For the next few weeks, I'll be spending all my extracurricular effort on finishing my application to grad school. If I get accepted – no, when I get accepted (manifesting it, right?!) – I'll pursue an MFA in Writing at SCAD here in Atlanta. This is all life-comes-full-circle for me. I didn't start out professionally as a web developer. Twenty-two years ago, I graduated with a degree in English. My entire focus at that time was on teaching and writing. It seems like both a lifetime ago and like nothing has changed at all.
I'm sure for some who know me, they probably never realized I was anything other than a writer. "What's Deryck up to these days?" I imagine one friend asking. The other says, "Spending all day at a computer, just typing away."
That's it, really. Just typing away. That's the through line. There are other similarities too.
Writing is about structure and point of view. So is software. In both prose and in software, the audience is an ever present fixture in the mind of the writer or developer. Both acts are driven by long periods of solitude followed by brief moments of eureka and euphoria. Then, back again to the solitude and the work. It's often more challenging than rewarding, and yet, there's something that seems empty about life for a writer or developer who goes too long without that act of just typing away.
It's this link that I find compelling and that I want to explore in my graduate work. I want to play with form in fiction and in its presentation online, and I want to create beautiful stories that are somehow both great pieces of writing and great pieces of software. This blog will be about that journey.