Dazed and confused

In the last few days of working on the thesis I went looking through my computer for the master copy of Belief so that I could check a timeline issue, and made the unpleasant discovery that the master copy, thanks to a hiccough in my operating system, no longer existed. Since it was the last few days of working on the thesis I screamed for a little bit and went back to working on the thesis, but after the thesis was done I went around to the computer-type people I know to confirm that, yes, the file had been eaten and, while I still had sections of the novel littering my hard drive that could be pulled together to make up what I'd lost, minus a round or two of revision, there was no way of recovering the actual document that had been lost.

Considering this is the fourth time that such a thing has happened with this novel alone it should no longer surprise anyone that I draft on paper. I'm not sure if this happens to be an especially ill-fated novel, or if I'm having worse luck than usual with electronics. Either way, it's not as much of a total disaster as it could be. Depending on the time of day it's slightly less annoying than the fact that, since moving, I can find none of my socks or sweaters. Though that could be due to still being stuck in the brain-fog that seemed to descend the moment I handed in, which has made everything from spelling to tying my shoes pretty well impossible. The one thing that I haven't been too foggy to do is transcribe, so the moment that I could look at the first draft without feeling sick I started transcribing it. And this afternoon I finished it. Maybe tomorrow my head will be clear enough to start putting what I have in order again.

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.

I'm not dead yet!

...though I'm not exactly feeling better. The cough I picked up in America in October has stuck around to make life difficult, so the frequency of getting things done has halved, and the rate of not being able to care that I'm not getting things done seems to vacillate at will.

Fortunately, other things have been vacillating as well - there were difficulties hunting down an external examiner, so my hand-in date has shifted to January 20th, which happens to be my dad's birthday. Which means that I don't get to move home just yet, but at least I get another month to work on the thesis. No matter how finished it gets I'll always be able to spend one more month on it, but given the amount of time I've spent coughing instead of working this term the delay is something of a blessing.

The academic conference that's been in the works for the past year will finally come to pass on Saturday, and I've got everything crossed that it goes off without any major upsets. I'm not presenting, but running the thing is so much effort that I wish I were. But the experience has been worthwhile, and I'm pretty sure that the feeling of getting back the brainspace that's been devoted to conference things will be nothing short of transcendent.

Oh, and there's a fiction-adjacent side-project that I've somehow gotten drawn into as a side effect of being involved with the conference. But that's all I'll say about that until it's ready to bear fruit. Which, by the look of things, shouldn't be long at all.

The most positive of feedback

I have a friend. Her name is Fran. Fran is an artist and graphic designer.

When I was working on The Lauras, Fran threatened to read it.

And when it came out, she read it.

And apparently she liked it, because she made an art of Alex and Ma (that's a technical term).

And there was much rejoicing, because she drew Alex to look pretty much the way that Alex looks in my head.

And also because my book inspired fanart, and that is high praise indeed.

Italy, Day 2: Venice

I had thought that my foray abroad would continue in the manner of the first day, and I'd find periodic quiet moments for getting work done, updating social media accounts, and suchlike. As is so often the case, I was very wrong about that. So the rest of the account of Italy is about a week late.

When I woke up in Treviso I had all the intentions of going out and seeing the town a bit before heading on to Venice, but when I popped out onto the street I found that it was raining. And not English mizzle, but the kind of rain that you see in Virginia at the tail end of a hurricane. So I went back inside the hotel and drank coffee and wrote for a while. But eventually my worries about not finding the correct train won out over my dislike for getting rained on, and I dragged myself out to find the train station and, since everyone else seemed to have one and they all seemed to look at me like I was crazy for wandering around without one, an umbrella. I managed to do both of these things without actually speaking, and then managed to check out of the hotel and get myself onto the correct train to Venice also without speaking, so I've added 'move to Italy and become a voluntary mute' to my list of possible career choices if writing doesn't pan out.

About halfway to Venice I had a strange moment. The carriage was full mostly of women, and even though I've spent a lot of time in train carriages full mostly of women this was the first time that I looked around and all of the women had the same yellow-green tone to their skin that I do, and the same ill-behaved hair that I do, and more or less the same nose and eyes and awkward body proportions. And while I don't usually find myself surrounded by people that look that radically different from me, I do generally find myself surrounded by people who are more Nordo-Germanic looking than me, so it was the first time that I've ever looked around and thought, I guess I am normal.

Venice itself looks exactly like the pictures, except it feels smaller and cosier than it's generally described to be, at least in my opinion. I had a few free hours before the evening's event, so I wandered around getting lost and rained on and looking into churches while trying to keep my umbrella from blowing inside out. I couldn't actually read the map that I was given of the city, so I accidentally found the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Frari, and also the Church of San Pantalon - which I personally thought was more impressive because the entire ceiling is painted to depict the martyrdom of Saint Pantalon. I also found the church of San Geremia, which houses the remains of Saint Lucy of Syracuse, which I was not expecting to see when I went in.

Yup, those are remains. Image from Wikipedia, because I draw the line at photos in churches. 

I was scheduled for an evening chat at Libreria Marco Polo, but the rain meant the trains were delayed, which meant that Rossella, the publicist who was coming to meet me; the interviewer; and the translator were all delayed, the latter two extremely so. This was dealt with by repairing to the nearest bar for a drink, asking around until someone who spoke both English and Italian was found, and having one of the booksellers do the interviewing until the actual interviewer turned up. Afterwards the chairs were cleared away and furniture rearranged, two boards laid across sawhorses in the middle of the bookshop, and an immense dinner of Afghani food laid out. We stayed up until one in the morning drinking wine and talking about books, which was probably a little ill-advised, considering that we had to wake up at five the next morning to catch the train to Milan.

In retrospect, it's pretty understandable why I couldn't drag myself out of bed the day after getting back from Italy. I don't think I slept more than five hours a night any night I was there.