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Let’s say you and I date (I’ll apologize now, prepare do be disappointed, even in the hypothetical).

Let’s say you’re an artist, and in the course of our romance you ask if I’d be willing to pose nude for a painting. And I agree. Again, prepare to be disappointed.

You paint me naked. And you flatter me a little bit because, you know, we’re dating, and I’d appreciate an extra inch here, a subtracted inch there, some hair removal. Lots of hair removal. Butt area, primarily, for hair removal.

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Background image via Jay Mantri

I recently wrapped slush-reading on what will be my ninth anthology: Lost Contact. It is the final volume in what I’ve considered to be my “Lost” trilogy; the first two volumes being Lost Signals and Lost Films. I am quite proud of these three books.

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You know how I know it’s March? Nope, not the sea of green in preparation for St. Paddy’s Day. Not the light spring breeze that I can almost pretend is actually there. No. 

I know it’s March because I can feel the collective ooze of self-loathing from a community of writers who are feeling their goals of writing-that-dang-novel-this-year coming to a carpet burn-y halt. 

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I last wrote for this site in late 2015. The core cause of my absence is this: I spent 2015 through 2018 earning my Master's of Fine Arts in fiction and have spent the time since teaching comp and lit at a local community college. My hope is that these experiences give me some worthwhile insight to share.

Given the thoroughly mixed experience I had with the MFA program itself, I felt this would be a good place to start. So, in this article, I'm going to share five things I loved and five I hated about my master's program.

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When I first started writing poetry, my focus was on imagery and how devices like metaphor, simile, and personification could help elicit a stronger reaction in my readers. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent (and still spend) writing analogies in my drafting notebook or scribbling down weird appearances that showed up in my dreams in hopes that one day, they’ll work themselves into a poem or be a soundboard for a doorway into something dark and surreal that ends up on the page.