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.

Thesis mode

My memory is odd. Looking back I get the impression that I've spent the last six months in general idleness, avoiding work and skiving off, and present Sara hates past Sara because of it, because when the looking back occurs present Sara is usually hustling to meet a deadline and wondering why past Sara didn't take care of it. But when I flip back through my diary it becomes clear why past Sara didn't take care of it, because past Sara generally does far more hustling of other types than present Sara remembers.

Today was the day that the first rough draft of my critical thesis was due to my supervisor. A week ago today was the day that I actually began working on it, because in the month before that I owed Henry 20,000 words, taught for FLY, presented at a conference, spent a week in the US doing research, judged a short fiction prize, had Annual Progress Review, and more or less kept up with the planning of my own conference. So the acrimony directed at past Sara was generally groundless, as very little skiving took place.

I've been writing up my research periodically as I've gone along, more as notes on what I've done than as actual readable material, and I've churned out a handful of self-contained pieces, so writing the first draft was less 'writing' than 'figuring out what part of what I already had was useable.' And if I'm bad at remembering what I've done, I'm even worse at remembering what I've already included in a document. So instead of approaching the thesis with any dignity, I took the arts-and-crafts line of attack:

Print it out, cut it up, sort like with like, put it back together, throw away the extra pieces. Just like Ikea.

I don't remember when I started doing it this way - no surprise there - but 'cut it all up and put it back together in an order that makes sense' seems to be the only way that I produce nonfiction that's in any way readable. 

It's kinda depressing to think that that's my critical output for the past three years. 

The risk, of course, is that all of the cutting and pasting and sorting out will take up so much time that the draft will be done in theory when the deadline pops up, but won't have made it back onto the computer. So far that hasn't happened, but I won't be surprised if one day I wind up hand-delivering a nine-foot sheet of taped-together paragraphs in lieu of a Word document. 

The whole was finished and sent at about ten this morning, with much fear and trembling because it's both far longer than my supervisor is expecting and far rougher than I was hoping it would be. Though, when I first sat down a week ago and looked at what I had, I hid under the desk and refused to come out because I thought I had absolutely nothing to show for the past three years, so I suppose I'm in a 100% better position than I expected to be.

Slouching towards the finish line

This weekend, by the power of coffee, the page proofs were sent back to Random House all squiggled up with little blue pen-marks. The changes I made were extensive enough that I'm now a bit nervous about the fact that anyone is going to see the bound proofs, which consist of the pre-final edit text. Which means I should either learn to lighten up a little or push myself to be more ruthless with the things that I know I need to change but don't have the will to change yet when it comes to the earlier revisions. The final edit mostly consisted of metaphorically bouncing every word against the table to hear whether it rang true, and messing with the ones that thudded, so I'm less of a basket case than I was on the day I finished the structural revision and realised that I was essentially done writing the novel. 

And while I've been tweaking the insides, other people have been tweaking the outsides:

There should be a little box of bound proofs turning up on my doorstep any day now...

And now that that's mostly done and dusted, there's nothing keeping me from locking myself in my flat in Norwich and writing up my critical thesis.

Oh, dear...

Office!

Last April Dave and I started fixing up one of the back bedrooms with the ultimate hope that it would be turned into an office so I could stop cluttering up the dining room table and Dave could stop throwing away my notes by accident. There were holes in the walls the size of my torso, and the floor wasn't level, so we figured it wouldn't be easy. Then we found out that the entire back half of the house was a not-quite-legal addition, done in the middle of the night by a previous owner, presumably while under the influence of something illegal.

The only straight lines in that picture are the books. 

The room contains not a single ninety degree angle. The walls bow. The ceiling bows. The floor ripples. Neither the ceiling nor the floor actually meets the walls. The skirting boards were hung using adhesive AND six inch nails, like they were possessed and in danger of flying off the wall during the full moon.

The coffee cup on the desk in both pictures should give you an idea of how big the room is('nt).

Which is why, when I finished putting the sealant around the seams on the new skirting board at the end of December and Dave said "I promise I'll paint the trim as soon as it gets warm," I said, "Forget it, it's done."

Lazarus has been installed on the windowsill; of course it's done.

To my surprise, it's suddenly so much easier to get work done. Possibly because when I close the door with me in the office the dirty dishes stop existing, and when I close the door with me outside the office the work stops existing. Maybe the door is magic. Or maybe I should remember what I know about how human beings work and quit being surprised by psychology.

 All the breakables got moved up here last week so they wouldn't fall victim to New Year's Eve, most notably Dave's collection of resin dragons. At first I was worried they'd crowd the books - so far we've only moved in the ones that were sitting in literal piles in corners of other rooms, languishing for lack of shelf space - but they're starting to grow on me.
 

Two of about a dozen. They add something... I wouldn't say 'menace,' but then again, I wouldn't not say 'menace.'