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Currently listening to: Bethany Dillon, "Stop & Listen"

I love it when either of my roommates have parents visiting in town. They enjoy taking us all out to eat and paying for it - what a blessing!

This past Tuesday, I went to an informational meeting concerning the honors thesis I have to write in order to graduate with honors in 2011. We were encouraged to start thinking about what we wanted to do and what faculty member we wanted to ask to be our thesis director. I had randomly heard that I could take the creative writing approach (as opposed to the literature approach) since my concentration is creative writing, so this week I asked my Creative Writing 2 teacher what that would look like. He got excited and said, "It's really terrific. You can write a collection of poems or a collection of short stories, or a collection of both short stories and poems." He went on to say, "I have directed a lot of undergraduate honors theses and they are a lot of fun. Poetry is my specialty, I can't give as much of an opinion on fictional work, but I really enjoy reading the students' work." OPEN DOOR! I knew that he was going on sabbatical next semester, though, so I wasn't sure if he would be able to direct, but I asked anyway. "Since you are going on sabbatical, you wouldn't be able to direct mine, would you?" "Next semester all that is due is your proposal and you don't need me for that, so I can definitely be your director! I would love to!"

All I can say is that God is good. I was really worried that, if I took a creative writing approach, I wouldn't be able to get another teacher to direct other than a literature professor and I wasn't sure how much insight he or she would have on it. Also, this means that I don't have research to do. None. My friend Noel has been reading books and looking things up, which is what I assumed I would have to do, but this is just my writing! Not that I am a fantastic poetry writer or even short story writer, but it will both challenge me and be fun. I enjoy writing when there isn't a specific assignment I am trying to fulfill. So the plan right now is to write a collection of poetry; depending on how the rest of the semester goes writing fiction on into next semester with the fiction class I need to take, I might add short stories in there as well, but we will see. That process was so much easier than I expected!

I am planning on buying my director's book that he has written - actually, he has two. His name is Davis McCombs and he went to Harvard as well as the University of Virginia and has won awards and such. He is currently the director of the creative writing program at UA, and I have really enjoyed his class and the select couple of poems of his that he has shown us. I just think it would be good before I start writing and am just planning to look at different styles of poetry to help me have a better perspective on how to write in that style.

I gave in... and got a Twitter this past week. My name is sswartzy and I am not quite addicted yet. I think it's more fun if you are funny, and I am not very funny (except when I don't mean to be and it normally involves me saying or doing something without thinking). But I have really funny friends so it has been fun reading their "tweets."

I keep wanting to write a good entry - one with what God is teaching me and such, but my mind is so dead after I am finally done with my day. Maybe this weekend, with nothing planned, will be conducive to a refreshed mind and fingers willing to type.