Tomorrow, I’ll be presenting at Queen’s Graduate English Society’s “Works in Progress” event. The presentation (titled “‘Ballad of a Thin Man’: Surveying Methods of ‘Improvising on a Self'”) is about my current MA thesis project, where I am working on expanding my short story “Ballad of a Thin Man” into a novella, and will be writing a critical essay on the process.
When I originally wrote the story at the end of 2020, I described it in my Queen’s Journal postscript “Living honestly, writing authentically: Learning to be truthful with myself” as one of the first times I wrote for myself.
It went on to win the 2021 McIlquham Foundation Prize in English. Since then, I’ve been working on a manuscript based on it, and recently started rewriting from a blank page (now the main component of my MA thesis).
During my presentation, I’m going to tell my story as a creative writer and survey some writing samples that I drafted using alternate methodologies and mindsets. I hope to prove or disprove a (for now) private thesis regarding potential correlations between consciousness, intention, thought, and time when writing creatively.
Update – February 1st, 2023:
The presentation was a success. Had a lot of fun with it. Some images:
