Hand in

I've fallen down the rabbit hole of final round editing. Everything that could possibly considered a verifiable fact has been double-checked. Every word that might possibly need to be capitalised has been looked up. The spelling of words that I could spell when I was seven (that's a lie, I've never been able to spell) has been checked in multiple dictionaries. All the little things that I was going to take care of later have finally been taken care of. It's been printed, and then bits of it were re-printed because I discovered that I'd leaned on a corner of the keyboard between copies and my Contents page had sprung a rash that looked like QQQ~Q```q~~Q`. It was bound with minor trepidation on the part of myself and the help-desk librarian, because it required the biggest spine they had and didn't quite fit into the binding machine without being forced. And then it was left on the corner of my desk for a day while I chased my supervisor for signatures, because he needs to attest to the fact that it's my work and isn't in today.

And now it looks like this:

Chapstick for scale, because my owls are all packed.

One copy is for me to us for reference during the viva, the other two are going to be taken down to the PGR office in a few hours, I'm going to sign forms attesting all manner of things including the fact that it is my own work, and then it will be both practically and officially out of my hands. 

I'm not sure how I feel about this, though it is a verifiable fact that I haven't been able to sleep this week. It's also a verifiable fact that I've been letting a million things slip since about September that will now need to be aggressively gotten after, so I won't really have the time to dwell on anything. 

Oh, and I don't think I ever mentioned; the title of the bloody thing is We Don’t Need No Education: Belief, and the Expurgation of US Public School Literature Texts in Response to Activist Beliefs.

Submissions Open

Over the course of the year we spent organising last month's hybrid writing conference my professional web evolved in new and unforeseen directions, mostly because organising a conference puts you in touch with new and interesting people. And one of the things that's come out of getting in touch with all of those new people is that I'm now involved with a publishing venture.

Seam Editions seeks to provide a home, both online and in print, for writing that plays with the boundaries between creative writing and criticism. If that seems a bit open-ended, it's because we're hoping that people will send us work that surprises us, and that subverts traditional concepts of fiction, poetry, criticism, etc. in ways that we haven't thought of. There are a few more details on the submissions page, where you can also find the address to send work and queries. At the moment we're accepting unsolicited submissions, so if you have something that you think might fit, it never hurts to sling it our way. And if you don't write, or don't write this sort of work, feel free to come over and read - there's a little Christmas Present up on the website for the curious.

Zero to maudlin in no time at all

In fifteen days I'm (touch wood) going to drop one electronic and two physical copies of my thesis on the weird partition thing in the PGR office, sign some paperwork, and walk out of there a free agent. This should be anxious-making, given how far the thesis is from being ready to be born, but every time I start to try to worry about that I start getting wibbly over the fact that I've only got seventeen or so more days of living in Norwich.

Finishing the thesis seems reason enough to get wibbly, but true to form I've managed to muddle life up enough that several things change once I hand the work over. Finishing means finally moving in with that guy (what was his name?) that I married two and a half years ago. It means not staying in school like adults always told me to because I've finally run out of school to stay in. It means not being a dog of a university for the first time in nearly a decade. Changing the way my friendships work, now that I'm leaving behind the people that were always around and inserting myself into the lives of the people that I was always leaving behind. Putting to bed the late nights and unhealthy habits that got me through the last however many years. Saying goodbye to Norwich

Weirdly enough, the thought that seems to make me the most wibbly is that it means giving up the first apartment I lived in as a self-sufficient adult, even though the heating's all but gone and I hate being away from Dave (that was his name!) and the neighbours' music keeps me awake during the day because I don't need their help to not sleep at night. I felt the same way when I helped my little brother move his things out of his bedroom in our parents' house and into the place he now shares with his wife, the feeling of stepping from one room to the next and realising that you're not able to step back, that there's no 'back' to step into because the only place it exists any more is in your head.

Change is hard, even when it's good change. And even though there are many good things beginning because of what is ending - no more missing game nights and parties in Reading because I'll be at school, no more saying goodbye to Dave, no more busted heating and ridiculous deadlines and all the other things that make this unsustainable as a permanent lifestyle - I'm going to let myself be sad for just a little bit longer.

'Sad' isn't exactly the right word. 'Hiraeth' is probably better, only in part because it is one of Dave's words.  The place I've come to love, and the person I've become, are both so much more than I hoped they would be when I fetched up at the last station on the train route in 2012 with a coat too thin for the weather, not enough money to live on, and the niggling feeling that I wasn't good enough to be there. And neither becoming has been deliberate: Norwich has grown on me as I've grown into myself, haphazardly and often in a panic, with too much attention paid to what must be done for any to be given to what the effect might be of doing it. In a way I'm glad that I had no idea what would happen when I first got here, because even after having made the trip, I still don't understand how I got from there to here. That's the way I write books, I guess it makes sense it's the way I live life.

Of course, while letting oneself get wibbly as a chapter rustles to a close is in human nature, the close of a chapter tends to be where its most vital to fill each unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, to bastardise a phrase. And, despite the years that I've already put into it, the thesis could still benefit from a little more work.

I guess I can run a ways further.