Block it out.

I've never outlined a novel - which probably shows glaringly if you read the early drafts of The Shore. I make rough plans some times, then lose them, forget them, have bad things happen to the notebook they were written in.

At our first meeting, Henry told me to rough out a plan for the book I'll be writing for the 'Creative' requirement of the degree. Which seemed like a pretty simple task until I looked at the paper. How do you plot a non-linear timeline in multiple voices?

This is supposed to be a learning experience, and heaven knows that I need to learn how to plot out ahead of time (so that I stop forgetting what setups at the beginning are waiting to pay off at the end), but if no one ever hears from me again, it probably means that I was never meant to outline and my attempts have opened a mystic portal into another dimension and I will never be seen again.

Have you tried turning it off and then on again?

I'm a week into the PhD, and I've come to the conclusion that the administration is broken. Bluescreen Red-ring-of-death stab Caesar and ride off into the sunset singing "Oklahoma!" broken. Either that, or it really is an old boy's club where you pay your dues by figuring out what you're supposed to be doing and faking it until then.

For the first time in my academic history, the bare minimum is no longer "show up," and that's both thrilling and terrifying. I've got a rough list of things I have to do before I can graduate in three years - mostly personal and professional development courses, but some of it looks fun - and they're leaving me and my supervisor to get to it; the first real deadline I have is the upgrade panel in May. Which is already terrifying, as I have to deliver the revised draft of my novel to my publisher in March. My approach to revision is to occupy the living room couch for ten hours a day six days a week until it's finished, which is a great way to revise but isn't really great if I'm supposed to be doing anything else at the same time. Like remembering to eat regularly. Or producing the material required for an upgrade panel.

So, what does a UEA PhD in Creative and Critical writing look like in the first week? And what exactly am I doing with my time?

Pictured: my initial background reading: books at the back, JSTOR articles at the front. There would be more, but the Library has a 20 book limit. Also the novel I'm almost finished drafting. Also the glass I clean pen nibs in. Also my pocket flask - I swear it's empty. Also my Phi Beta Kappa cords. 

First (and foremost, because I can't fake knowledge for once), I get to audit Henry's crime fiction class - I'm not sure if this is voluntary or forced, because he is my primary supervisor and I'm pretty sure I was going to have to do it at some point. There isn't too much reading to do, but he makes up for that by tossing out writing assignments as we leave class (ten minutes late). This week I'm supposed to come up with a detailed outline for a crime novel and a decent first paragraph.

Second, there are the PPD seminars, which I finally get to sign up for by myself and attend by myself, though Henry is supposed to make sure I do enough of them to graduate on time; they sound both useful and time-wasty at once, but I don't know for sure just yet.

There's also the weekly research seminar, where we all come together and talk about What We've Been Working On. That started yesterday, but I'm still not so sure what is supposed to be accomplished in those sessions.

The big thing, though, are the supervisor meetings, which happen every few weeks and consist of Henry or Dr. Potter talking and me scribbling down furious notes and trying to spell writers' names correctly, then trudging to the library to take out books, print out JSTOR articles, and wonder if I can ILL things or if I have to buy them. I'm still getting through the reading and doing what they told me to do part; right now that consists of "getting to grips with the history of censorship" and plotting out the novel I'll be writing.

I'm happy that I made it this far, but I periodically stop and scream in horror at the mound of books on my desk.

Oh baby

It's been a bad weekend, begun with bad news from home conveyed badly (note to family: I'm five hours ahead and there is literally nothing I want to find out about over social media first), and concluded with grief bacon and grief drafting. But now that it's Monday and, as far as I know, everyone important has been told, I can say what's happening with my irradiated baby.

After a lot of back and forth and more transatlantic phone calls than I care to think about, my work has a publisher in the UK, US, and Canada, which shocked me a bit as I'd been told to consider myself very lucky if I landed one in any one country. Here in the UK I get to work with William Heinemann, which feels a bit weird, since I've walked past the Random House building on my way to Tate Britain so many times and never imagined that I'd be invited inside. In the US I belong to Hogarth, which is an imprint of Random House US but was (apparently) begun by Virginia Woolf and has died and been resurrected since then - a fact that I still squee over whenever I think about it. In Canada it's being published by Bond Street, Doubleday. At some point in the next few weeks I get to wander down to London to meet everyone at Heinemann, and a few weeks after that I should start getting revision notes. And I still feel like someone should come along and take me back to the finger-painting so the adults can get their work done.

The current working title is "The Shore," but I'm hoping that someone in editorial will come up with the kind of title that sticks in your head for the rest of your life - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Gravity's Rainbow, 100 Years of Solitude; different ones probably do it for you. My sixteen-year-old sister summarizes it as being about sex, drugs, and wild ponies, and while those things occur where necessary, she left out the murder, plotting, and reconciliation that also happens. It's scheduled for release in 2015 in all three countries, though probably at different times, and though it's been fully drafted for about a year now I'm looking forward to the massive amounts of editorial that will happen between now and then. My advisor and I called it my multi-limbed, multi-headed, irradiated demon baby, and while it's looking a lot more like a novel and a lot less like a random collection of violent events, it could still stand to be poked more into a traditional baby shape.

After a skim of all of their books, it looks like there's about a 5% chance of getting a "Chick Lit" cover. Which is about as important as having an ugly baby, I guess. Or maybe more important, since a lot of women and most men tend to avoid Chick Lit, and my book is pretty certain to disappoint anyone looking for the sort of lighthearted story you usually get under a pink cover with glittery writing and a single graphic image - a martini glass, a high heel, a tube of lipstick, you know the drill. So great publishers, great editors, and a shot at a cover that I won't be embarrassed of.

Now if only I could convince my parents that they really don't want to read it.