We spent a lovely weekend in the U.P. with friends and friends of friends featuring multiple late nights, sunning, napping, and generally putting the brain brake in park. It’s difficult to get the sluggish thing moving again, especially on a sour, gray day after so many sunny blue ones.

I heard this morning that Tom Disch died, or rather took his own life on July 4 at the age of 68. Of his body of work, I have only read a number of science-fiction-related essays and Camp Concentration, all of which I liked. I know very little of the man otherwise, but what I do know is this: he was a major figure in the New Wave of sci-fi and had an enormous impact on a number of readers and writers. But I also know that Google news search hasn’t mentioned it yet, and if in his last days Disch was fighting to stay in his rent-controlled apartment, then the unparalleled riches that many writers hope will be theirs when they finally make it “big” may not be as vast as imagined. Sad, sobering news all around.

The revisions to the novel continue more or less on track. I really can’t tell anymore whether the thing is any good and I’m ready to be done with this round so I can circulate it to my reading group and get some more feedback. Right now I’m trying to clean up the language a bit and to better tie the beginning and middle to the end.

I had it in my mind to take inspiration from China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station but upon further review it is much more like his King Rat. Whereas PSS has long and vividly described passages that really root the reader in the fictional world of New Crobuzon and the overall plot works in tandem with this world-building, KR takes place in contemporary London and is both more episodic and plot-driven as the protagonist learns more about himself and the city he thought he knew. In fact, swap out London for New York in that sentence and you pretty much have my novel. If it’s anywhere as good as King Rat I’ll be in good shape…

Otherwise, I haven’t sold any new short fiction in over a year and that sucks. Part of the reason is that my submissions in the last year have been anemic, but I also think that many of the stories I’ve sent out need some touching up—many of the rejections I’ve been getting have more or less said “this story is just okay.” Personally, I think really, really paying attention to language might be what’s needed, but my writing time is going into the novel right now.

And on the school front, it looks like I might have a lighter class load than usual come fall. It looks like an almost certainty at this point that I will not be getting a teaching position but all is not lost—at least not totally. They offered me the Program Assistantship, which is full tuition remission and some pay.

This does nothing to help me with the problem of getting teaching experience (and contrary to what some folks at my school think, it really is hard to get adjunct teaching positions without any experience, and when you apply they really do think something is strange when a 2nd year Ph.D. student hasn’t been a TA ) but the tuition remission staunches the outflow of cash and makes things a little more comfortable academically, meaning I only need to take two classes per semester. Unfortunately, the PA position does almost nothing for income since it works out to be around $3K per semester. Realistically, if I’m only taking two classes two days per week and doing 10-12 hours of PA work, I’ll need to get another job to help bring in some cash. Just another ball to keep in the air…

Crawling back into bed for another year or two sounds like a pretty good idea right about now.

UPDATE: Oh, how fortune can swing so dramatically. I just got word that I will indeed be getting a full TA position for the upcoming school year, which pretty much makes all of the above moot. And the sun came out. I’m not even kidding…

Current Mood: Monday Blues |