London: I spent five weeks with my family, and it was a wonderful time. Writing in my mother’s sewing room wasn’t always easy, and I underestimated how much money I would spend in the city, but I was glad to put some breathing room between my MFA and me. The course has been great all year–but it is overwhelming. I felt myself get lighter once I’d moved an ocean away.

If London is not the greatest city in the world, then the burden of proof is on New York, Tokyo and the rest. I took some visiting friends from New Jersey to Camden, and one remarked, “It’s like [Philadelphia's] South Street, but bigger and cooler.” I lived in north west London, between Camden Town and Hampstead, both of them city centres in their own right, and when I travelled down to Chelsea, by the river, it too was a city centre, and looking in every direction London spread out, always varied. I shopped in farmers’ markets and I saw six plays. Stoppard’s Arcadia and the Sam Mendes production of The Winter’s Tale were probably the best–both left me with an awe and wonder that still comes back to me now, weeks later.

I met many old friends, I wrote, and now I’m glad to be back in America, preparing for the next semester. I’m taking my ever changing novel in Taiwan to a novel writing course taught by Adam Mansbach, and I’m designing a syllabus for two new classes of undergraduates.

Best wishes.

I’m in England for the summer, meeting old friends and reformatting my mother’s computer (this has been a slow process). Right now, one of my fellow students at Rutgers, Pete, and his friend Kent, are staying in my house here in London–they are beginning their trip around Europe. You can see pictures of them (and a couple of me) over on their blog: The Adventures of Pete ‘N Kent.

It’s a funny experience to watch other people on the first days of their travels, going through the familiar, peculiar experiences: adjusting to a different time zone, the sheer amount of work getting transport and routes sorted out, working out what to do each day, trying not to worry too much about money.

Pete and Kent abuse a telephone booth

Maverick film maker Chris Barrett recorded this.

I’m feeling very lucky these days. I’m into full writing mode, which means I’m not quite human. I’ve drafted about five short stories so far — running around using prompts from the southeastreview, making my own ones up with random Bible passages, pacing around Knight Park thinking – then spending the whole afternoon in a daze, unsure who I am. It is great — I am still getting a salary during the holiday, so I can write every day and not worry about money.

I sat in a cafe today and read a great book on screenwriting, “Save the Cat!” then went off to yoga. I feel very happy to have come to the States.

Best wishes to you all

Daniel

A man walked into one of my favourite cafes, Salvador’s, in Kunming’s university/foreign student district, and blew himself up.

Kunming stunned by cafe bombing

DAMN! I guess I’m just really stupid – I didn’t expect to loss the address to a bloody ad site.

Long term reader, it isn’t that I have more enthusiastic readers in the flesh, but I’m just so busy. I am writing constantly. And Barb, I know my MFA semester post lacked much personality, but I really don’t know how much more I can add online. There has been juicy stuff to report, but I don’t feel comfortable putting it on the blog.

A few things have combined – the writing load of the course, the worries about publishing personal information online, the annoying loss of the address: I really feel as though suitcasing has reached an end of some kind. It’s odd to say this, but the original impulse of the site, the travelling, really feels changed, as though I’m in New Jersey on some mentally longer term basis.

If you’d like more material about my weird struggles in graduate school, send me your email address or leave a comment with it and I’d be very happy to add you to my group email list. If you’d like to read some of my new writing I can email that too: I will have a book of poetry ready for reading next week (52 pages): I can email that to interested people in a PDF.

I’m really sad I can’t maintain the suitcasing writer-reader relationship due to a lack of production on my behalf: I appreciate you all immensely. I’m thinking of starting a new site, one that maybe will let me manage the balance of private and public better. Perhaps this will be more of a move than an ending.

Dear everybody.

To my amazement, the semester is coming to an end. There was a point, a few weeks ago, when I felt the term was endless, and it was hard to stay calm. Now, I feel a growing nostalgia for what’s about to end in less than a month.

It’s been a great time. I’ve had my first workshop experiences, with fiction and poetry – both have been very helpful, and very different. I feel as though I arrived in the fiction workshop knowing something about the craft of fiction, having a clear sense of how I wanted my own writing to utilise and challenge certain writers of the past, and having read enough theory that I could say something intelligent about other people’s work. The fiction workshop has as a result been useful half as a huge kick in the bum, to teach me to work more thoroughly, and half useful as an experience in analysing what other writers are doing. And probably will be half again useful in a year’s time when what I’ve learned filters down to my writing self (who lives deep in a cave).

The poetry workshop, on the other hand, has felt like more of a steep learning curve, because I arrived with only an interest in the craft (and little formal ability at it). The six poets in the class all write quite differently, and seemed at times to have different conceptions of how to judge a poem: for the three visiting fiction writers, it was bewildering at times. I’ve also struggled with finding a direction for my poetry writing, or working out what is a strength and what a defence mechanism. I feel like I’ve learned a huge amount from the workshop, that I can draw a clear line between the poems I wrote before it and what I’ll write going forward.

And so, if anyone reading this is wondering when to do the MFA / writing workshop experience, I don’t have a clear answer. My guide, using myself as the sample, is that how much you’ve read is really important – it’s that which lets you take part in class discussions.

And my third class, Theories of Composition, has slowly proved very useful, especially as I’ve doubled-back on the reading material and filled in various gaps, been able to compare ideas from different books, and read more about psychoanalysis / Lacan.

Next semester I’m slowing down: the pace of three classes plus teaching has been a little intense for me. I’m studying two courses: Greek tragedy and a fiction workshop. This means I’ll probably take longer to do the MFA, and funding may become an issue for my final (extra) semester, but I’d rather do this well than quickly.

It’s been a real challenge to my work disciplines. As long term readers of this blog probably remember, I’ve spent ages developing regular writing habits, and yet the level of multi-tasking needed here has been tough. It’s one thing to sit down and write 1,000 words a day: it’s another to then switch to giving feedback on a short story, or head into campus and teach twenty students.

A powerful experience.

Best wishes to you all

Daniel

So, politics. Here in a creative writing programme in New Jersey, it was hard to find any McCain supporters. I know one person who clearly wasn’t voting for Obama, and a few of my students sounded likely candidates, but it was kind of a guilty secret. Partly this reflects the power of the Change wagon, partly the divided nature of American politics (the whole “coasts versus the inland states” thing). No one knew many McCain voters by name, but they were out there, in Ohio and Texas in vast numbers, ready to keep the Republicans in power. The paranoia was unfounded: my plan to stay up all night in a bar watching the TV was unnecessary.

As a British person in America, it felt strangely familiar: a young left-wing candidate promising change who defeats a tired right-wing government: lets hope that Obama doesn’t have a similar trajectory to Blair. And the state-by-state electoral college thing felt far more like the British system than I’d ever realised (where regions of the country choose the party to represent them rather than directly voting for a prime minister). The electoral college system seems quite bonkers.

And poor Sarah Palin. I hope she’ll run in 2012.

Daniel

The Rutgers-Camden MFA programme is running a reading series by visiting writers, and on the 22nd of October, I am set to introduce one of my early heroes, the travel writer Rolf Potts. If you have never heard of Vagabonding – read it – it’s one of the best and most sensible guides to travelling out there. If you are in the Jersey / Philadelphia area, and would like to attend (it starts at 7pm), leave a comment or send me an email.

Rutgers-Camden Visiting Writers

Best wishes to you all

Daniel