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Mailing out links to my thesis to survey participants is taking longer than expected. However, I’m now sending via Gmail BCC in groups of about 50 each, instead of one at a time when I get the chance.
My outlook/iinet would not let me send more than 25 emails in an hour, which was annoying and caused more work. I cannot use my newsletter service because of double opt in requirements.
So far I have sent links to 155 romance writer participants and starting yesterday with the BCC on Gmail 169 to romance readers. I’m getting quite a few bounces, mostly from the romance reader participants. I think this is to be expected as these details were provided in 2016 and 2017.
I have many hundreds of emails to send.
Another annoying thing. I developed a template, then corrected the template, but somehow in many cases the template message with typos went out. I’m sorry about this. I feel very stupid and actually can’t work out how that happened. For those getting the error free email you are one of the lucky ones.
As a rule of thumb, romance writers are downloading more than readers. However, I won’t be able to distinguish between the groups from now on as I’m sending to both groups at the same time.
If you participated in the survey and haven’t received a link in a week or two, then feel free to email me for it.
I am very grateful to the survey participants for their generous support and thoughtful survey responses. Thank you.
I am in the process of emailing out links to the thesis to the romance writers and readers who participated in my research. However, I have to do it manually a few at a time. I sent a whole bunch out this morning and if I have time this afternoon and tomorrow I’ll send more. However, with over 700 people who left their email addresses, it’s going to take me a while. I’m not quite 10% done.
For those of you who have had a chance to look, I’d welcome any comments you might have positive or negative of the analysis. Feel free to email me or leave comments on the blog.
I finally collected my testamur from the university of Thursday. It wasn’t in the folder I received on graduation day. Good thing too as they had to adjust a date. My academic transcript covers my whole uni life, starting with Graduate Certificate in Professional Writing (Editing) in which I earned two Dean’s excellence awards (2011 and 2012). I think switched to a Masters in Creative Writing (but believe me first class honours is best for scholarships). And then finally the Phd in Creative writing commencing 2016.
It seems so long ago now.
I don’t feel exceptionally clever for doing all this. My passion for writing drove me and once awakened a passion for learning stuff! I feel a sense of accomplishment and I proved my stamina!
You see, I left school at 15 years old, mid way through the Australian Year 10 or in my time 4th form. I don’t think I knew what a Phd was at that age. There was no encouragement to study, broken home, dysfunctional family, lost teenager looking for love. And life sucked pretty much really at that time. I wanted to go back to school but my itinerant lifestyle meant I couldn’t, nor could I get support from my mum to help me either. Later on in life, I was in NZ and I tried correspondence around age 17 and that was a bit hard. Later again in my early 20s I did my school certificate in NZ part correspondence and part night school. I had babies then and that was when I first had to idea to write. Unfortunately, young kids, feeling like I wasn’t smart enough I gave up that thought. I studied university entrance in NZ and got accredited. That meant I didn’t have to sit exams as my work was good all year. That was correspondence and it was great really. Three kids under five meant I had to be organised. I did maths in the morning because my brain was fresher and then physics in the afternoon. History and English in the evening if I could, around cooking etc. My husband at the time didn’t like me studying at night but I read my history stuff anyway while watching TV with the family.
I moved back to Australia, divorced and studied my higher school certificate (years 11 & 12) in a condensed year. I could have done fewer subjects and got a better score but that was a time limited thing, whereas the full school certificate was mine forever, and with young kids I didn’t know how long it would take me to get into uni. I was offered a place in arts at Uni of Sydney, but I wanted Economics. At this time in my life it was soul searching time, do I move to Canberra or Newcastle and go there or enter arts and try to switch in a year? All my supports at that time were in Bondi, so I went into arts and worked my butt off to get into economics. I did get into economics and I also studied Japanese and Spanish languages as additional subjects.
The point of this recounting of my education is that I wanted this education, I wanted it for reasons both ego stroking and economic reasons. I studied economics to get a job and, hence, a better life for my kids and me. I achieved that, despite setbacks, such as the introduction of HECS in my first year and then a recession when I graduated. No dream jobs available and being an older student not much opportunity at the time. My passion though was for the arts but with my limited time frame and supporting three kids, I didn’t have the luxury to pursue my passions. I had to to turn down honours too, offered because I was pretty good at tax law in the day.
The other unusual thing was I studied for my economics degree with opposition from many family and friends. It’s weird I know but people I loved and trusted tried to talk me out of going to uni. They saw no value in it, thought I would fail, waste my time or whatever. For me, though, study was the key to unlocking my life. I had low self esteem, achieving academically helped with that in many ways, I ended up earning well and putting my education to good use. Although I must say when I worked in the audit office I had imposter syndrome and kept meeting highly intelligent people and wondered what I was doing there. I also had imposter syndrome when I started the Phd. Although I’m told that’s normal.
It wasn’t until I was entering my forties that I thought about what I really wanted to do, which came to me in a traffic jam, and that was to write. And not long after I started writing.
I can’t tell you if the Phd in Creative Writing made me a better writer. That remains to be seen. The two books I published last year were written before I started the Phd. I think I look at the world differently and I’ve certainly been on a journey, life and study and genre over six years.
I will say that I’m satisfied with what I’ve done and how I have clawed my life into a semblance of something it could have been, if things had been different. Now coming up to my 63rd birthday, I feel content. I’m also glad it is done too, but I sense there is more out there in my future. I just need to focus and go for it.
Moral of the story. Go for it? Pursue your dreams. Value yourself.
Yesterday, I walked across the stage as Dr Donna Maree Hanson. I had the gown, the hood, and the Tudor bonnet. I did not look as debonair as I was expecting but it didn’t matter because I was excited and happy. It’s been a long time coming. The pandemic played havoc, not just with me, but with staffing at the university which meant the last part took too long and it was very frustrating.
Rituals and ceremony are fascinating things. The permeate our lives-marriage ceremonies, funerals, graduations. For me, it was a closure thing. I didn’t have to do it, but I so wanted to. I wanted a moment to remember, to celebrate and share with my family. Not all my family unfortunately.
I found the whole thing a boost to my morale. I dressed up. I put on make up. I felt good. Yay me.
At moments like this I am expected to thank people who helped me. I have an extensive thank you in my thesis, but that’s not as easily seen or read. My supervisor was Associate Profession Tony Eaton, AKA Anthony Eaton, award winning author of SF and F and he propped me up when I was down, guided me when he could, challenged me and made me prove my points. He also was a great mentor for my novel component. It was a challenge that Tony wasn’t an expert on romance fiction, but he did his best as he is the genre guy and he asked the amazing, indomitable Dr Jodi McAlister to be on my supervisory panel. Jodi was a godsend from the romance academia perspective. Thank you Jodi. My second supervisor was Dr Jordan Williams and she was very good value when she had to mind me when Tony was away. She gave me some great feedback on my thesis and chatted to me and helped me refine my arguments.
However, it was Tony who zoomed with me every week and fortnight during the peak of early pandemic lockdowns and fear and who kept me going, listened to my ideas, encouraged me, He worked hard with me to drag, pull, push over the line. During that time I had no will to write anything, no creativity, I was blown up by a cannon ball of pandemic fear and family chaos. What really touched me though was Tony was feeling similarly. He was finding it hard. He had family, a job, PhD candidates and lectures and marking and he didn’t give up on himself or me. So thank you Tony for fighting the hard fight.
My partner, Matthew Farrer, was always quietly supporting me with love and advice and money too. My children who supported me and were proud of me, even if at times they didn’t get what I was doing. The romance readers and writers who I’ve met, the ones who participated in my surveys, thank you all.
People ask questions about being a Phd candidate. What’s it like? Why? What do you do? It’s a long process, years. For me even longer that the normal because I took a year off, I went part time and so on. I can’t deny there was a time about a year and a half in that I wanted to give up. There were so many other distracting things to do-like write books, devote myself to publishing and promotion. But I had completed a survey of romance writers and readers and I owed it to them to do the work, the analysis and so I did.
Most of the time you are working on your own when you do a phd. I can only speak here about my creative writing Phd experience. Other disciplines are different I think, particularly if you are on a science research team. At first I had to learn to read academic articles. I think those first days I struggled to read one in a day. First you have to find them, then read them, then work out if they are relevant (the abstracts help). Then in my case my brain got accustomed and I could read two, three or four in a day. You need to work out a way to keep track of your articles because if you want to quote from them or paraphrase from them, you need to be able to lay your hand on the reference, check the wording (I failed a lot at this) or even wave them about and say ‘But they say so!’ Meanwhile, all this stuff just accumulated in my head. Then, there was the creative piece which is linked, inspired by or part of your research topic. For a long time my was a general area Feminism in popular romance fiction. By the end, it was Romance as a bridge to understanding changing gender roles in society. One thing I really enjoyed when I could be on campus was participating in campus life. I tutored in creative writing among other things. I loved being part of the student’s journey, encouraging them, sharing with them the pros and cons of being a writer. The pandemic killed that for me though as I was a sessional and it was a rubber band snap off into the no more tutoring scrap heap, like a lot of us.
Any enough blabbing and more photos.
Matthew Farrer, my partner and meThe robes from behind.
My thesis is currently available for viewing at the Uni of Canberra research repository. Here.
I’m thinking of publishing the thesis and the novel component so it may not be available forever. I will start emailing survey participants who requested a copy with the link to my thesis over the next couple of weeks.
I delivered my printed and bound thesis to the university to complete my Phd. It is a week shy of a year from when I submitted it. Honestly, the longest 12 months ever due to the administration at the university. Anyway, I hope to graduate in April in person but I’m likely to have my degree conferred before then. This now means I can start work on developing my Phd novel, Sihem, for publication, actually to submit to agents first up. I have structural edits to take up. You might ask why do I need to do that. Didn’t I just do a PhD in creative writing? Yes, I did but I was limited to word length and also I explored themes related to my PhD topic and that restricted how much time I devoted to other aspects of world building. That’s my January sorted.
The second big bit of news is Awakening has been published to most e retailers. I’m about to hit print on the print version too. I haven’t updated my links yet. There’s a lot going on as we finish off renovations and painting and pay attention to family visiting in the lead up to Christmas.
I wanted to share with you a bit about the genesis of Awakenings. It started with a kind of a poem as I sat by my mother in the early morning in the later stages of her life. She didn’t die that time but it was close. So I sat there at 2 am watching her on April 19 2014, looking at her pale white skin, her shallow breaths and then wrote down the ideas that came to me. Here is what I wrote:
Bring out the soldiers who lie within their frozen crypts
Do not wake them or disturb them
Their time is done
They gave us this peace, t his life and we are thankful.
Let not their sleeping, tranquil faces beguile you
They are bringers of death, purveyors of harm
It is time to let them go
Let them burn
Their flesh to no more rise
Let us grasp a future where they no longer exist
Where we are free
I don’t claim to be a poet, but these words were the genesis behind Awakening. I used some of these words and the ideas behind them for the novel. Here is the blurb.
Bring out the cold soldiers who lie in frozen sleep.
Do not wake them nor let their tranquil faces beguile.
They are purveyors of death.
They must burn!
What soldiers? Colony Five has been proudly peaceful since before living memory.
The cryptic new orders make no sense to Deleen Milo… until she sees the burning bodies in the stasis sarcophagi. She tries to uncover the truth behind the mysterious soldiers, only to become adrift in a colony suddenly full of secrets and threats. Who wants the soldiers destroyed and the colony defenceless?
Pursued into hiding, Deleen manages to revive Rik Chesson, a Cold Soldier trying to understand the new world waiting for him after 134 years of cryosleep. Deleen has never trusted easily, and Rik’s nanotech-infused posthuman form sets her nerves on edge. But they are the only ones who can rescue the surviving Cold Soldiers and defend the colony against a deadly new threat. They have to work together, and as they begin to truly know one another Deleen realises that however Rik’s body may have changed, the man inside might just be one she can love…
It has taken a while to get this book published. I started out thinking it would one thing but Nicole Murphy who was my first reader suggested I take a different tack. Every time I was part way through a revision something else would crop up and some of those revisions were big. This year, I had another beta reader, Lily, who did an amazing job and her comments helped me focus on getting it done and out there. I hope you like it.
It’s been a year since my last post. That’s totally unforgivable, even in these trying times. A lot has happened. None of it writing fiction. I hang my head. However, I am writing again or trying to. Perhaps I’m just too precious but I am affected emotionally and mentally by world events. Like a number of author friends I’m finding it hard to be creative.
A short recap of the last year. My partner lost his job in April (made redundant) but it’s not as bad as it sounds. He inherited a farm and if we could sell that between his superannuation pension and the sale of the farm he could be a full time writer (Me Too!). This meant cleaning out the farm, doing some renovations to make it habitable and selling it. Of course, pandemics don’t help much there and we were locked down for nearly three months when we could have been selling. As well as painting, flooring etc, I started a job to keep us ticking over. I’m still working but now I’m only three days a week and that’s pretty good so far. Working and renovations did take it out of me and I had to put aside the sourdough baking.
We also took a couple of trips to NZ on family business mid year. (when the country was open and just made it back before the borders slammed shut). That did not turn out how we thought it would. Counseling and recovery later, we are getting there. Without going into too much detail, this really changed everything, our house, what we thought our lives would be and we were left going on okay but slightly damaged. Sorry I can’t be more explicit.
Locked down with my daughter and granddaughter in August/September and into October. That was so hard. Both my daughter and I working from home. Child care of a two year old. My partner was amazing. My younger son was here too. Lockdown was damn hard. The news is damn hard. I agree with mask mandates, lockdowns and staying safe and even then I found it very, very hard. I had to have more counseling to cope with it, particularly after lockdown when Omicron started spreading. I was beginning to doubt we would have Christmas. Then, dealing with ‘living with COVID’ was also another change. I felt as if we had been tossed to the wind to fend for ourselves.
It isn’t all bad you know. I managed somehow to submit my PhD thesis in December. Although it didn’t go out to markers until March, due to COVID, missing forms and I don’t know what else. I believe this is something to be happy about but emotionally I’m just drained. We had a great Christmas. We survived lock down and we are all still speaking to each other.
We sold the farm and are just waiting on settlement.
One of my daughters was able to move into a brand new townhouse which was delayed. She loves it. And it’s not too far away.
We bough an electric car (KONA EV) and we love it. At first we couldn’t go anywhere much but we are doing a little bit now.
Meet Ruby Red
My partner had two books come out in hardback and audible. We think the paperbacks will be out soon. He’s starting to get his writing mojo happening again. Those two books took him about five years while looking after two elderly parents, then losing them a year apart. Then you know, smoke, hail, fire, pandemic and things really haven’t let up.
Here they are. The paperback of The Serpent and the Saint comes out April 12.
Crafting has been a godsend. I just totally lose myself. I’m still learning. I haven’t been weaving because we moved my floor loom into the garage as part of the house changes mid year and we haven’t sorted that out yet. My craftroom is being used as a bedroom. I was doing a lot of crochet and other craft until I gave myself RSI. It’s better now but I’m limiting myself to a row of Matthew’s blanket a night.
Front side of French Braid pattern.
Reverse side has a Maori inspired design
The pink quilt was for my sister. Both quilts used Jelly Rolls by Moda. The pink one had to be completely unpicked and re-sewn. It is an easy quilt in theory but YouTube tutorials don’t always give you all the technique
In progress shot
Also, while we didn’t garden this year due to renovation on the farm, I did manage to buy in tomatoes to make passata earlier in the month. A year’s supply and tomato ketchup too.
The results and the mess
There is more obviously to be grateful for. My grandkids and kids are safe. So are my family and friends as far as I know.
What’s changed though for me is my attitude to socialising. I also wonder will we ever be the same again. We went out for my son’s birthday to a restaurant, inside, with other people. First time in a long time and it felt transgressive. We had been socialising two on two on our deck or in cafe’s without outdoor seating until then. There is still so much COVID around. Then again, I’ve been at the pool recently and that’s just asking for it I suppose. However, I have prepaid and the pool have been very good all year stretching my visits out but once the government opens things up, the clock starts ticking again. I have such big lock down belly. I swear we drank two gins and ate three bags of chips a night in lock down. We also ate a lot of takeaways and chocolate. All my hard work in losing kilos. I got down to 65 kilos in July and I’ve put 10 back on. That’s not good for my health or knees. We are trying to get some kind of routine going, walking in the evenings, the pool and eating healthily. (I just ate dahl and a pork bun not sure how good that is).
Writing encompasses a number of tasks and projects and plans. As I manage my own ebooks on market places and do my own marketing, that’s all slid in a heap. Books are still selling here and there but I’ve not done anything much at all to help things along. The only thing I’ve managed is to do my BAS and my taxes. So when I start to think about writing, it’s not just the writing part, it’s the whole, newsletter and promotions as well. I’m totally out of the game and things change in one year…I wasn’t doing much before then either. Two years is a better estimate.
To get books published, I have to write them, revise them, get them edited etc. I have a couple that are getting close. To be honest they have been close for two years. One is a Dani Kristoff title, called The Changeling Curse, an ex rated paranormal fantasy. I received two beta reader comments on this and one lot of comments requires me to think. So that’s in the too hard basket. I have an editor lined up. Have had for a year. Next cab waiting is Awakenings which is a SF kind of romance. It was very much a romance but my beta reader (thanks Nicole) convinced me to ditch the sex scenes and concentrate on the SF side of things. That’s getting close to being sent out again to beta readers.
I started a kids book for NaNoWriMo in 2020. (I don’t think NaNoWriMo registered in 2021 with work and pandemic). I’ve been tinkering with that so I can finish the draft and send it out to beta readers.
These are only a fraction of what I have in the way of projects in progress or on the to be written list. But if I did happen to knuckle down I could achieve quite a bit. Having a backlog makes concentrating hard because you know…choice!
I hope I’m over this slump. I will try to blog again to update on my progress. I can’t say I’ll be the same as before because I don’t think I am or will be. Cheers from me and Matthew from our High Tea at the Hyatt last Monday. (Don’t know why he’s focussing on the glass!)
Apologies for my absence. I’ve been head down working on the second draft of my exegesis to a deadline. The deadline was my supervisor going on long service leave until early 2021 and so if I wanted his feedback I had to get the damn thing drafted by mid-July. Phew! I made it.
The novel for my Phd was mostly done before, but I had a sensitivity read by a non-binary person and managed to make some changes while checking over the manuscript. For the purpose of the PhD that novel is done. It’s parked until it’s time to submit and copy edit etc. This means I am now free to try to shop it around. If it sells there will be two versions. The one I’ve parked won’t change and there will be a published version.
I’ve started the ball rolling on selling the novel. I have to mentally prepare for rejections and silence. On the bright side, I have a bit more time to work at a slower pace on the third draft of the exegesis so I’m taking a short break to work on other projects. I’ve been dabbling in family history and that’s so addictive. It’s like a puzzle game. I’ve had to stop now or so I tell myself. And I’m working on a science fiction romance I drafted years ago and I hope to get that into shape for submitting or publishing before I have to get serious with the PhD again. I have a few novels in progress and one I should be drafting but I can’t do it all with a PhD on the boil.
I’ve started the intermittent diet because wow social isolation, iso baking and sitting on my arse! Oh dear. I may not succeed but as I’m getting older, the weight just goes on quickly.
My son has been staying with us and hopefully will be able to return home to China soon. He works and lives there. It has been lovely to have him around and he cooks too so ‘oh dear’.
I’m hoping that y’all are coping okay with the pandemic restrictions. I feel like I don’t have friends anymore. It’s weird. There’s Facebook and stuff but it still feels distant and strange. The restrictions in Canberra are easing but with the outbreak in Victoria and New South Wales I can’t help but be fearful and careful about exposure. It is also gut wrenching when I come up against the Covid-19 conspiracy stuff. I’ll just not start on that.
I chose not to participate in the New Zealand World con, mostly because I was head down and busy but I anticipated stress so bowed out. I was a member but I didn’t attend. I’m sad for New Zealand. What a blow!
This time last year I was at David Farland’s fantasy workshop in Dublin the week before Worldcon.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with a picture of this bread I made. I sort of made up the recipe and the method. I used a biga (preferment) but only a part day but man did it get big. Bigger than my head.
I have graduated from jaw pain from clenching my teeth.
I’ve gotten over the stress induced weird diet thing, where I couldn’t stomach the thought of meat.
I’m a little less anxious than I was and sleeping better.
I have come to an understanding with myself that I’ll be home for the foreseeable future and that I probably won’t get to campus again, except maybe with a mask and to clean out my desk. I have developed some better habits for staying at home. I’ve progressed to reading novels until my eyes feel like they will fall out of my head.
I have finally sorted out the big mess I made when I was warping the loom and and now in a happy space. Evidence here.
I think I have improved with my smocking project and didn’t unpick it all last time (yesterday).
I am giving away food I bake and prepare. The gyoza I made were amazing and we were able to deliver some to a friend. Well my partner did.
I also made sourdough pizza, which we ate and did not give away (although I have some dough frozen). I also made peanut butter and choc chip cookies but they are all gone.
I have received the feedback on my draft (cough) exegesis and have printed it out! Amazing as I had to use my own printer and that hurt me…I get free printing on campus. I will be going through the comments (all bad) and then I’ll start working on the next draft. At least I have a suggested structure to help. I mean it is all there, but it’s buried in the detail or too much information and well…you know at wet mess.
It’s my birthday on Tuesday. A big one, but the restaurant is cancelled and I’ll be hanging with friends on Zoom and I’m having a social distanced high tea with my daughter tomorrow. This is a picture of me a week out from my 60th.
Current status treading water on my life.
And signing off I will say that I feel for you out there in countries with lots of community transmission, high death rates and hospitalisations and economic downturn.
This problem has been on my mind. Some of my books are in Australian/British English and some, like the Dragon Wine series, are in USA English. This means choosing between ‘arse’ and ‘ass’.
For Dragon Wine I have changed ‘Dragon’s Holy Arse’ to ‘Dragon’s Holy Ass’ but it jars to my ear.
That got me thinking about the music of the two words. Arse has a long drawn out ar sound where ass is shorter and harder.
Stupid arse or stupid ass? Stupid arse sounds posh to me, where as stupid ass just sounds insulting.
This brings to mind people who are not native English speakers swearing. It sounds weird. It would take a lot of practice to get it right. I’ve dated a lot of foreigners and they couldn’t swear (or cuss) to save their lives…in English, that is. It would just make me laugh. But in their native tongue though they could swear but it wouldn’t really register to me. I could acknowledge that they swore but not feel the impact of it.
I recall talking about this while trying to swear in Italian. And it was brought home to me just how insulting an Italian would feel on hearing that particular word. I guess being sworn at in your own language is more impactful.
Anyway that does not entirely solve the argument between ‘arse’ and ‘ass’. Arse is my native swear word but because USA English is very much part of our own popular culture we know and respect ‘ass’. Lol. Hey I respect your ass!
But for me it’s the music of arse that really works for me. ‘Nice arse’ sounds nicer to my ear than ‘nice ass’.
This bit of frivolity was brought to you by burn out. I have not posted in a while as I’ve been teaching. I’ve had a few topics on my mind but this one won the day.
I’ve been trying to get Beneath the Floating City into print. With generous help from friends I have lodged the files with Createspace. However, Createspace threw a spanner in the works and I haven’t been able to proof the file until I can prove I own the copyright of my stories. I understand the precautions, I really do. But I was kinda in hurry because post takes ages from the USA when you can’t afford express international etc. So the odds of the book being here in time for the awards is fast disappearing. Oh well.
I received my first pay from tutoring. A small amount this pay, but it paid me back for the uni fees I had to pay out last week. Next pay I have probably already spent too. Just a whiff of money and I go cray cray!
My draft of Sihe continues. I was going to say apace but nah that’s not true. Although I hope to get the MS to 60,000 words today. I’ve skipped ahead and am writing the ending without having written the crisis. It seemed like a good idea because the ending was pushing against my mind and so on.
Today I have to work on the analysis of my surveys. We have transferred the responses to the Uni’s IBM SPSS program. That means a lot of manual stuff from me to get the files ready for showing me stuff. So I’ll do that today. I had to wait to get the program installed on this Mac and the Mac randomly freezes still. I have no idea but I’m over it. It’s been so unreliable. Different things get blamed. The updates. The Endnote. I have PC native files. Or something else goes bang. Picture me rolling my eyes and being very unimpressed.
I’ve been reading up for one of the tutorials I’m doing. So far in the last few weeks I’ve read, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan and I’m currently reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick (very different from Blade Runner). I’ve also started on American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I have more books to read, but I feel a lot calmer now about teaching. None of this reading is for my PhD, just for teaching.
Teaching is a bit distracting. I hope I calm down a bit. Lots of little things to do and being across things. You get paid like an hour to prepare which is nice but it takes a lot more. I’m also delivering a lecture next week and that took ages, like 6-8 hours to prepare. Although money is good to have, it will all get spent. Hopefully I will do something useful with the money like pay for the cat run.
I have stockpiled book earnings to pay for edits of Skyfire and Moonfall.
I saw Black Panther last night and had nice cosy dreams about Chadwick Boseman. I have no idea what they were but they were pleasant. The movie didn’t finish until after midnight so no time to wind down. I loved so many things about that movie. I wished that Wakanda was a true place. It’s a really lovely fantasy. I also liked the Africaness of the place and the movie was so owned by African -descent peoples. I also loved the women. Proud, strong, capable women. All of them were my favourites. Just awesome. Michael B Jordan was really something to see as the villain, great performance and well as Winston Duke-totally cool. Well done Ryan Coogler. Awesome movie. I hope to see many more like this. I’m also hanging out big time for Avengers Infinity Wars that I hope Matthew takes me to see for my birthday in the premium lounge (hint! hint!)
In other Dweebish news, Star Trek Discovery kept me thrilled to the end. Some great performances and favourite roles and great writing in places. I loved that I was shocked and awed and kept on the seat of my pants. My youngest daughter checked online and apparently we will see more of Lorca and Ash Tyler in the next series which doesn’t drop until 2019!
I’ve also started on Altered Carbon. It helped that I finished the audio book. There’s a lot of action in the second half of the novel that will probably be better visually. It’s the second time I’ve seen Purefoy’s member and I was equally stunned and impressed as I was when he played Mark Anthony in Rome.
The Good Place is really a good mood lifter and I started on IT Crowd which I had heard of but had never binged watched before.
I’ve run out of detective series (not really) but I binged watched Wallander-loved it. Finished Shetland (first two seasons), watch River twice. Finished Whitechapel ages ago. I found Luther excellent but way too intense for me. I may go back to it. I had tapped out the Hinterland series on Netflix but I’m hoping for more. With the second season of The Crown consumed and Victoria I need more recommends.
Anyway, back to the novel. I’ve been procrastinating enough.
We can call them goals for want of a better word but goals seem like a things that make you feel down if you don’t meet them. Whereas, plans are things that can change and can be added to and things can be taken away. I think plans are more strategic.
First and foremost is my Ph.D.This is my last full year run at things. I have to analyse my data and do that soon, because I’m delivering a paper on my analysis in March in Indiana,USA.
I have to finish my Ph.D. novel, Sihe. By finish I mean finish the draft, have it beta read by people, revise it and polish it, get my supervisor to read it and take up my supervisor’s comments and polish it again, again.
I also have to draft my exegesis. This relies mainly on the analysis of the two surveys that I undertook of readers and writers of romance fiction. That kind of sounds easy and kind of doesn’t. Time will tell. I’ve done my literature review but I have to keep it current until I submit. The literature review is like a chapter of my exegesis.
I am also delivering two to three papers at academic conferences in 2018. I haven’t written them yet. I also need to get a couple of academic journal articles written and published.
There are things that I can do if my plans don’t go well. I can switch to part-time study. But that means I won’t finish for another two years or year and a half. I’m not sure I want to keep on doing this. Because just as soon as I started my Ph.D. I wanted you to do other things as well. And even though I don’t have any other job besides the Ph.D. and writing there is only many so many hours in a day. And there’s just not enough hours for me to do everything I want to do. Also, I have a growing list of physical issues that impact on my ability to work (see previous post).
On the personal side, I really want to manage my physical issues better so that I can maximise what I can do without incapacitating myself. At the moment, I’m waiting on a bunch of results from blood tests to make sure that I don’t have some horrible autoimmune disease. Fingers crossed!
I’d like to do some tutoring at University this year. I was offered some opportunities in the second semester in 2017 but because I was in Europe for two months of the semester I couldn’t do it. My trip to Indiana in March is short and in a semester break so if I do get any tutoring I’ll be able to take up the opportunity.
Writing/publishing
My plan is to finish the draft of Moonfall as soon as possible in January. I’m nearly at 35,000 words today and if I keep working at this pace I might achieve that. The first cut of Moonfall should be 80,000 words, maybe a little bit less. I tend to increase my word count when I’m doing my revisions and polishing before sending to beta readers because there are scenes that I have not fully explored and/or atmosphere settings that I’ve missed out. It’s where I really start crafting the story. My aim when drafting is to get the story down and make sure the plot works. This means that in 2018 I will have both Skyfire and Moonfall to revise and edit and publish. I aim to do this in the first half of the year and work around my Ph.D. at the same time. I think it’s doable.
All other new work has to take a back seat to the Ph.D. I’ve got some ideas and I have some previously drafted work that I could revise and polish on the backburner so that there might be new work later in the year. I have a sci-fi romance drafted. I have a Regency romance drafted and I have a two steampunk series that are close. And I have a lot of ideas for more stories in the Silverlands world, the Dragon wine world and in the space pirate world as well a completely new stories and some old stuff that I started but never completed. That all might need to wait until 2019.
Craft
I’d also like to do some craft projects. I’ve got some lots of unfinished craft projects but I’d really like to make a quilt as well is finish off some of those unfinished projects. I’m attending the Jane Austen Festival in April and usually make something for that. I’m almost finished making my Regency corset. And I’ve got a bonnet workshop in January.
Reading and general
I’d also like to get a lot more reading done. Not only romance but in other genres and the academic reading. I’d also like to create time. Ha ha!
I would also like to keep up my social activities and enjoy time with my friends and family. My son is going to pay for me to go to China to visit him in Shanghai. I just have to find an appropriate date.
On the indie publishing side of things I would like to learn more about marketing and book formatting and the industry in general but as said above I can’t really commit to a lot of new work until the Ph.D. is done. Yet a think providing the last two instalments of the Dragon wine series will please fans of that series and that’s very important to me.
House projects include developing a cat run so that Gin, the cat, can get outside. Generally, I’d like to see that we keep our garden in better order. We’ve hired cleaners once a fortnight for inside the house and that has helped a lot and I hope to continue that. We have to be tidier to get the full benefit of the cleaner but I can’t see anything wrong with that. However, Matthew likes a bit of chaos around the house.
Most of all I hope I am resilient enough to cope with what life throws my way this year.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 