Time slippage

[osprey_archer]

32,357 words. It's a children's book, so that's a draft.

I wrote it very quickly, so it may be a bad draft (asakiyume, this grew out of the time-traveling popcorn ball story), but it is a draft! It has a beginning and a middle and an end, and stuff happens.

There are two girls living in a house, fifty years apart from each other, who become friends through the medium of time travel - time slippage might be a better word. And time-traveling trick-or-treat KitKats - in fact, quite a bit of candy in general (they discuss the changes or lack thereof in the US candy market. Candy bars have surprising staying power!) - and of course a lot of cake.

Also a brief interlude where they gain the ability to float. If you’re going to throw out the laws of physics anyway…

Plus a pterodactyl, very briefly.

It is a little bit like my id exploded on the page.

***

I have been waiting for this moment of glorious accomplishment to say that I’m quitting grad school at the end of this semester. I’ll have all the credits I need for a master’s degree, and I’ve decided I don’t want to go on for the Ph.D.



I’ve been thinking about this since last spring. I finally decided to quit because I realized that I don’t want to be a professor, and it’s not worth suffering to get something I don’t actually want.

I might like to be a teacher, or even a professor at a community college where my main duty is to teach, but I really don’t want to be a researcher, or at least not as a history professor. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life writing about things that other people have written, and reading the newest academic history books, most of which I don’t even like.

And there just isn’t time to be both a professor and a novelist, and I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was about eight. That’s where my heart lies: that’s what I want to be doing. Never mind it’s not a very secure career path. But then neither was professor - so many people don’t get tenure-track positions, let alone tenure, and the job market outside of that doesn’t pay well.

In any case, I’m not particularly concerned about making novelist my “career,” in the sense of being my only job that pays all my bills. I would of course like to make money, but I don’t really care if I ever make enough money to live on just from writing; I write better when I have to fit it in around something else, anyway, rather than having an empty schedule and nothing to do but write. If you have all day, then you can always write later, right? And later...and later...And then it rarely gets done.

But it has to be a job that doesn’t take up all my mental energy, and doesn’t make me feel guilty because I ought to be reading more boring history books and thinking about my dissertation.

Anyway, I waited to tell you till I finished the time travel story because it would have seemed awfully silly to quit grad school to write novels, without being sure that I could even write one that was any good.



And finally, this means I don’t have to take qualifying exams. I think we can all agree that’s a win.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is definitely a win!

Congratulations on the draft! When/if you get to the point of feeling like sharing, I'd love to see! Will you try to find an agent for it (after revisions, etc. etc.)?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I will be happy to send it to you! I'm going to let it sit for a few weeks and then do some revision first. I think both the beginning and the end need some tightening...it's hard tying things up.

(Incidentally, you mentioned you might want me to look at Penpal. Do you still want me to give it a look? I'd be happy to if you do.)

I actually flipped through a writer's market book at the store and made a list of agencies that handle children's and young adult books with a fantastic bent. So when I get to that point, the most preliminary research is done!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You are hardcore old school, looking at an actual physical book for your agent research! But good; I'm glad you have; you're a step ahead.

If you want to do more research online, an *excellent* free resource is agentquery.com. You can type in search parameters (e.g., "middle-grade" or "fantasy"), and it will give you a list of all the agents who represent that type of book.) You can click on the agents' names and find out their taste in books, what things they've represented recently, etc.

Another very, very useful thing to do is to find out who represented books that you think are similar in feel or tone or story to the one you've just written. This can be hard if you feel there aren't any books that are directly comparable, but you can usually find *something*.

But enough of that--that's for the future. For now, yeah, let it sit and then do your revising, and when you're feeling good about sending it, I'd be *so honored and excited* to look at it.

Regarding Pen Pal, at this point I'm done revising it and am on a final editorial read-through (hoping to catch any stray typos, but no doubt will miss one or two), so rather than send it to you as a beta reader, I think what I want to do is send you the actual finished book, just as a present, once it's made. Which do you prefer, paperback or ebook?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Paperback, I think. Easier to entice my friends into reading it that way. :)

Plus you could sign it! Then when we are famous and literarily successful, people can admire it like they admire the inscriptions that Keats and Shelley wrote when they gave their books to each other.

when we are famous and literarily successful

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love this idea ^_^

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

As someone who also quit with a master's degree (although alas not until after the qualifying exams) I can say that I have never regretted making that (difficult) decision. And it was for the exact same reason you did: I realized I didn't enjoy what I was doing in grad school, and it was preparing me for continuing to do that for the rest of my life. Which I didn't want to do.

So, yay! And also, yay time-travel novel, my very favorite device. Yours sounds a bit like the kind of stuff Jack Finney wrote (do you know the story I mean? The one about the man and the woman who send letters to each other across 100 years - she leaves them in secret compartments in a desk the man has, and he mails them with historic stamps from that period) which again, my favorite.

Your writing is lovely, and I'm sure you'll be a fabulous novelist!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've read that particular version. Jaclyn Moriarty wrote something similar, although with notes passing between worlds rather than through time. And through a broken parking meter rather than a desk, although a desk does make more sense.

Plus desks with secret compartments are automatically cool. I have always thought it would be awesome to own one of those giant desks with a million pigeon holes and a secret compartment in the bottom of a drawer.

[ursula]

Hurray for knowing what you want to do and doing it!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I wish I could reach through the internet and clink glasses with you. Cheers to that!

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

All of your reasons for quitting grad school with your masters sound like good, solid ones to me! And they're a lot like my own reasons for deciding not to do a thesis to go on for a PhD. I mean, it's different in rehab science and my writing life goals are fannish, but mostly, everything you've said here makes SO MUCH SENSE. So, uh, thank you for sharing them because they also made me feel better about my own career choices. Good for you for finishing your draft, too!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the sciences are so, so different - they have jobs outside of academia for Ph.Ds, for instance. (My dad is an engineering professor, which is quite different from rehab science, but I suspect in this aspect they're similar?)

And I'm happy that I made you feel better about your own career choices! Your posts always make it sound like you love working with clients, which is really the important thing for your career goals, right?

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

For us, it seems like getting a doctorate is really only something you'd do if you wanted to do research and teach, rather than be involved clinically. But then, most of my professors have extensive clinical experience, so I'm not sure. It might just be that I only know people with doctorates in academia because of where I am right now.

But I do know that I'm happy with my options at Masters level--because like you said, that's where the clients are, and all I want to do is work with them. And it sounds like you're happy with where you're at too and with the opportunities it'll give you. That's really nice to hear from people in my peer group nowadays because it doesn't happen much.

[sineala.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the draft! And on quitting grad school. It sounds like a sensible decision to me.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's a real load off my mind. The grad school thing, although finishing the draft too.

[anait.livejournal.com]

Congrats on finishing your draft - which sounds delightful! - and on setting your course in life.

Best of luck! I really enjoy your fanfiction, and have noticed this year just how very much you've grown as a writer since the first stories I read from you in, oh, 2007 or 8 was it?

I can't wait to see your books in the bookstore and the library eventually!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

2008. I have been posting regularly on LJ...almost six years now! Wow! I hadn't realized it was so long.

People argue about whether and how much fanfic is useful for learning how to write non-fanfic, but one thing that is inarguable, I think, is that fanfic makes it easier to get thoughtful critiques of your writing (through betas) and also to write a lot, because there's an audience for it. And both those things are awfully helpful.

[silverusagi]

Sounds like "quitting" with a master's is the right way to go, lol. That's quite an accomplishment.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on finishing!

And, yeah, I think that figuring out what you want definitely qualifies as a check mark in the 'win' category.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely. Now I just have to figure out how to support myself while I do it...Meep!

[ladyherenya]

Congratulations on finishing a draft! Your story sounds exactly like the sort of thing I would have considered a perfect book when I was a kid. (I still like time-travel stories, but with perhaps not quite with the same intensity as when I was 12.)

I, too, find it hard to write when I have an empty schedule; doing nothing isn't very inspiring.

Also, congrats on working out what you want to do (or don't want to do, as the case may be).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ha, my basic working method for this book was, "Would this have struck me as awesome when I was eleven? Yes? It's going in!"

And it is useful to know what I don't want to do, although sometimes this list seems dishearteningly long.