December marked the second year since I finished my coursework for my Master of Fine Arts degree. Milestones, arbitrary as they might be, can be stressful, can make you ask yourself uncomfortable questions. How far have I come? Am I successful at what I set out to be successful at? I read stories about a [...]

I’ve been going through my grad school notes, deciding what to keep and what to dispose of. On many of my notes are little sketches of scenes in class that I would write when something struck me as interesting, absurd, or annoying. Here’s one I just found, written in November 2004 in my 18th-Century British [...]

A comment showed up on my last post that I marked as spam: “It’s not so simple to do a good enough written essays, preferably if you are occupied. I consult you to define [essay mill] and to be spare from query that your work will be done by custom writing service”

All of that is [...]

While I was endeavoring to give good advice to someone applying to San Jose State University’s MFA program, I managed to find my own statement of purpose. I thought I’d post it with the thoughts about why I wrote it the way I did.

Statement of Purpose:
The Shoulders of Giants
by Jennifer de Guzman

She has [...]

The results of the Bulwer-Lytton contest are in, and they’re pretty amusing.

The Bulwer-Lytton contest, for those that don’t know, is an award given for the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. It’s run by Dr. Scott Rice, who was chair of the San Jose State English department when I was an undergraduate. It’s [...]