Essay-Collection-in-a-Year Application

Fear not the yearlong intensive program application

Last week was the first session of the new, yearlong, writing intensive program I am embarking on: Essay-Collection-in-a-Year with THE Megan Stielstra. ECIAY, as those in the know like to call it, is one of StoryStudio’s In-a-Year Programs, which are designed specifically for writers working on book-length projects. I completed their Novel-in-a-Year: YA & Middle Grade with kindest human alive James Klise and I can honestly say that it transformed how I approached my writing. After five years of picking at a manuscript, I completed the bulk of my YA novel under Jim’s guidance. It’s the reason why I applied again to one of StoryStudio’s advanced programs—I need to have a draft of this essay done in a year or two, not the seven it took to finish my previous manuscript. I was beyond elated to be accepted and to receive a grant for it, and if the first session was any indication, it too will prove to be pivotal to my writing.

The application consisted of a 10-page writing sample and a simple questionnaire. I’m only going to add the first page of my writing sample here, only because I do hope to publish a version of that essay somewhere, at some point in the future, and editors can be picky about what “only unpublished work means”. I don’t want to risk the chance of sharing all 10 pages and screwing my ability to place it elsewhere. However, you can find below the answers to the questionnaire, which I hope you find useful and motivating. As you can see, my responses are nowhere near the Pulitzer-prize winning prose we sometimes think we have to present to get into these kinds of workshops. I mean, lordy, the first word of my writing sample is “fuck”.

As with my Ragdale application, I am sharing this under two conditions:

1. Don’t ever tell me if you find a typo, EVER. It clearly wasn’t bad enough for the jury/committee/reader/editor, etc. to reject me and it will only serve to haunt me until my dying days.

2. Do not plagiarize my silly little sentences. It’s not cool and I’ll know you’ll have done it. Especially if you copy+paste it with the typos I do NOT want brought to my attention.

Without further ado: