First meeting with M

I am serving as a Director for a Master's thesis of Fiction, but really consider myself an ally. Really, I am looking forward to reading what M comes up with.

Here is our schedule:

TABLE OF CONTENTS based on proposal

 With the the novella “The F---”

· A working journal        

 To plan to expand as a novel, with the goal of a finished Chapter One

·         To include a query letter to agents

·         To plan at least two short stories (one in genre, one in lit) and one flash fiction 

·         To include a cover letter to lit mags, journals, and other publications

To complete a list of agents for the novel

To complete a list of publishers and publications for the short stories / flash fictions

We have also added the Snowflake Method as of today 

and a flash fiction

May 18, 2016, 10:00am: Meet with D in the ML office to go over strategy plans for writing and research

June 1, 2016 Meet with D at PT’s (10am) to discuss drafts with D; submit whatever drafts to D via email

June 8, 2016 Meet with D at PT’s (10am) to discuss drafts with D; submit whatever drafts to D via email

June 15, 2016 Meet with D at PT’s (10am) to discuss drafts with D; submit whatever drafts to D via email

June 22, 2016 Meet with D at PT’s (10am) to discuss what research M has found about agents / publishers; submit whatever drafts to D via email

June 29, 2016 Meet with D at PT’s (10am) to discuss drafts with D; submit whatever drafts to D via email

July 5, 2016 Submit bio to D via email for feedback

July 6, 2016 Submit general query letter for an agent and cover letter for publications to D via email for feedback

July 8, 2016 Send to members of committee for feedback

Alternate Roots

What do you think of the name Alternate Roots?

Boys growing into men, boys with two grandmothers, boys finding ways to grow while finding "alternate routes."

“When I was a child, comics were relegated to stores that were clearly meant for adult men,” says Bennett. “All the same, I was introduced to the characters through cartoons and feature films, and love of those characters provoked me into finding alternate routes to access comics.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/25/feminist-superheroes-she-hulk-ms-marvel-thor

Finding different ways for learning--both in my experience and in my childrens

Copying the Dictionary

I recently asked on facebook if anyone had to copy the dictionary as punishment. The results were intriguing. Yes, it is still a practice used today, and to me shock, sometimes an entire class will be asked to copy the dictionary based on one person's "misbehaving."

That's right. Instead of a teacher asking a student to talk to him or her after class, etc., there is a shaming practice used, a humiliation to copy TO THE LETTER pages from a dictionary.

A teacher admits she will assign it, but not "that many pages."

Someone confessed they never pulled a chair out after being told to do it.

One person said he would have been in trouble mroe often if he had to do that.

I know it is in fun--in play--that the idea of copying the dictionary would be better than the hum-drum of sitting through class all day. However, why not try it yourself? Go on.

Or pretend I am telling you to know go get a dictionary and spend two hours copying it with a pencil on paper, and I am telling this in front of your peers, and you might not even know why you are being told this, but you will do this because you always do what you are told. You don't want to be in trouble. Yet, somehow you are.

Here is the irony. You want to be a good child, but you are always in trouble. You do what you are told, and yet you somehow don't.

You are labelled by a teacher who won't pay attention to you. The children know how the teacher feels about you, so they stay away to.

It's time to copy the dictionary in the hallway. You might get a chance to go get lunch and take it back to your desk in the hallway. Begin, and I will tell you when you can come back in. I want to see the first fifteen pages.

I will take your work from you. You will never get it back.

Also, I will never tell your parents about this.

Do you think this will encourage you to become a writer? Or to love words?

The carbon from the pencil smudges your hand.

I leave coded messages

My Graphic Novel into the real graphic--a project.

Photos + panels + research + Leslie Scalapino

"The comic book is the self."

I had found the comic book in the garbage. It was my first experience with retrieving what could be lost. I take so many photos. Do you remember me saying that?

[

Also, Strike Out--converted

Mash-up Project

I can't draw.

I am honest when I write this, yet I know I can draw draw. I just can't draw to get the story right.

What I mean is representation.

I can't draw to represent a human body, even though you will recognize a human body.

It will be my uncanny valley to draw you something, one I can't crawl out of.

Although I've spent my life crawling out with both arms swinging. I need my hands for leverage. I need my hands to draw you a picture.

[

I have photos. I have drawings.

I can trace.

Poetry and Comic Books

Poetry is about getting to the vulnerable. The comic books I loved featured how the outcasts with "powers" were vulnerable. Still, there was Patriarchy. There is Patriarchy in poetic traditions and continuing poems. There is Patriarchy in poetry criticism. How can my poetry go against Patriarchy? How can it capture how, many times, the comic book characters I read as feminists were read as Patriarchal?

I was reading a book told via Wolverine's viewpoint. He talks about reading the classics: a list of male writers. I dropped the book, agitated. It was a male writing in Wolverine's voice.

What made Wolverine so attractive? He was the tough guy we scrawny, picked-on boys wanted to be in the Eighties.

The graphic novel landscape has changed. However, there are still needs to fixing it--especially with the films and merchandising.

Project

Movies I Hate Admit Liking: Prose Poems on the Male Gaze
Prose Poems on the Masculinity?

Use Film Theory interwoven with Film experiences

Strange Brew
Xanadu
Singles
Mortal Combat
Star Trek IV and VI
Condorman

Movies I didn't realize would become cult classics
Labyrinth

Project

Positive masculinity, feminism, and my sons in prose poems reminiscent of MC Hyland's

DON'T GIVE UP!

Thinking of the universities around the country: I know stories of beginning writing students who were hassled and/or asked why they are even trying to take a class by their professors. There are also professors who ignore many students, who even say "eff the students," because academia is one of those rare places you can earn a decent income if you are a writer?

I say, DON'T GIVE UP! I say--if you ever have someone telling you that, don't listen to those fools! KEEP GOING! Stay away from them, and find the true teachers--those in your school, your community, your life.

https://www.facebook.com/ManterCo/videos/1495155537461923/?pnref=story.unseen-section