a new semester (and a new draft?)
life updates & more!
hi everyone!
happy new year! i hope you’re all doing well. i’ve just started my second semester of grad school, and am excited to see what the semester holds for me!
lately i’ve been re-reading my second draft (again) and making notes for myself (again) and trying to decide when i want to actually dive into the writing of the third draft. as grad school is about to start up again, i don’t imagine i’ll have much time to actually work on it until the summer. however, i would like to start slowly chipping away it, maybe in between assignments and essays.
i’ve also been continuing to submit short stories to different publications! i’ve got a few short stories and a few poems that i’m currently waiting to hear back about—hopefully i’ll have good news soon! i’m also trying to dip my toes back into poetry, something i haven’t done in a long long time. we’ll see if anything comes of that. finally, i applied for a very cool writing opportunity on my campus, and hopefully i’ll hear soon whether or not i was accepted to that.
in others news, i passed all of my classes for my first semester of grad school, and got even got A’s in two of them (one was just pass/fail)!! i’ve been spending winter break relaxing, working part-time to make some extra spending money, and doing a little bit of creative stuff here and there. i’m working on a large cross-stitch project at the moment, which i might put aside for a bit as it’s been awhile since i crocheted anything and i have a few small projects i want to make for that. i’ve also started exploring my family heritage a bit, and have been reaching out to extended family members to try and put together a family tree that reaches as far back as possible. i’ve already found some really interesting stuff, and it’s so fun to look at the names of my great-great-great-great-grandparents and wonder what their lives were like. plus, i’ve been learning some fun family drama, which is always great.
i also celebrated christmas with my family, where my favorite gift i gave was a commissioned art piece of our pets to my sister, and my favorite gift i got was a weighted heatable snoopy plush! i love the holiday season and am already sad to see it go, but i am looking forward for winter to go by as quickly as possible so the weather can get warmer again.
finally, this past friday i went into nyc with my sister to see romeo + juliet on broadway with kit connor & rachel zegler!! they were both there thankfully, and both did an absolutely amazing job!! it was such a fun show, and i think my favorite part was hearing multiple audience members gasp when juliet woke back up at the end. my other favorite part was paris trying to get the audience to sing along to “we are young” by fun. while in the city, my sister and i also went to rockefeller center to watch people ice skate, the new york public library to see the original winnie the pooh & friends, and to the drama book shop!
books i’ve read:
first, back in november, i finished a sweet sting of salt by rose sutherland, which i really enjoyed! it was probably one of my top reads of 2024, as i very much enjoy lesbians and selkies, and really enjoyed the historical context it was written around.
i also re-read under the whispering door by t.j. klune, which is one of my favorites. a very bittersweet but still heartwarming romance! i actually ended up recommending it to my grad class, when during our last meeting of the semester we all shared one piece of media we thought everyone else should read/watch/etc.
after seeing wicked part 1 over thanksgiving break, i found myself in the mood to get back into oz, and so have read the wizard of oz, the marvelous land of oz, and ozma of oz! i’m currently reading book #4, dorothy & the wizard of oz. i was always a huge wizard of oz/wicked fan, and read these books many times as a tween, so it’s exciting to go back and revisit them.
i’m also currently reading the vampire armand by anne rice! armand is one of my favorite characters from the vampire chronicles so i’m having a lot of fun reading things from his perspective this time around.
songs i’ve been listening to:
hymn to virgil - hozier
you tell me the sun is shining in paradise
and i have to watch your lips turn blue
i would burn the world to bring some heat to you
only you - the platters
only you can make all this world seem right
only you can make the darkness bright
only you and you alone can thrill me like you do
the wizard and i - cynthia erivo
no, he'll say to me i see who you truly are
a girl on whom i can rely
and that's how we'll begin
man of house - rachel zegler
do you have doubts?
i curse your name
it brought me pain and now
without you, I don't know how to be
that’s all for now! i hope you’re all staying warm, wherever you are, and i hope you all have a wonderful 2025! may it only bring us the best.
i’m planning on publishing either a poem or an essay sometime soon, so let me know what you’d like to see!
until then, thank you for reading, and see you soon!
becca 🌟
find me on: tumblr | spotify | storygraph