Whew! I finally finished the rough draft of my critical thesis. Now I can breathe again. I have never written a paper this long (35 pages! Eek!) and I’m still a bit shocked I managed to get through it all. It was…challenging. I won’t lie, but it helps to be writing about something I love: Omniscient Narrators. Many of my favorite middle grade books feature an omniscient narrator, and the more intrusive the better, in my opinion, but there’s a fair amount of animosity towards omniscient narration nowadays. So I wanted to explore the various ways in which intrusive narrators can actually pull a reader into a story instead of pulling them out (as many who argue against omniscient narrators claim).
And, of course, I got to read some awesome books like Maryrose Wood’s The Mysterious Howling and Pseudonymous Bosch’s The Name of this Book is Secret. I would have happily read all of Lemony Snicket, but sadly there wasn’t time. And I got to include some books I had already read that I absolutely adored like Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm.
After struggling through most of my school days writing papers in literature classes it was wonderful to write from the perspective of a writer and not a literary critic. And after years of convincing myself I couldn’t write papers it’s pretty awesome to say I wrote 35 pages that are mostly coherent. So hurray! Now I’m going to give myself a little break for a few days and go back to my novel.
Last, but not least, I’ve been terribly remiss about posting the link to my poem Said the Satyr to the Wood Nymph that was published in the Summer edition of Goblin Fruit! Hurray again! You can even hear me read it aloud, if you so wish.
http://www.goblinfruit.net/2011/summer/poems/?poem=satyrtowoodnymph
I’m so excited to be in yet another issue and with such wonderful company 🙂 And I’m sorry it took me so long to post this. Anyway, if you haven’t already, you should check out the whole issue. You won’t regret it.
Jonathan Lenore Kastin 