes me wonder why I did not pick up a degree in business, which makes me reflect on why I choose to be a Writing Art major. It's a lot of cause and effect (or reflect? Excuse the pun, I just woke up).

Despite not showing friends and family my writing, a few have found it, much like when I was working as an artist I few people I knew stumbled upon my old portfolio. "I can't imagine you not working a job where you're creative," is a sentence I've heard a million times, from the time I was a child until even now, at twenty-four. Even when I was, for a few weeks when starting Rowan, a journalism major I was encouraged to switch to Writing Arts for the sake of creativity--only this time it was by a journalism professor. ("If you've written books why are you in journalism?" "Because it's practical." "Journalism isn't practical.")

Of course, sitting here, writing this, is feeding into my own self-doubt, again, somehow, about publishing and jobs and internships and millions of other things (like my tendency to overuse the word "and" while writing instead of using lists. Who does this? I do this. It's not proper English). And in a lot of ways, I think this self-doubt is uniquely a writer's thing, one in which no matter how many stories published, professors impressed, or family and friends offering encouragement, writers will always have, and no one else will understand. After all, why else, when I'm dead-set on writing, do I sometimes wonder why I didn't listen to my Freshman year calculus teacher when he said I should be a math major? It's that doubt, always that doubt.