Apoyo

Not much has changed, but little by little I'm seeing some improvements, largely because of good people in my life.

Still no job, but over the last few days I've sent in a couple of applications for real jobs at real universities that would give me real paychecks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I discovered these listings because of a lovely relative who told me where to look. I would never have found this site on my own.

A wonderful professor of mine from my MA has been helping me with my grant proposal and application (much more than he ought to feel remotely obligated to do). One component of the proposal that had been worrying me was the requirement of securing a letter of affiliation from a foreign institution. In the past, not all candidates have been sucessful in filling this requirement. Imagine: you send a letter to a professor or a librarian or an archivist or a research lab director whose name you've found on the institution's website, essentially a cold call, saying "I'm a student/graduate at University X, I'm writing a grant, you don't know me from Adam but is it okay for me to come invade your lab for a year in the unlikely event that the committee should award me the grant?" Now you understand why it can be sticky. However, if an applicant is lucky enough to know someone who has a connection to another someone at that institution, and the first someone is willing to organize an introduction and give a recommendation. . .well, it significantly simplifies the process. I happen to have such charmed luck, since my prof did his PhD at the university whose aid I am soliciting. He's already heard back from the friend we've asked to sponsor me, in the affirmative. Now I'm just waiting for the hard copy of the letter. With some auspicious aid, I've gotten over one of the biggest hurdles in this lengthy process.

Last week I had coffee with a friend who is a fantastically experienced creative writing instructor and editor, and over the course of our chat I shed some fears about writing fiction. There's a novel that's been rolling around in my head for several years now, and I haven't had the courage to really start it because it's such an important story to me, one that I believe has to be told, and I'm terrified of screwing it up. I love this story. It's a bit of folklore that has haunted me since childhood, and over the course of my life it keeps creeping back into my consciousness. I've come into an awareness of its universality. Writing it down and fleshing it out intimidates me. My friend told me to just write it, that passion for the story matters, and the rest will work out in the editng process. It's still slow going in these earlier stages, but I'm working it out mentally in ways that I hadn't been able to before, being blocked by fear. It may take a month or a year or ten to get this manuscript onto paper, but it will happen.

God bless these people. It's good to feel like I'm not going it alone.