Check out Draw A Dinosaur Day, courtesy of the genius Todd Page. This event is officially Peewee Herman and Bloggess endorsed. I’m not even making that up. I don’t think I COULD make that up.

My submission this year:

Darlings! All is busy here — my last full day of work today; the apartment’s half-packed; little things have been pricking me to tears all over town. I’ve also been busily writing fiction.

If you’re inclined to check it out, I have a new piece of very short flash fiction called “A Place to Store the Teeth From Dreams,” up at The Dirty Napkin. Check it out here, if you’d care to!

It might remind you of, oh gosh, way back when I used to write interesting blog posts. Like a few weeks ago?

This is part of a series. For the first entry, click here. If I had to apply for MFAs all over again, I’d wish someone had told me the following:

Ten Things I Learned About Applying To MFA Programs (From Actually Applying To MFA Programs)

MAJOR POINT: Do not be an idiot when you pick which schools to apply to.

Doesn’t this sound self-explanatory? And yet, I was an idiot for so, so many reasons. And just because it happened to turn out well doesn’t make me any less foolish. In retrospect, three things I wish I could go back and tell myself.

2) Most of the top fifty schools have an acceptance rate in the range of 1.0 – 3.0%. Think about what that really means. Draw a diagram or something to help you out. I’ll wait.

What staggers me the most is that, when applying to schools, I actually checked out the selectivity rates of my fifteen primary schools, and thought to myself: “Oh, I’m choosing a great mix! There are definitely some safeties on this list!” All fifteen schools are in the top forty for selectivity. The most selective school I applied to (with recent information) is University of Texas, Austin, which, this year, had a 1.11% acceptance rate for fiction.

But obviously that’s just a pipe dream, and my least selective school with recent information — University of Alabama — is only the thirtieth most selective! Thirtieth! That’s a friggin’ cakewalk, right?!

The acceptance rate for fiction was 2.5%. Yes, that’s a decimal in there.

What I needed to do was shake myself by the shoulders ’til my mouth foamed and shout: “Imagine yourself surrounded by thirty-nine other people! All of these people want nothing more in the world than to be writers, and have worked just as hard as you and have the same dreams! And one of them is Baby Chekov, and he’s totally giving a high-five to Baby Hemingway! And you’re absolutely positive the admissions committee is going to choose you?!” And that’s just the pep talk for my least selective school.

The MFA application process is so selective that schools with 15-20% acceptance rate feels like a comparative cakewalk. 20%. That’s a low F.

Fortunately, had I been able to tell past-me that, I would have consoled her with the advice:

3) There are schools with amazing funding that you’ve never even heard of. And if you haven’t heard of them, a lot of other people haven’t either. Do your research to root out these schools so you have a shot at something with, uh, a more than 2% acceptance rate.

I thought I did a fine job researching. In retrospect, I took about the dumbest tack available. I bought the first edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (an excellent resource, but for pete’s sake, get the updated one); read Tom Kealey’s descriptions of the top fifty programs; circled the ones that matched my funding/duration/ineffable standards; visited the websites and poked around for about ten seconds or ’til I burned out my meth-y attention span, whichever came first.

Using this technique, I narrowed down my list to fifteen schools. And while they’re all amazing schools, it’s a dumb list, because it was limited from the onset to the most selective and hard-to-get-into schools. Which didn’t seem like a problem, ’cause I hadn’t yet given myself the reality-check from Step Two. (Later, I added two slightly less selective schools. One because it had a free application; the other because it was in Boston and, at the time, I thought I might have a reason to keep my options open to staying here.)

The thing I wish I’d known is, while funded programs are obviously going to be the most competitive, there are lots of great funded programs that not as many people apply to, because there are so many idiots like me who don’t do sufficient research to find them. At the very least, I should have looked at Seth Abramson’s list of Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs. And while underrated programs, after being featured in a list like that, have the tendency to become annoyingly correctly-rated, even a quick peek at the 2011 Funding Rankings would have shown me a whole new world of potential schools.

Ohio State? University of South Carolina? Arkansas? These are cool programs. Since I knew over a year in advance that I was applying to programs, I had plenty of time to check each of these schools’ websites and see what they had to offer. Like, oh, I don’t know, a 70% funding and a better-than-1% acceptance rate? Past-self, spend a few weeks doing your research, and stagger your applications to different tiers of schools.

That said…

4) Before applying to a school, imagine that you get turned down from every other school on your list except for that one. Would you still go? Or would you apply again next year to see if you had better luck?

Because the thing is, past-self, there’s a very real chance you might only get into one school. And that’s actually a much better scenario than the equally real chance that you won’t get into any schools.

When I chose to apply to fifteen of the most selective programs in the country, even knowing, intellectually, that they all had miniscule acceptance rates, I imagined that I’d be turning down offers left and right, the only applicant in history to get accepted everywhere. The thing is, everyone fantasizes that will happen to them. And it doesn’t happen to anyone.

I can’t even tell you how many applicants I’ve watched throughout the season — cool, talented writers, whose writing samples absolutely shattered me — who applied to fifteen top schools with the assumption that, applying to so many, they were sure to get into one. And then, as the months go by, the brutal realization that that’s just not true. Or amazing writers who applied to a  good range of schools, then only got accepted by one. Sometimes with no funding.

It’s grisly out there, y’all. It’s a WWII movie.

Anyway, I got very lucky this season, and wasn’t left with that heartbreaking decision. But just because I was lucky doesn’t mean I wasn’t an idiot. In retrospect, there were a few schools I applied to that, really, I had no business going for. The two-year programs I applied to for name recognition, even though I knew I wanted a three-year program. The program with no funding in one of the most expensive cities in America. The medium-funding program with a dreaded (for me) language requirement. Pretty much any program at a northern latitude, when I know northern winters make me so depressed that I can’t write for four to six months out of the year.

Had I been in the very real situation of only getting into one of those schools, I would have faced the dilemma of whether to accept the offer, or whether to throw it away and go through this expensive, grueling process all over again. A problem that you, past-self, could solve by: 1) really researching your schools, and 2) oh yeah, not being an idiot.

Would this have scared past-me out of the prospect of applying to MFAs in the first place? Of course not. Past-me is a cocky bastard, and that’s what I love about her. Still, I like to think she’d have heeded caution enough to put together a slightly less idiotic list of schools.

Next time, stuff I wish I’d known about putting together the actual application.

Hey y’all, apologies for the MFA-centric posts lately, but whenever I hear that maxim, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” I always interpret it as: “Write the things you wish you could have read.” I’m drawing near the end of my MFA application journey, and there are many, many things I wish I could go back in time and tell past-me. So if you’re applying for MFA programs, or just considering it, feel free to take a peek at this series of advice. (And, of course, if you’re not interested, skip this and wait ’til I start dragging my butt back to the library four days a week, for some actual posts.)

For what it’s worth, my meager credentials: this fall, I applied to seventeen MFA programs; fifteen of them ranked in the top thirty (which was dumb for reasons I’ll explain later), and two less selective programs as a just-in-case (which was also dumb). Of these schools, I’ve heard back from thirteen so far, and had the great honor of being accepted at four programs — three fully funded and one with a not-bad fellowship — and waitlisted at two schools. Last night, I officially accepted an offer from a school I only applied to for the privilege of being rejected from. (This was not dumb.)

If I had to do it all over again, I’d wish someone had told me the following:

Ten Things I Learned About Applying To MFA Programs (From Actually Applying To MFA Programs)

1) Work on your sample. Work on your sample. NO! Stop reading this! Go work on your sample!

My basic portfolio was two stories, and ran around 28 pages. One of the stories was a piece I’d written for a workshop I took at Harvard Extension about a year before I applied to programs. It came out well in the first draft. I took it through a few workshopped rounds of edits, then let it sit ’til application time, ’cause it’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever written (so far).

The second story was a wretched piece of trash I wrote for a workshop when I was nineteen. A few months before I applied to schools, I decided it had potential, and completely rewrote it. Made everyone I knew read it and give me notes. Completely rewrote it. Bought everyone ice cream and made them reread it again. Redrafted it. Redrafted it. Ripped it apart with colored pens and then — you guessed it — redrafted it. The last two weekends before I submitted, I spent four to six hours a day on this story. I spent so much time with it that I started getting hallucinations that it wasn’t a story at all, but a statue I was sculpting with my hot shaking hands. When I’d finally taken it as far as it could go, I knew in my heart it wasn’t one-tenth as good as the story that had come naturally; I only hoped that programs would overlook the whole lowly mess.

When I actually got the chance to talk to three department chairs about why they had accepted me to their programs, guess which story they talked about? The second one. Unanimously.

What, it’s March now and you’re not applying ’til November, past-TKOG? That’s nice. Go work on your goddamn sample.

Cutting this off before it gets unwieldy. See you tomorrow with more retroactive MFA application advice. (Or see you later, if you’re not into MFA stuff, which is cool as well.)

This morning, I was in a pretty chipper mood. I already had plans to go celebrate Fat Tuesday with Co-Worker, then on the bus, I realized my Rogaine was working.

Huh, good things always come in threes, I mused, admiring the baby-fine wisps newly curling around my scalp. I wonder what the third will be?

Wonder no more. I got a call from an MFA program. A big one. (Not Iowa.) I’m going to start saving my happiness tears in little vials then, whenever I forget how goddamn blessed my life is, drink them to remember that we are living in the best of all possible worlds.

Goddamn.

Yesterday was THP’s fifth annual Draw A Dinosaur Day. Did you participate? I totally did, and meant to put up my dinosaur earlier, but I had a very busy day baking cinnamon-raisin bread, turning it into French toast, then watching Dawson’s Creek. Sometimes being an adult really is what I always imagined it’d be.

Amidst all that Very Serious Business, though, I drew not just a dinosaur but an illustrated guide to the deepest recesses of my mind:

The original sketch featured Captain Categorical Imperative attempting the failed fistbump. T-Rex whispered: "Come closer," to which he responded: "I. Kant."

If you have a few minutes to kill at work and want to spend it in THE MOST DELIGHTFUL WAY POSSIBLE, I highly recommend you check out the rest of the Draw A Dinosaur Day 2011 archives.

Here are a couple that I fell in love with:

I want this full-size print to hang in my apartment. It makes me imagine a modernized dino Gatsby adaptation.

Sir, I consider this drawing tantamount to a marriage proposal. And I ACCEPT.

Okay, okay, it can be an open marriage.

A disproportionate number of dudes were sportin' top hats and monocles. I sincerely hope that's not the last time I ever get to say that sentence.

What does it say about me that this actually sounds kind of delicious right now?

I'm -- I'm fighting really hard not to hug my computer monitor right now.

Aren’t dinosaurs the best?! Big ups to THP for creating such a spectacular occasion, and for being an all-around capital human being. I’m already excited for Draw A Dinosaur Day 2012!

While I was too undisciplined to write last week, posted I think my personal favorite Secret Society of List Addicts list to date: quotes I thought were from the Bible ’til an embarrassing age. Keep in mind, I went to Catholic school.

NTKOG Year 2, #15: The kind of unanchored, pleasure-motivated creature of Id who pays no mind to Should or Ought, but builds her castle on a foundation of Want.

I am: locked in a constant struggle with my discipline, both as a writer and a human being. For the past year or so, I’ve emerged as the victor, thanks to a ceaseless cycle of early mornings, late nights, and forcibly cutting off my internet access after hours.

I am not: convinced it’s been great for my mental health. Let’s put it this way: near the end of the three-month MFA application extravaganza, I had no trouble getting a seat to myself on the bus. ’cause I was twitching and shuddering like an ’89 Honda going a hundred on the freeway.

The Scene: My apartment. My god, my glorious monk’s-cell apartment, night after night, for a week of personally mandated laziness. During the second week of the new year, I made a deal with myself: You don’t have to write. You don’t have to do laundry. You don’t have to socialize with humans. Just do what comes naturally.

It reminds me, actually, of my project during the year after undergraduate: I declared a moratorium on alarm clocks, and spent a year living by my natural clock. I’ve never been happier or more well-rested in my life, going to sleep at 9:30pm and waking up at 5:30.

During this week of laziness, though, I assure you I wasn’t waking up in the wee hours. Oh most verily not.

For the sake of comparison, my general weekday schedule before MFA applications started:

6:30 Wake up
6:45 – 8:15am: Jog or clean; shower; eat
9:00 – 5:00: I don’t even want to talk about it
5:15 – 9:00: Writin’ in the library, with a quick break for dinner
9:30 – 10:30: Goofin’ around for a bit before sleep

Compare that to the mental health extravaganza that was life during MFA applications.

8:27am: Wake up
8:30am: Leave for work
9:15 – 5:00: Ugh
5:30 – 10:00: MFA applications and story editing, living on a diet of cookies and soft pretzels to justify my non-stop cafe tables
10:30 – 1:00am: Back hme, last-minute MFA stuff, research, panic attacks, until the dreamless death of sleep

So. Yeah. I was doing super great for a while. Now that the applications are all in and the weight of the world is off my shoulders, though, I figured one week of utterly debauched laziness would reset my system. And every day, I discovered another thing that I thought I’d forgotten how to love.

Whole novels, swallowed over the course of one decadent evening! Spending hours cooking complicated meals and meditating on the wonders of food! Walking the two and a half miles home from work because, hey, I have nowhere to go and no particular time to get there! My god, some evenings I can spend an hour or more doing nothing but cuddling with my stuffed elephant, vacant of thought, just feeling warm and happy to be alive!

I also, of my own volition, finally washed the dishes that were stacked up from MFA madness. I don’t want to talk about how old some of them were. Like, we’re not talking calendar — we’re talking carbon dating.

The effect of this mindset was best captured last Sunday, when I thought to myself: My god, have I not left the house since Friday night? then remembered with relief, No, it’s okay! I went to the convenience store TWICE today! Oh yeah. The rest of you girls can save the prettiest valentine in the box for Atticus Finch, ’cause apparently I’m in the market for a Boo Radley.

The Verdict: Well, my “week” reprieve started three weeks ago, yet here I am, lolling around in my pajamas, eating chicken curry and contemplating rereading Calvin Trillin’s “An Attempt To Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing”. As great as I feel, I’m afraid we’re going to have to label this one a decided fail.

How is it that just a few days indulgence, following a massive burst of virtuous do-gooding no less!, can push us so far backward in our personal journeys for excellence? I’m filled with discouragement, despair, self-recrimination, etc., etc. Well, I will be. As soon as I finish this chicken curry burrito and lounge around in my pajamas a bit longer. Sigh.

What demons are you facing right now? And if your demons happen to be passing a supermarket, can they pick me up some soy milk?

At this moment, these things I hold manifest:

Art is born in the moment of reception, not conception. Art is in the ways that we learn and relearn to relate to the universe. Today for you maybe it is a line of a novel and the sparkle of salt on a pistachio shell and a commercial for soap. Maybe it is not Michelangelo’s David or Absalom, Absalom. Today, anyway.

Nothing except art matters. There is no sense in rattling around a universe that we are not constantly teaching ourselves how to see.

God hides himself in the curves. The hollow of an underarm, a naked tree branch bowed by snow. There is nothing in nature that does not bulge or twist. Man invented the straight line; it is just the beginning of the brutality he has done himself.

Rectangles are not escapes. The computer is not an extension of your brain. A television is just a piece of furniture. A window is a reminder of incarceration, disguised as a glimpse of freedom. Of what enduring greatness is a skyscraper?

Move not with bustle but with THRASH. You are here to do great, productive violence to the world.

It is better to be alone than to suffer tepid company. If some days you are the only person you love, then see it for what it is: a blessing.

There is no escape in the places everybody goes. If the majority of time is eaten by the crushing requirements of survival, do not squander the rest of your precious hours by consoling yourself through numbing and vacant means.

If other people dissatisfy you, then — let them. Aggression and brittleness and delusions of grandeur and insecurity and dysfunction, these are not your problems. And whoever seeks to bring these problems to you, do not scorn or pity them, but do not condone them either. Just live gently and peacefully among them.

If you are not constantly creating something proactive and joyful, then you will die. If you are constantly creating something proactive and joyful, you will die too. But one of those stories is better than the other.

Stop waiting. It is eating up the best parts of you. Go forth to the inevitable, you beautiful bastard.

–

*The title’s a nod to the manifesto by, among other cool dudes, Russian Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who is a great hero of mine. Back in 1912, they wrote one of the greatest manifestos I’ve ever read — which, from a Russian major, is saying something. But enough about him. Let’s talk about you. What do you hold manifest today?

I spent last night in bed with Jeffrey Eugenides, and when I woke up this morning, I remembered what love is.

It’s been a cold few months, and I’m a creature who’s only ever really happy when sipping sunshine, so it’s something of an understatement to say that I’ve felt the chill. This morning, though, I’m a rose blooming under a bell jar. Give it your damndest, bleak wintry haze.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that love involves other people. Other people are so interesting. The constellation of moles across a shoulder blade, the way the girl on the train shifts her weight to one hip, the clear unmistakable tang of morning sweat trapped inside a daytime shirt, released after a too-sharp turn. There are things it’s hard not to like about other people.

But you know that feeling when you’re first falling for someone, when you lie in bed for a long drizzly morning, listening to a song you once heard them humming, staring out the window with bubbles fizzing through your veins because you have a secret, you and the universe, and it’s a big one. You know that everything’s going to be wonderful forever.

It isn’t about other people, that feeling. And if another person’s involved at all, they are, at most, tangential to your happiness.

It’s unfathomable to me that I occasionally forget how very much I love to read. The rhythm of the words and the spidery march of neat ink across the page. The great sprawling secret of it. The honeymoon is never over with literature.

Love is, I think, the thing that is infinitely bigger than you, but never makes you feel small.

That’s all I have today: a reminder that happiness is not only possible, but necessary. And a reminder to myself that while I’m ripping out my hair and shredding my skin, trying to get to the misty alabaster city rising in the distance, I should take a moment every once in a while to look down at the path that’s bringing me there.

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, a few songs I adore by bands I utterly loathe.

When I’m in stressful situations, I like to — as I think most people do — distract myself from the catastrophe at hand by worrying about minuscule far-off future quibbles.

Home alone on prom night? Oh gosh, I hope the rhubarb and copper color scheme at my wedding doesn’t clash with my fiance’s mediterranean-blue eyes!

Another night choosing between ramen or laundromat money? Is it flat or sparkling water that’s considered gauche now? My heavens, I do hope I remember before the next time I fly on a private jet!

So it make sense that now, angsting over my third (and final!) portfolio story, trying to assemble forty pages of fiction that will unlock my whole future as a writer, instead of worrying about character development or dialogue — I’ve become obsessed with worrying over the adjectives the New York Times will use in their review of my first book.

Hear me out, y’all.

Everyone knows that when you are christened by the NYT, you’re neatly dispatched with two balanced adjectives. Your novel might be witty and vibrant or masterful and seductive or brooding and masculine — your whole professional achievement, boiled down to two. friggin’. adjectives.

Once I got too old to keep fantasizing about being labeled a “stratospheric young talent,” I realized I had to set my (completely fantasy) sights a little lower. But still, so many adjectives in the world — WHICH WRITER AM I?!

My first thought was the classic:

Then I remembered that the majority of my stories feature graphically sexualized descriptions of bacne. So I aimed my sights a little left of center to:

But most of my stories tend to involve people in dysfunctional relationships sitting around smelling each other and eating moldy food. Not — not exactly high-tech.

So I finally bit the bullet and asked a few literary friends for their input. The result? Not just slightly. Not just overwhelmingly. But DAMN NEAR UNANIMOUSLY:

DARK AND OBSESSIVE. And the worst part is — it’s entirely true. So now, whenever I’m failing at writing, I twirl the phrase around in my mental hall of mirrors.

The latest dark and obsessive foray by TKOG…

Another typical work from the darkly obsessed TKOG…

Don’t miss the latest tale by creepy fetishist TKOG…

Actually, as creepy fetishes go, hydraulic dental chairs are a pretty good one. Sign me up, baby.

TKOG, noted connoisseur of men’s under-arm deodorant…

Standard fare by certified literary looney TKOG, who would perhaps not be so shunned if only she could teach her Roomba how to love…

All I can say is — nice to see my friends know me well. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the rest of the night darkly obsessing over my applications.

What two-word description do you think sums you up best? Slash which description would your jerkwad friends choose? (I, for the record, would call myself a vivacious goofball or maybe oafishly enthusiastic.) Bonus points if you draw it out on a Post-It when you’re supposed to be working.