Howlidays

Hey, thanks for checking in! Guess what! I passed all my classes (albeit some not-too-gracefully). I'm praying I can take the academic beating to heart and actually work during the spring semester.

Christmas went great, though a little quietly; I've been able to catch up mostly with most of my friends from GR. Though some people I just can't get enough of, you know how that goes. Ah well.

I've been taking some of my free time to try and finish out a final draft of my book. I started off by running through and fixing all of the mechanical errors and weird word choices--basically anything that required just a couple of words or a new sentence; next is the revision of 16 different scenes that needed to be fleshed out, extended, or cut back to meet pacing needs. After that I'm planning on reading the whole thing out loud to myself (which really makes anything awkward pop out), correcting as necessary, and calling it a done draft.

You can polish a rock or a knife until it is shiny; you can keep going until it's gone and all you're left with is dust. You can do the same thing to a written work--refine and polish until there's nothing left. That's why I'm intent now on going just so far and no further with the editing, because I doubt I'll ever be totally satisfied and comfortable; you know how that can be. At some point I have to start sending out query letters, and barring some misfortune or other I think I'd like to be doing that before February is out. There: a date. Hold me to it.

Anyways: I've also started the arduous process of applying to a couple of graduate programs (Caltech and UofM to start with, plus a few others). I don't think, at this point, that I'll be doing grad school yet. It's not a place to find yourself or learn about your interests--it's a place to research something you already want to learn about, and do it until you almost die. Or something. But I'm not at that sort of point yet. But I'm sure going to apply anyway, just in case something changes. I just see this as the sort of thing I could be kicking myself for a ways down the road. If I don't, I mean.

In my ongoing quest to figure out what I ought to be doing, I'm interning at Hughes Group (http://www.hughesgroup.com) in St. Louis next week and then going straight to school from there. I'm enthused about it.