Just under a year ago, I had a conversation with Dad at the Duke of Perth. I decided that the summer of 2014 would be my last summer before grad school. And it will be.
It was a decision with a lot of steps, and I followed them all. This was unusual, because I've been tumbling from one decision to the next since midway through senior year. First: What did I want to do? Second: Where did I want to go? Third: What would I have to do to get there?
In the end, though, there was no real decision to be made at all. There's only one thing I've really wanted to do since I was in fifth grade.
What I couldn't explain to my mother, and scarcely to myself, is that I have come to see that I know more than I think I know and that, however sparse and seemingly unserviceable my memories, this doesn't matter because you don't put yourself into what you write, you find yourself there. And for a writer the life you don't have is as ample a territory as the life that you do. -- Alan Bennett, "Cocktail Sticks"I applied to MFA programs in creative nonfiction, and on Sunday I was accepted to my first one. And there was much rejoicing!
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