Scrivener! As someone who writes out of order and then tries to stick things into a beat sheet later, it's great for sliding chapters around without scrolling through a 200-page document. Zotero is also a lifesaver for citation-heavy work
Hey, I'm in a similar boat. You're not alone. 5 of mine have died in the trenches over the last decade -- it's so terribly demoralizing.
I recommend this post from Aimee Davis about quitting. Sometimes stepping away gives us much needed perspective 💗
aimee-davis.com/2023/01/14/h...
yknow, one day I'm going to have a heck of a perseverance story 😂
Regularly I am amazed at the accuracy of the advice "If you feel like you hate everyone, eat. If you feel like everyone hates you, sleep. If you feel like you hate yourself, shower. If you feel like everyone hates everyone, go outside."
although I would really appreciate SOMETHING working out eventually 🥲
honestly though, my 10 years in the trenches and various R&Rs have really helped me handle the behemoth task of my dissertation so even if I never get a book deal, at least my journey counted for something
idk maybe i'm just jaded as a decade-long querier but 2 years in the trenches is not really a "long" journey IMO
Phishing emails should never be titled "sad announcement." Almost had a heart attack seeing that in my university inbox this morning 😭
imagine that "use your own brain" and "make your own art" are hot takes in this day and age 🫠
Undergraduate edition:
- organic chemistry
- population ecology
- neuroscience
- music cognition
- 20th century French literature
tried to pick things from vastly different disciplines !
- research assistant
- clinical audiologist
- sessional instructor
- teaching assistant
- writer (unpaid vocation lol)
i'm used to talking around it by saying "oh I teach and do research at the university"
buuuuuut i've technically finished up all my teaching contracts
and people don't get how you can possibly research literature
soooo *throws up hands* I give up
gritting my teeth through a conversation about my PhD like
"oh is it hard to study with a young child?"
"do you become a teacher after this?"
"so do you speak French fluently?"
🤡
reminds me why I don't tell people what I actually do for work!
my invisalign is meant to set the stage for future restorative work and wasn't because of crooked teeth but I just got new refinements and tell me why this is going to take nearly FIVE years
Things that I never expected to take as long as they are:
1) literary representation
2) invisalign
lmao it's literally a race to see whether I'll get my PhD, an agent, or finish my invisalign first
I will be on hiatus... soon... but the plan is to write write write write write into the new year... 😩
write my dissertation
write another article
write more novels
write more shorts
write in French
WRITE!!!
seeing publication dates for 2028 and--- ;_; the way almost 15 years will have elapsed by the time I ever see a novel of mine in print (and that's being optimistic!)
In case anyone needs to hear it (aka me), you cannot control anything in this industry except your own writing (and maybe regulating your feelings about it?). At a certain point your craft plateaus and it's up to market alignment and a bit of luck
Anyway, I will not be engaging with any "yearly goals/accomplishments" content bc every single December/January, I end up in a funk specifically because my goals are never achieved
The nice thing about ruling out success prematurely is that you feel less disappointed when the failure ultimately comes to pass! And I mean, it'd be a pleasant surprise to get some good news, though unfortunately that doesn't apply to my case
A lot of people are being like 'yeah well XXX million amount of people are using ChatGPT so whether we like it AI is here to stay' and not taking into account that if the underlying companies don't prove profitable the venture capitalists will stop bankrolling them and those services will go down.
On that note, I should probably stay off the socials until the calendar passes my birthday. I find this period so disheartening re: my publishing journey and it has been this way for too many years 😞
Welp it seems 2025 won't be the year of securing rep either... My only goal for now is to survive the semester and write as much as possible over the next 5 weeks 🥴
As I read through 50 handwritten paragraphs, I suddenly realize this is the generation that never learned to cursive write??? Every single one of them prints!
I have no idea if my committee is aware of the editorial concept of 'stet' but my dissertation is the only place I can regularly use it and it feels great 😅
I have a story in this anthology! 👻 🇨🇦
Received what I strongly suspect is an AI-generated document for an OPTIONAL assignment I gave so students could receive feedback on /their/ writing 🥲
