An Online Discussion on the Querying Process: And some new friends!

In addition to writing personal essays for my honors thesis, I am also enrolled in a Beginning Novel class where I am working on my first ever novel!  Last week, one of the girls in my class sent out an invite to join a live, online chat session on October 11th with a few published authors discussing the querying process at Annie Laurie Cechini's website.  It started with Michelle Davidson Argyle, talking about where to start the querying process, then Lydia Sharp, who discussed the fundamentals of a query letter, and then was wrapped up with Sierra Gardner, who discussed ways to stay organized and keep tabs on queries.  Ashley, the girl in my class, ensured us that they were friendly people and would be thrilled to share their information to those who are new to this scene, so I decided to check it out.

The archived version of the chat session I participated in is not yet posted, but I will link to it once it is.  Here are a few main things I learned:

The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

The Best American Travel Writing 2010 by Bill Buford

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As part of thepersonal essays I am writing about my experience in Dharamsala, India this summer, I read selected essays for different models onwriting in this genre. It was hit and miss, but I have comments on a few that stood out to me in terms of content and form.

1.       Appointment in Istanbul by Henry Alford

Content:           This is the first essay in the collection.  The fact that this story took place in Istanbul is beside the point.  The moral of the story could be gained from the first few lines.  “Sometimes what you get is not what you thought you wanted.  I had just broken up with my boyfriend of ten years back in New York, and had flown to Istanbul to sightsee my heartbreak away” (1).  Of course, the narrator does not forget about the personal baggage, which is made quite clear in the last, ironic paragraph, “thanks for helping me forget about my break up” (3). 

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present by Phillip Lopate

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As I have been working on some of my own personal essays from my travels in India, this has been like my Bible. I'm just going to attach some of my responses on the form and content of selected essays. It can be daunting to try and sift through the entire anthology (it is huge, I know, I backpacked it all over Europe and India) so I hope this can help someone:

First Draft of A Bus to Dharamsala

Here is one of the first drafts of my essay, "A Bus to Dharamsala." 

A Bus to Dharamsala:

Me

Life happens on the way to somewhere else.  For me this tends to be quite literal—public transportation.  This is one of those times: 

It was my first time in India. The pretext?  A leadership opportunity for a small international study program offered through my university—a chance to do four months of undergraduate research in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile and home of the Dalai Lama.  On this particular occasion the “deluxe” night bus that was supposed to take me the horrendous twelve hour journey from Delhi to Dharamsala broke down.

 It was two in the morning.

Things were already not going so well—including (but not limited to) having a drunk man conk out on my shoulder the entire nine hour flight from Amsterdam to India despite attendants desperate efforts to relocate him, getting a hotel door slammed in my face (reservations are apparently irrelevant) at another dead hour of night, having group members inform me last minute of their flight cancelations, and having said group members show up at the airport anyways when their flights were not in fact cancelled with zero means of contacting me.  Now this?

Two in the morning.  A twenty something year old girl with minimal leadership experience, no phone, no skill with any of the hundreds of local languages, and no university permission to be taking a night bus to start with.  Perfect.

1st Place in Stowaway Magazine Photo Contest!

I just posted on my photography blog, but today I found out that I won first place in the photo contest through Stowaway Magazine I applied for last Fall.  Surprise!  Here it is!  No one told me!  I just discovered it as I went searching through looking at  submission guidelines this year for short stories (I'm doing something based off of my host grandma), Ha!

I took this one when I lived in Hawaii working at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I thought that was exciting. 

Shara: Connecting and Sharing

One of the greatest aspects of my academic blog while doing my field work in India was learning how to better connect with people online.  I have come across some great people, including Shara, who is mentioned a few times on this blog.  Shara was an awesome find!  She has a great idea for a new project she is starting, a lot of the ideas coming from my own avatar framework from my Ghana project, and she could use some support! 

I just got this facebook message from her last week and thought I would include it on this blog:

Hi Rachel. How are you doing back in school? Adjusted from the awesome life of a traveler? :-) Just wanted you to know that I am launching a kickstarter project for a book I want to publish of writing and photography. It was thinking about your avatar concept about how we see the world differently with different parts of our personality and careers that gave me kind of an epiphany about how I document the world. When I write, I write about all the sadness and suffering and that's what I "see" in words. When I photograph, I shoot postcard-type images, the beautiful things whether it's architecture or nature and I see beauty in image. My book idea is to balance this duality. So anyway, know that your project really had an impact on me and mine. I'll be launching it next week, but I have a FAQ online if you're interested in checking it out. Once it's live (hopefully next week), if you feel inspired to share it with your friends, I wouldn't complain. :-)

• Project FAQ

  www.skjtravel.net
  

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Matt's Documentary!

My friend Matt, a fellow student who went with me to Dharmasala, India this last summer, is in the process of making an awesome documentary.  Here is a two minute preview of one aspect of the film.  Watch and enjoy, and make comments directly on the youtube page so that he can try to win a video contest!