Katie's Blog

Not an empty seat at Hinovations last night! I'm coming off my workshop high, well, that and a slight hangover from cheap Goddess wine :) Last night went amazingly well, better than I could have dreamed of, in fact.  I guess I'll start from the very beginning, as stories oft go. It was maybe two months ago; Rachel Vela, founder of a local poetry reading series affectionately called We Need Words, sent me a message on facebook. "What do you think of leading a workshop?" she asked. I jumped on it. Of course! Yes, I was a little nervous, but it was an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone, to give back to the community, and to maybe grow as a writer myself. I agreed to do it. Rachel would organize and publicize; all I had to do was lead. Fair enough. I decided to teach what I know best -- the writing of revisionist myths. It was, after all, what I wrote my thesis about, and it's how I frame a lot of what I write within poetic discourse. I wanted to e...

So I promised to come back and blog on my experience presenting at NACCS Tejas Foco. I'm back to do just that. On Saturday morning, I was giddy and nervous. I had prepared some "remarks" about my poems, but as I sat in my car, sweaty palmed, I read them and rolled my eyes. Too academic. I''m too academic. That's my problem. I want to stick my nasty theory into everything. Ugh. I crumpled up said theoretical remarks and tossed them into the pile of trash that exists in my backseat. Sometimes, the best remarks come straight from ones... well, you can figure out how this goes. Our panel was in the MAGC building, pretty separate from the rest of the conference. It was on the second floor, at the end of a dark hallway. I'm feeling less enthused about this whole prospect. A toxic mixture of my ugly ego and my pessimism well up. Ugh. This is going to suck. I'm going to be reading my poems to.. myself and two other panelists. The room was empty. The li...

Ahh... I'm coming off an academic high right now. NACCS 2013 is officially in the books. It was a really great time. Lucky for me, this year, it was at my home institution, UTPA, which meant I was able to take advantage and participate without having to disrupt my teaching!  My first experience with NACCs this year was probably the best. I was in my classroom yesterday afternoon, erasing the board, cleaning up after my lecture. I'm holding a conversation with a student about her research question while straightening up. Offhanded, I mention that I'm on my way to the conference festivities, and suggest that she take a looksie at one of the panels related to her research on bilingual education. "Miss..." she says, a smile on her face, "is that the Chicana conference?" I nod, a little surprised. "I went to a panel yesterday about grad school," she continues. Grad school? Now, this kiddo of mine is pretty spectacular. This is the...

Ahhh... It's Friday night -- an ideal Friday night. It's about 11:30pm here, and I'm stretched out on my sofa in my bathrobe, enjoying the company of the grand ol' green fairy. So how are you doing, KatieKins? Great, thanks. :) So how goes the poeming? Pretty eh. Moreso, I'm engaged in community service lately with my poetry. Today, I read at Jardin del Arte in Edinburg. It was more of an art show than a poetry reading, but what was particularly inspiring to me was the overwhelming sense of community there. Everywhere I looked, there was someone I knew -- a hug to be had. I went alone (Bruno's been having a particularly rough time at work, so he's been MIA a bit), but I didn't FEEL alone. Gwah. I think El Valle is my home. I think it always will be. Gwah. It's a good thing. If you know me, you know I have big dreams. I tend to think of these "big dreams" happening in "big places" -- you know, outside of the valley. I...

This perhaps seems to be my constant litany, work vs. creative development. I never imagined it would be this difficult to maintain a writing life and teach, though it seems that many of my coworkers struggle with this, too :-/ I love teaching, I really do. It gives me purpose and joy. I think I love writing more, but I also think I'm a better teacher than I am a writer. I think this is going to be my lifelong struggle, finding balance between the two. Enough emoness. Actually, my above rant is perhaps the opposite of emoness. It's two conflicting loves. One loves me more, and one I love more. Anyway, I'm glad I have two loves in my life (wait, I have more than that, I'm a multitude of love...) I'm never going to figure this all out X-D  Ok, moving on... I've been trying to get more engaged in community lately. No, that's not true, the community's been trying to get me more engaged in service. I'm just one to leap on opportunities to share ...

How can one fail at rejection? Well, I'm apparently apt at failing at numerous things. In 2012, I declared that I would earn 100 rejection letters and celebrate every single one.How did I do? I received 95 rejection letters in 2012. 95. Gwahhhhhh! So close! I'm going to admit that I totally began losing steam when I started teaching, and my submissions trickled down to MAYBE one per week. Anyway, the real point of this mission was to put myself out there and to hopefully get more acceptances. This year, I received 11 acceptances. Not bad, not bad. That puts me at almost 12%! My stats last year? 9 acceptances/92 rejections, which is about 10%. So I think I'm going in the right direction.  Will 2013 be the year of 100 rejection letters? No. No it will not. I need to reflect a little more before I declare my writerly goals this year, but the main one is finding some sort of workable balance between creative time and teaching time. It's been to...

I did it! I did it! I did it! ::Cue Victory Dance:: I really didn't think I could pull it off this year. My darkest moment was last night, staring at my blinking cursor, needing 10k more words to go and giving up, wallowing in my own self pity. "I'm just too busy, being a professor sucks nuts..." I wined... and whined... But then, today? With a burst of renewed creative energy (and, ok, an extreme amount of coffee) I sprinted to the finish line. This month I wrote a novel. I. am. awesome. All awesomeness aside, as per expected, my novel needs work. It took me about 10k words in the beginning of nonsense to get a handle on what this crazy plot would look like (it's two stories, about the same woman, woven into one... and it gets a little trippy), another 20k to really relate to my own protag, and I'm JUST ABOUT at the climax of my book when... when the two folks that you KNOW shouldn't get together are just... just.... just about to... if only...