In Memoriam, F.M. Megan

My horse Megan had to be put down today. She developed a strange form of colic, probably within the last 24 hours, that completely backed up her digestive system. The vet said we would have found her dead this afternoon if we hadn't seen her laying sprawled on the ground in pain and made an emergency visit this morning. She's been my one of my best friends since I was 12, about 8 years. I cried in sympathy a week or two ago when my roommate and her family had to put down her Golden Retriever that they'd had seemingly forever, but you just don't understand it until you've felt it for yourself. My emotions have been close to the top all day. As part of my grieving process I want to share some pictures of her with you.

This was taken soon after we first bought her, when we were both 13. I'm holding her and my brother Rick is sitting on her.

This is actually my riding instructor, RaNae, riding Megan in a Western Pleasure show before we met. Isn't she just beautiful?

This is a photo I took two weeks ago to put with Megan's ad on KSL.com (which is no longer online). For a 20-year-old horse she still had pretty good form. My sister Katie is holding her.

I also think instead of a USU Press memoir (although it's a good idea, and I might come back to it), I'm going to revisit a memoir I wrote as a high school sophomore in my first Creative Writing class. It's about when I first met Megan and our riding lessons together. Since I wrote it when I was 16, it needs work. It's 8 pages long but it's all summary, and it only covers our riding lessons before we bought her, which is one summer out of 8 years. I think there's some room to play with there. My idea is to revise each paragraph or section for detail, description, dialogue, imagery, stories that highlight the ideas or detail, etc, and then I'd like to post some of them here for your enjoyment and critique. Let me know what you think.

How about a memoir of interning at the USU Press?

Does that sound like a good idea to anyone? I interned at the USU Press over spring 2009 semester and I just started another three-credit internship there, which will hopefully end before school starts. I've been thinking a lot about my last post's plea for help in writing inspiration (and I got several comments--thanks!), and I remembered today that one of the example Masters projects on the Emerson College website was a memoir of life in London's publishing houses, and I thought, I could write a memoir of life in a publishing house. I love the USU Press! Since I'm always saying that, why not? The thing is, I'm not sure how valuable such a memoir would be or how many people would be interested in reading it. It probably wouldn't be book-length, but I don't know anything about the market for short memoir/short nonfiction. I know short fiction is usually published in anthologies, either of the author's work or of several authors' work, but I don't think they do that for short nonfiction. Would it be something I could publish in a magazine?

And what things should I include? Of course my first impressions of the place and people, my original goals for each internship, maybe part or all of my five-page essay that I wrote at the end of the first internship to get the credit, talking with John about grad school and increasing my editorial skills. Maybe some things about the culture of the press, like talking endlessly with Sandy (the secretary) about religion, school politics, allergies; the day Michael (the director) came out to my desk, which is on the other side of the small building from the offices that he, Dan (designer), and John (editor) work in, to inform me that I'm supposed to say hello when I come in because otherwise he only hears the door close and thinks there's someone waiting out there. The main thing I suppose would be about the stuff I worked on and the things I learned, but at this point I can't directly quote anything (and wouldn't want to if it's from a book) and I can't really remember any stories to tell from my spring internship. The one about Michael happened on Friday, which is why I remember it.

If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

It's been awhile...I feel sheepish

Sorry everyone that I haven't blogged regularly for some time. I haven't blogged at all for awhile! Summer is just a weird time warp for me: I never know exactly what day it is because I'm not in school; it seems like no time passes and there's never any deadlines, so I simply don't do the things that the regularity of school facilitates, like blogging and writing and reading.

Anyway.

Quick update: I have a job!!!! I'm a cashier at the new South Logan Walmart. I kind of feel like I was brainwashed instead of informed at my orientation and training, but it's better now. Not too bad a job to have actually.

I have also started reading a book I borrowed from my mom, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith during my breaks at work. Love it. It takes place in Botswana Africa and has calm, soothing, almost folklore-ish feeling to it, a lot like Chinua Achebe's writing.

Good news: I've started another internship at the USU Press! I love the press. If it were possible I would stay in Logan and work there for a long time. Alas, it's unpaid. But it's okay because John (my supervisor and the executive editor of the press) is going to train me to be a professional proofreader and copyeditor, so I can advertise myself on-campus as a freelance editor, and maybe even advertise elsewhere. Yay for good editing experience!

And the biggest (and scariest) news of all is that I'm thinking about grad school and getting my Masters in Publishing. Right now I'm researching two schools, Portland State University in Oregon (where my brother lives) and Emerson College in Boston Massachusetts. Big cities, expensive schools, far away from home--I'm terrified. Since my brother lives in Portland, I'm less scared of PSU, but lately I've been leaning toward Boston, where I know no one and nothing! So if anybody knows anything about Boston or Emerson College, I'd love to hear it!

Another plea for help: summer is a time warp for me, which means there are no deadlines like there are in school, which means I never write anything except random comments on Facebook. I really need to write! at least something every week. I need to practice for school, for grad school application essays, and for grad school resumes. To get into publishing, I really should be published, and do that I need to write. Anything: poetry, fiction, nonfiction (memoir, travelogue, etc). If anybody has any writing prompts (other than my two books, In the Palm of Your Hand for poetry and The Pocket Muse for a bit everything), or even better, a motivation technique to take the place of deadlines, I NEED TO HEAR IT!!!! Please feel free to help me out!

Also, quick poll: should I write my stuff (assuming I write) and then find magazines or other venues in which I would like to publish my stuff? or should I find the mags/venues first, and then write for the kind of publication they are?