Tom Romano Day

Yesterday Tom Romano came to campus. It was the single-biggest event SCWP has ever done and Amanda and I were on the front lines. 219 teachers showed up and had to be organized, fed, and registered.

Usually, I wake up at about seven-thirty. Yesterday I was not only awake, but on campus, by seven o'clock. Then it was one thing or another to be done, or fixed, for the next nine-and-a-half hours. In some respects, the whole thing reminded me a lot of a busy night at the bar - being on my feet, running about, and dealing with a variety of stressed out people.

In the end, it all ran pretty smoothly. More smoothly than I thought it would, in fact. We had our glitches, sure - like flipping two presenters from their original rooms to each other's after they'd done their first presentations but before they did their second. But, we had enough food, everyone got to where they needed to be, and the students who volunteered to help were very, well, helpful. I'm just glad today is Saturday, because I definitely needed a bit of sleeping in.

Who's Tom Romano? He's the multi-genre dude and Katherine's hero. I even got to chat with him for a couple minutes. He's pretty neat and very personable. I was impressed by him. If you want to know more, just google him. He's written some books and is easy to find.

Peeps

After my last, bummed-out post, I got some encouraging notes from my peeps. It's good to have peeps :)

In other news, I talked with Juan today about the new vision for my thesis. He had to think about it, but he's seeing the vision. It's good.

(I've been going flat-out this afternoon, getting things ready for Tom Romano's visit to campus tomorrow. Lots of busy, plenty of stress. I only have simple sentences left in me tonight.)

Anthology Edits

Right now I'm a short ways away from finishing my first run-through of edits on the latest Writing Marathon anthology. One interesting thing about these anthologies is the variety of writers who contribute - some who're professionally published writers, some who are just now dipping their toes in, and everything in between.

Another interesting thing is the number of people whose writing reflects a desire to articulate the purpose of the act itself. It's almost as if people feel the need to define writing before they can say they are a writer themself.

Makes me wonder - how necessary is it to define writing for yourself? How necessary to define it before you do it?

About This 8 a.m. Thing...

I'm just wrapping up my first day back on campus for the new semester. After a few months of waking up at 8:30 at the earliest, I now need to not only be awake but also be on campus and in class by 8:00. It's going to take some adjusting. And coffee. Definitely coffee.

I think I'm going to like having my Comp. classes back to back, it seems like they go quickly that way. I got a pretty good handle on student names today, and I'm hoping that by the end of classes on Wednesday I'll have the names of all 46 students down. I know it may sound a little crazy, but I'm big on knowing names right away.

Then, after class was my office hours, then I had a getting back on track meeting for SCWP, and this semester I'm training a replacement who'll take over next semester when I'm graduated and no longer eligible for work study. So, we spent a couple hours doing the office tour where I showed her what got filed where, etc.

It's just 3:00 and I'm feeling like I need a nap. However, tonight's also CWC night, so no dice there.

Coffee, I think I need more coffee.

And Then It Was Over (Almost)

Everything is strangely in-synch this month. The semester is drawing to a close, and my students are getting ready to tackle their final portfolios; the Hungry Eye is nearly ready to pring; and I've got two SCWP anthologies being printed almost right on top of each other.

Today I check the SCWP e-mail account and find a message from the printer: "This is Fidlar Doubleday and we would like you to know that your books fortitle 'WRITE ON' shipped yesterday via UPS. The scheduled delivery of thebooks is April 18, 2008. If you would like to track your packages the number is..."

I'm excited all over again to see a book I've made (or at least compiled, edited, formatted, and made a cover for). In theory we'll have them by Friday. Yesterday someone asked me what I want to do after I graduate. I told her about my work on the anthologies and how I thought that type of work is fun. Now the trick is figuring out how to make a job out of it.

Going to the Presses

This week has been incredibly busy with all of my projects coming to a head at once - a new 8 pg. paper for Scottish Lit, grading comp. papers, and getting the most recent issue of the Hungry Eye ready to go to the printer.

The goal was to get the magazine to the printer by Wednesday, and thanks to everyone on staff pitching in, we made the goal. Also, during the flurry of activity, one gal especially stepped up so now I'm going to be joined as Head Editor by Juliana who did the bulk of the heavy lifting on physically assembling the issue.

The groovy part is that now that's done we can relax a bit and not have our regular meeting this week. Hoorah for a whole day of no commitments! We'll have the galleys next week, in theory, and then it's back to the printer and, all-in-all, we should have the issue printed and in our hands by the end of April/beginning of May.

Meahwhile, for SCWP, I'm in various stages of coordinating the publication of two anthologies. One of which should be ready to ship by the 14th. So, in the end, I'll have three anthologies I've helped make all coming out within a month of each other. Crazy.

SI 2007 Anthology Cover

In the next day or two I'm sending off the latest SCWP Summer Institute anthology to the publishers. This is the second one I've worked on and I'm really pleased with the way the cover turned out. Since I'm learning all of this from scratch, it's been a particularly interesting experience. This go 'round I played around more with the photo editing software and I'm more pleased with the manipulation for the cover.


One thing I'm also happy with about the two issues is consistency. Both are built out of two photos (one for the background, one for the focal) which came from various spots on-campus (the backgrounds from iron sculptures, the focal images from art on the campus buildings).

By way of comparison, here's what the last one looked like:

When Acronyms Attack: SCWP ISBNs For the SI & WM Anthologies

I don't typically put SCWP stuff up on this blog, but today I just can't help myself.

I'm working through my second and third anthologies for the writing project (one from the summer institute, one from the writing marathon). During the first one, the question of ISBNs came up and we opted to skip it. However, we also decided they would be good for subsequent anthologies.

A couple of days ago I filled out the electronic form. Then they e-mailed us a batch of numbers that are all our own. Neat, huh? We're all official now.