A writer's life for me

It’s been so long since I last updated this space that it took three attempts to get my password right just to log in here. Off the top of my head I couldn’t actually remember when I’d last rambled on about my PhD but, if Blogger records are anything to go by, it looks like it was back in September 2017 – which must mean that it was immediately before or immediately after handing in the dreaded thesis. If you’re reading this and we’re friends on Facebook, or you follow me on one social media channel or another, then you’ll already know the outcome. If by some minor chance you have stumbled across this blog without knowing me – or you’ve started to follow this blog, without really knowing who I am – then: SURPRISE! I PASSED MY PHD! But there were one or two steps between then and now so kick back and let me fill you in (or, alternatively, you could click the top right X and call it a day; I have, after all, given you the ending to this story already). I handed in my thesis...

DISCLAIMER: Reader, I wrote this post a few days ago now, and at the time of writing I was yet to see a doctor to either confirm or deny what was actually happening with my health. This morning, I saw a doctor. She said quite plainly, 'Yes, this is the same problem as before, just flaring up again.' She also said the treatments are the same as the ones I've already had, and the investigations are the same as the ones they've already done - well over a decade ago, and all. I was angry about this - horrendously angry, and I have to pause here to thank my mum, my sister, my partner, and two amazing friends for being on the brunt end of that anger. But I was hugely frustrated that, after all this time, the first answer was, 'You still just have to live with it.' Now the anger has died down and I'm oh-so-aware that people out there are living with much worse things than this. But now more than ever, it seems important to me that I talk about this thing/malfuncti...

I haven’t been too out and loud about resolutions this year, largely because I don’t want to be held publicly accountable when I inevitably drop the ball on them – such is the way when making resolutions. But one that I’m happy to put to paper – or to screen, if you will – is the hope that this year I will take part in more events as a writer and as a poet, rather than as a host and as an organiser (although I plan to be doing a lot of the latter, too). My first on-stage event towards this resolution is happening in February and, like all shameless self-promotors, I’m going to talk about it for the next couple of hundred words or so (get comfortable). Matthew Nicholson – a top poet/half-decent bloke – is putting on a poetry event to fundraise money for not one, but FIVE charities (I know, right, he’s totally winning at the whole new year, better person thing). On February 10 th , from 5:30pm onwards, a poetry-packed evening will be taking place at Kidderminster Town Hall (DY10 1DB...

I am NaNoWriMo-ing this year. It’s my third year having a bash at what feels to me an utterly sadistic challenge, wherein you boil a complex and intricate process down to a month’s worth of writing, that only really secures months and months of editing in the aftermath. And yet, here I am, bashing out a story that I hadn’t planned to write – largely because I decided to join the NaNoWriMo bandwagon the day before the blessed event was due to start. I first tried to do NaNoWriMo in the middle of my MA degree; massive mistake, lasted a few days, developed a semi-decent character only to abandon the poor man and never write him again. The second time was last year; I was in the final year of my PhD (brilliant timing, yes, okay) and the horrendous editing for that had left me with creative energy to burn. I wrote every day, averaging at around 1700 words a pop, and I had a short story collection by the end of it. This year, I am writing a thing. I don’t want to use the word nove...

Take a walk with me. We’ll go back to August 2010, late August, when I finally found out that despite my below par A-Level grades, there was a university in the country that was prepared to give me a chance. Praise be to them. Ahead of starting this journey, my generous mother bought me a laptop. A brand spanking new laptop. That my kind and patient sister, and her partner, set up for me and taught me how to use. They deliberately picked something that would suit the university life style – and they were bang on the money in that respect. That laptop lasted I-don’t-care-to-remember how many assignments and a 10,000 word undergraduate dissertation. Let’s not forget, either, that during my first and second summers home from university, I also wrote two “novels” (I use that word in a bland and unimpressed tone, incidentally) that were typed on that same laptop. From there, we moved to postgraduate studies. More assignments and eventually a 25,000 word dissertation. By this point ...

Transition: 'the process or the period of changing from one state or condition to another'. I wanted to make this blog more of a regular thing once my PhD was over, for several reasons. Partly it’s just to log what happens next and this, in itself, is two-fold: I want to have some kind of documentation of this recovery process (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) that follows the PhD, but I also live in hope that someone who is struggling with having finished their PhD might find this blog some day, and breathe a hefty sigh on realising that the weird grief-cum-relief they’re feeling right now isn’t totally abnormal – in fact, it might even be quite common. I also want to get into the habit of writing more – something I’m encouraging my own students to do now and I hate giving out writing advice that I haven’t/am not taking myself, and so here we are. This is my first post as a Whatever I Am Now (because I still don’t have balls big enough to write The Diary of a Writer in th...

In case the title of this blog post didn’t give it away, let me clarify: I have handed in my PhD thesis.  I handed it in exactly a week ago, actually, and I would have blogged a brag sooner if not for the fact that the day after my hand-in, a family member was taken into hospital, and the last week has sort of slipped away from me as a result of that. It’s been a while since I gave you an update at all, I know, and the last time we “talked”, I was in this blissfully ignorant place of not having any work to do. Let me catch you up from there:             My readers were wonderful. All of those who read and provided feedback for the book part of the project were insightful, considerate, and careful with their responses. I ironed out technical issues and even one or two final plot holes and so, to those who read the manuscript ahead of hand-in, I cannot and will not ever be able to thank you enough.         ...