What next?

It's an inevitable question. You've finished all your applications. You've sent your recommendors gift cards thanking them for their work. You've paid all your bills and application fees, hoping that the little money you have left will be enough for graduate school next year. So what's next?

With the very large likelihood of staring down a long, bitterly cold, two-three month winter before hearing anything from the thirteen schools I had applied to, I figured it would be a good exercise, maybe even therapeutic, to take up some kind of activity in the interim to busy myself. But what kind of activities? I made a list of requirements (because I love lists so much) that a potential activity had to fulfill:

1. It had to be cheap.
2. It had to be time consuming.
3. One of the activities has to be in the realm of writing.

I think the third point is the most important. As a default, I think we all realize that writing is naturally going to be one of the things that we pick right up when our applications are all finished. It occupies us. It's what we do. At the same time (and I don't think I'd be alone in saying this), unless you're the kind of person has tremendous amount of self-motivation, writing in this time of year, especially when all we can think about is how and when schools will accept or reject us, is a very difficult prospect. Making writing fun again through some kind of activity is a necessity.

The most obvious way to do this is taking some Creative Writing classes. Something local is always convenient, and if you live in a big enough city, you can probably find some form of "Continuing Studies" Creative Writing courses at the major university, and to a lesser extent, at the community college. But are they any good? It depends. I've taken my fair share of Creative Writing classes at nearly every level of college, except graduate -- I've taken classes as an undergrad at Purdue, as a post-grad student at the Graham School of Continuing Studies (Chicago University), and community college classes at the College of Lake County. To be completely honest, the only class that had any "meat" on it was the one I took as an undergrad at Purdue, and even then, I don't know how much of an honest assessment that is, since I was just starting out as a writer. The main problem with every other class I've taken (and I suppose you could include my Purdue experience in there as well) is that these courses are intended for beginners. They were the kinds of courses where by halfway through the semester only half of the students showed up (the ones who hadn't had their stories critiqued in class yet), and where we were still learning the mantra of "show, don't tell." It's an unfortunate fact, as "Fiction II" or "Advanced Creative Writing" courses are, in my experience, far and few between.

I don't want to say there isn't any value in beginning-level courses. On a community-level, it's a great place to meet other writers. Sure, you'll bump into a lot of beginners the majority of which don't even stick with writing, but once in a while, you'll run into other passionate, outstanding writers. All of the people in my first writing group came from the Graham School class. It's also a great way to simply get started writing again; the communal act of writing (not to mention the strict deadlines) makes it purposeful.

I am, however, a big proponent of Writing Conferences. Typically, conferences don't satisfy points one and two of my list (cheap and time consuming), but where they lack in sustained distraction and price, they more than make up in sheer fun. I attended Indiana University's Summer Writing Conference a couple years ago, and it was incredible. For a full week I was immersed, without any outside interfering media -- little internet access, no TV, etc. -- surrounded by nothing but the beautiful Bloomington campus and other passionate, dedicated writers, talking, eating, breathing, and sleeping nothing but writing. In fact, to this day, two out of the three writing group members in my current writing group I met from that conference, both of which are good friends.

Which is why I strongly suggest, for the upcoming winter months, going to the AWP 2009 Conference this year in Chicago, February 11-14, 2009 Why? First, unlike the usual summer conferences at most major schools, the price of admission is only $185 if you aren't a member, $40 if you're a student! That's incredibly cheap. The Indiana Writers Conference was about $500 to participate, and ran me about $1,000 total for room, board, transportation, and food. Second, check out the schedule of events starting Thursday. Over a hundred events for just one day. Interested in readings by alumni from the University of Michigan? They got that. Want to learn about censorship in creative writing? They got that too. The graphic novel as a literary form? Ditto. Friday and Saturday's schedules are more of the same. Just the idea of wall to wall seminars on nothing but writing, writing, writing for three straight days makes me salivate.

So that's what I'll be doing. It was a stroke of fortune for me to have this year's AWP Conference in Chicago (free room and board). But even then, I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice missing out on this conference if you can afford it, especially considering how much cheaper it is than most summer conferences. And if you can't afford it? Well... there's always the Creative Writing course down the street.