Things Change

It's been a while since I posted anything on here. I apologise for that - I know you must all be waiting with bated breath... Well, perhaps not, but I apologise nonetheless.

There have been quite a few changes in my life in the last few months. Perhaps the most fundamental of these was that my grandmother died at the end of February. Long-time readers of this blog will recall our stresses moving her from her home to sheltered accommodation to one residential home and, finally, to another. She settled there at least, and the staff were brilliant. When the end came, that plucky old lady survived for a week without food or water, just lying there in her bed listening to Radio 3. She slipped away with one of her best friends by her side and, honestly, it was time. I owe a lot to that little old lady, I really do. I wouldn't have my MA or my PhD if it wasn't for her support, and one of my most vivid memories of recent years is telling her I was now 'Dr Lucy Brown'. That expression of delight will stay with me forever.

Along with Grandma, other things have changed. While I'm still interested in pursuing an academic career at some point, I've come to accept that I'm not ready for that. I need to concentrate on staying healthy and looking after myself. I'm not the first to conclude that academia isn't conducive to that! So what am I doing instead? Well, I've turbo-charged the freelance work I was doing before into something akin to a proper job - with caveats.

I've acquired several ongoing clients who are currently bringing me in a steady income. However, I'm not actively touting for extra work right now. I'm in the very fortunate situation of not needing to bring in a living wage, thanks to living with my father and therefore not having those pesky bills that everyone else has to deal with. This gives me the opportunity to keep my freelance workload manageable and focus on other things as well.

Top of this list is, naturally, my fiction. Expect an update on my projected timetables over the next few weeks but I'm cracking on with the 12 (!) novel drafts in various stages of completion and rewriting that I've got in the bank. They're not going anywhere till I'm happy with them and, fortunately, the freelance work gives me the chance to continue working on them properly.

I'm on a good path at the moment and there are other things in the pipeline too. Let's see how it plays out, shall we?

Some Tentative Goals

So, here we are, six weeks into 2016 and I'm finally getting some goals sorted in my head. Things are still bumpy but I'm feeling ever-so-slightly better. At least I've got my motivation back, even if I've accepted that I need to stop pushing myself quite so hard and give in to the frequent necessity to burrow away and hide. Fortunately, I've mastered the art of relaxation. Way back before Christmas I got a new bed and reorganised my room. It's now much more comfortable and devoid of 'proper' work. I sit up there listening to music and watching my water-effect speakers, colouring, reading and writing fan fic. It's a little retreat and I'm building something of a postcard collection on the walls - John Atkinson Grimshaw and Rita Hayworth - brilliant bedfellows.

These are tentative goals centred on a couple of areas of my life that I have control over. As things stand, I have a trickle of money coming in from freelance writing and tutoring work. It's not a lot but enough to cover my meagre expenses and ensure I can still visit Create for my afternoons of writing. I need to work on my long-term plan but, really, thinking along those lines was proving unhelpful so, for the time being, short-term goals are best.

• 'Max' Fourth Draft - I've had fun and games with this one in the last few months (see here and here) but I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It knows what it's doing and my aim is to finish the fourth draft by the end of February. It's currently at 43,046 words and I've got clear plans for the rest of the draft. It's half-editing and half-rewriting huge chunks but I'm confident I can make a huge dent in that in the next three weeks. 
• 'Danni' Seventh Draft - I stopped mid-draft last year, having done most of the difficult rewriting but I'd gotten bogged down with the close editing. This one's at 54,342 words and it's reasonable to say I could complete it by the end of March. 
• Other Novel Drafts - There are nine of these in various stages of rewriting. I listed them comprehensively last July when I was in a better frame of mind and I think the order of priority probably still sticks. If you add in my aborted NaNo project, 'Jess', then that's actually ten and that's a bit scarier. Optimistically, I'd like to work on four of them this year - 'Liz' has a complete plan and needs the second draft completing, 'Izzy' and 'Vic' need the second drafts planning and writing and 'Kathy' is a fragment of a first draft that needs rewriting in first person and completing. We'll see. If I can keep myself in the writing zone then anything's possible.
• Short Stories - I didn't submit any short stories in the last three months of 2015. I've already taken steps to remedy this and submitted three in January whilst devoting more time to my short story writing, rewriting and editing processes. I've got a little notebook that lists which stories are at what stage - 'Ready', 'Final Touches', 'Line Edits', 'Rewriting in Progress', 'To Rewrite' and 'Unsure'. Currently, I've got four that are ready to submit and three more that are nearly there. It's time to go through my list of magazines and competitions and find some appropriate venues and, if there aren't any right now, they'll pop up eventually. I'm not putting a figure on the number of stories I want to submit or write but I do want the list to be moving. 
• Academic Work - Now, this is where I'm completely at sea. I'm deliberately not attending conferences this year as I just can't do it and my academic work's stalled somewhat. I've got one half-written paper, plans for several others and I wanted to rewrite and edit two chapters of my thesis to submit to journals. So what happened? Well, my anxiety kicked in. The fact that it's a year ago this week that I submitted my thesis isn't helping, nor is the fact that my certificate arrived in the post this week. I couldn't make it to graduation because of, yep, anxiety so it doesn't really feel as though I've achieved anything. Actually, it feels like a colossal waste of a chunk of my life right now. I have no idea what happens next with my academic work but the frustrating thing is that I still have ideas for papers and the desire to research. I'm a contradiction.

Anyway, with a bit of luck I'll manage to pull at least some of this off. I nabbed myself a cheap gym membership to get me out of the house and filled a playlist full of cheesy pop like Steps, SClub7 and Boyzone to get me through it. About a third of the songs on there are by The Nolans (and, as I'm typing this my iPod's thrown their 'Song Sung Blue' at me from over 8300+ choices) so at least I can have some fun whilst exercising. There's something especially amusing about listening to 'Don't Make Waves' whilst on the rowing machine - or is that just me? 

Big Week Ahead

I've been pretty absent from this corner of the internet for the last few months. There's a practical reason for that - it's difficult to review books or classic films when you can't find time to read and watch them. That epic reading challenges list I decided to undertake this year is taking a hammering, though I'm hopeful that I can catch up when things settle down. I'm due a lull, you see.

This week is pretty important in the grand scheme of things. I have my viva on Friday. And I'm just going to leave that there, because otherwise I may start flapping again. Judy and Fred say no.

So, what else is going on? Well, I've been officially nominated as the Yorkshire First candidate for the Wakefield North council ward. Campaigning is enjoyable yet time-consuming and I just hope I don't disgrace myself on the ballot paper on May 7th. On the work side of things, I've mainly been fire-fighting. I feel like I'm playing a lengthy game of Whac-A-Mole. Viva prep: bam! Political leafleting: bam! Article research and writing: bam! Short story work: bam! Everything begins to calm down after the election. That, however, brings its own set of problems. I think I prefer playing Whac-A-Mole to be honest.

It will be good to return to novel work. I've had to set my plans aside to focus on the things that have popped up in the meantime, but I miss those drafts. Hopefully I can come back to them refreshed and make some headway.

For now, though, I've got to get through this week. I've got everything crossed...

"Maybe I can do - don't laugh - good,

Maybe I can do - don't laugh - well,

Maybe you could be - who knows - proud,

All right so laugh...but not too loud..."

A Fresh Approach

Now that I'm in that scary limbo between thesis submission and viva I decided that a little shake up of my daily plans was in order. I've just been muddling through for the last year or so, trying to do everything all at once and getting snowed under with it all. It was only when I allowed myself the novelty of a weekend off that I realised there are better ways to split my time for the moment. I won't like it, on account of it feeling like I'm doing too little on certain days, but I'll try to stick to it where I can.

So I've got various irons in the fire as far as work goes. I'm researching several academic papers that I think I can set my mind to drafting now the thesis is gone; I've got a steady stream of short stories that I'm writing, rewriting, editing and submitting; I've got two blogs to keep ticking over; I'm hoping to stand for election in the locals in May for Yorkshire First (I forgot to mention that over here, see my other blog for details); and, of course, I have those pesky novels in various stages of rewriting. If I don't break it up a bit then I'm liable to feel more overwhelmed than I do just looking at that list. We're probably looking at something like this:

• An admin day - Time spent on catching up with blog posts, typing up short stories ready for editing, sorting out submissions.
• An academic day - Work on those papers I've got in mind, one at least is ready to be written straight away.
• A short story day - For the actual writing and editing of short stories, which will entail me going to the library because that's definitely an out of office task. 
• Two novel days - To work on whatever novel I'm beavering away on at the time. 
• Evenings - Fan fiction or other relaxing activity that is probably not work.
• Weekends - I can work, if I want, or I can write fan fiction or I can read. I don't have much of a social life but who needs one when you've got books? 

I know myself well enough to say that Mondays will probably be my admin day unless there's something pressing to be done in the other categories. We'll see how it goes, of course, and I might go back to muddling through very quickly. Anyway, it's worth a shot.

Here's Snowdrop with my thesis, to brighten up a dreary Monday...

Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey

Before Christmas I received my copy of Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey edited by James Leggott and Julie Anne Taddeo. True to form, I haven't yet managed to dip into the rest of the collection, though expect a review of some sort when I eventually get time to enjoy it. My essay is in the third section, entitled "Homosexual Lives: Representation and Reinterpretation in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey" which examines the characters of Alfred Harris in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton's Thomas Barrow.

Part I: Approaches to the Costume Drama

1. Pageantry and Populism, Democratization and Dissent: The Forgotten 1970s — Claire Monk

2. History’s Drama: Narrative Space in “Golden Age” British Television Drama — Tom Bragg

3. “It’s not clever, it’s not funny, and it’s not period!”: Costume Comedy and British Television — James Leggott

4. “It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion”: British Costume Drama, Dickens, and Serialization — Marc Napolitano

5. Never-Ending Stories?: The Paradise and the Period Drama Series — Benjamin Poore

6. Epistolarity and Masculinity in Andrew Davies’s Trollope Adaptations — Ellen Moody

7. “What Are We Going to Do with Uncle Arthur?”: Music in the British Serialized Period Drama — Karen Beth Strovas and Scott M Strovas

Part II: The Costume Drama, History, and Heritage

8. British Historical Drama and the Middle Ages — Andrew B. R. Elliott

9. Desacralizing the Icon: Elizabeth I on Television — Sabrina Alcorn Baron

10. “It’s not the navy-we don’t stand back to stand upwards”: The Onedin Line and the Changing Waters of British Maritime Identity — Mark Fryers

11. Good-Bye to All That: Piece of Cake, Danger UXB, and the Second World War — A. Bowdoin Van Riper

12. Upstairs, Downstairs (2010-2012) and Narratives of Domestic and Foreign Appeasement — Giselle Bastin

13. New Developments in Heritage: The Recent Dark Side of Downton “Downer” Abbey — Katherine Byrne

14. Experimentation and Postheritage in Contemporary TV Drama: Parade’s End — Stella Hockenhull

Part III: The Costume Drama, Sexual Politics, and Fandom

15. “Why don’t you take her?”: Rape in the Poldark Narrative — Julie Anne Taddeo

16. The Imaginative Power of Downton Abbey Fan Fiction — Andrea Schmidt

17. This Wonderful Commercial Machine: Gender, Class, and the Pleasures and Spectacle of Shopping in The Paradise and Mr. Selfridge — Andrea Wright

18. Taking a Pregnant Pause: Interrogating the Feminist Potential of Call the Midwife — Louise FitzGerald

19. Homosexual Lives: Representation and Reinterpretation in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey — Lucy Brown

20. Troubled by Violence: Transnational Complexity and the Critique of Masculinity in Ripper Street — Elke Weissmann

Farewell 2014...

Well, if I thought 2013 was bad... Seriously, there has to be a point where things do actually hit rock bottom and I start climbing towards that pinprick of sky discernible miles above. A good post about the crumminess of this year was written in September called 'Taking Stock' and, I have to say, things haven't exactly improved. The only thing that's improved is my ability to roll with the punches a little more. So, on a personal level, 2014 stank but what about those goals I set myself? First are links to a few successes before we get into more failure.

Short Story Publication - 'To Catch a Fly'

Short Story Publication - 'Aldgate Echoes'

A Wakefield View of Westminster - Available Now

1. 2014 is, barring catastrophe, thesis submission year. It's been a long time coming and, I have to admit, the light at the end of the tunnel is frightening. Completion will bring its own set of problems but if I look towards them I'll panic and flee. So, let's just focus on finishing writing, submitting, the viva and... Actually, let's just think about the writing aspect. Everything else is too scary.
Does submitting two weeks into 2015 count as 'catastrophe'? That's the plan anyway and my only excuse is that, the number of times I've despaired of the thesis in the last year, it's a miracle it's getting submitted at all. And that light at the end of the tunnel? Even more petrifying now. 

2. Some more conferences would be a nice idea - either just attending or giving papers, ideally the latter.
I gave papers at three conferences this year, taking me to Oxford, Nottingham and London. A review of those can be found here but, on a personal level, I'm particularly proud of making it through the Nottingham one due to some incredibly difficult anxiety issues on the day. Taking good from bad, that was a triumph for me this year. 

3. I want to work on at least three academic articles/papers this year. Since I have four ideas already, that shouldn't be too difficult...right? We're going with optimism here.
Erm, misplaced optimism. Although the paper I gave at the VPFA in July is still ripe for expanding into a full essay and that will probably be my first academic task once I've submitted my thesis.

4. On the writing side, I don't want to promise too much. 2014 is the year of the thesis, remember. However, if I don't write then I go a bit batty so there will be work. What work? Well, I have eight novel drafts to play with. I want to do full-scale edits on, say, three of them (and I know which three, which is always good). I've already started putting the polished two out into the world. We'll see where that goes this year. A NaNoWriMo draft is on the cards too, along with finishing 'Kathy' (the novel I failed to complete this year) and maybe another draft about something close to my heart. I'm almost certain no one else could write this idea with the truthfulness required. The question is, do I have the courage? We'll see.
Novel-wise, I've added a NaNoWriMo draft to my bank, although I didn't manage to finish 'Kathy'. I've completed two second drafts and I'm partway through a third. The two novels that are in the best condition, having been through five or six drafts each, were refined in 2014 and I'm ready to submit them. I think. Not great but not bad considering.

5. I'm taking part in two reading challenges this year: the Chunkster Challenge and the TBR Challenge. I've picked out the books so just need to read them now. Easy...
I failed at both of these, as I summarised yesterday.

6. I want to continue going to the gym 2-3 times a week, at least until my membership runs out in August.
Until my membership expired, I managed this one. 

7. I've asked for driving lessons as a birthday present in July. Whether this comes off is still undecided but I do need to learn and this year might be the year. Keep off Yorkshire roads in August.
Given my mental state around my birthday, it's probably lucky this one didn't come off.

8. I've been saying for four years I want to learn a little Italian. I don't really know why but it's a deep-seated thing I do intend to do at some point.
Ha. Nope.

My Summer Conferences

I've given papers at three conferences this summer in rather different locations and to different groups of people. The actual conferences themselves have been enjoyable and informative, though my personal difficulties have made them a little more traumatic than I would've preferred.

The first one, at the beginning of June, was the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2014 on the theme of 'Margins'. Of course, this gave me the brilliant excuse to see Oxford - and to see Oxford in the sunshine - which was a very pleasant experience. My paper, entitled 'Reclaiming a Sensation Novelist: Re-evaluating Edmund Yates', was on a 9:00 am panel, probably a good thing because once it was over I started to enjoy the day a little more. The programme was packed full with four sets of four simultaneous panels. The variety was excellent, though I tended to stick to the more Victorian ones. Perhaps my favourite panel was 'Nineteenth-Century Women' that included three outstanding papers from Ruth Ashton (University of Leicester), Teja Pusapati (University of Oxford) and Rebecca Shuttleworth (University of Leicester) who looked at 'fallen'/'new' women, the English Woman's Journal and provincial women in abolitionist discourse respectively. The day was a success overall and I managed to overcome my inherent shyness and hold a few conversations with some interesting people.

Secondly, at the end of June, was 'Recoveries 2014: Reconnections, 1714-1914' held at the University of Nottingham. The paper I gave there was a variation on my Oxford paper, slightly shorter and with more of an emphasis on Yates's novel Black Sheep in relation to Dickens. I was pleased with how it went and got some interesting questions. Once again, there was a nice mix of paper within the time period, my favourites perhaps being Amy Watson (Nottingham Trent University) discussing Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Adam Abraham (University of Oxford) talking about imitations of The Pickwick Papers and Elizabeth Adams (independent) on the collaborative authorship questions surrounding Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The university campus at Nottingham is stunning, a perfect place to discuss literature and culture.

Finally, I attended the 6th annual Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference which was on the theme of 'Victorian Treasures and Trash'. I attended this conference last year and it was brilliant. I'm pleased to say that this one was exactly the same. Spread over three days, there were plenty of papers to hold my attention, dealing with some Victorians I know a fair bit about and some of whom I know absolutely nothing. There's something equally fascinating and terrifying about being in a room with a heap of Victorian experts but they're all lovely people. I didn't get the chance to talk to some people I wanted to but that was partly due to time and partly due to my shyness going into overdrive. I did spend a lot of time hiding but I was there. That's the important thing.

My paper was on the Thursday morning and was a completely different creature to the Oxford and Nottingham papers. While they focused on the collaboration rumours surrounding Edmund Yates, this one delved into textual analysis and comparison to Dickens in a paper called 'Bleak House to Black Sheep: Literacy and the Street Boy'. I was fortunate to be on a panel with Sarah Lill (Northumbria University), whose paper on Edward Lloyd was both fascinating and slotted most neatly in alongside mine. There were too many excellent papers to name and I wouldn't want to leave anybody out so let me just say that it was a brilliant conference with some thought-provoking panels.

All of these conferences have thrown up things I want to now read, whether related to my research interests or not. Thanks to Oxford, I need to get more acquainted with Dickens's Christmas journals, read some Marilynne Robinson and delve - quite carefully - into George Moore. Nottingham taught me that I need to finally read The Pickwick Papers and dramatically improve my knowledge of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 'lesser' novels. The VPFA gave me a lot of potential reading material including stories by Louisa Baldwin, Dr Paull's Theory by A.M. Diehl, Behind the Mask by Louisa May Alcott and a few texts on stammering from the nineteenth century. I may also give The Mill on the Floss another shot.

It's been a busy five weeks but rewarding nonetheless. I only hope my papers proved as interesting to others as theirs did to me.

...Onwards to 2014

2013 was a mixed bag on the work front but a lousy year all told. It was the year things finally got away from me and I can only hope 2014 will be an improvement. I have big things ahead. This post details the things I'd like to do, as well as the things I need to do.

2014 is, barring catastrophe, thesis submission year. It's been a long time coming and, I have to admit, the light at the end of the tunnel is frightening. Completion will bring its own set of problems but if I look towards them I'll panic and flee. So, let's just focus on finishing writing, submitting, the viva and... Actually, let's just think about the writing aspect. Everything else is too scary.

Some more conferences would be a nice idea - either just attending or giving papers, ideally the latter.

I want to work on at least three academic articles/papers this year. Since I have four ideas already, that shouldn't be too difficult...right? We're going with optimism here.

On the writing side, I don't want to promise too much. 2014 is the year of the thesis, remember. However, if I don't write then I go a bit batty so there will be work. What work? Well, I have eight novel drafts to play with. I want to do full-scale edits on, say, three of them (and I know which three, which is always good). I've already started putting the polished two out into the world. We'll see where that goes this year. A NaNoWriMo draft is on the cards too, along with finishing 'Kathy' (the novel I failed to complete this year) and maybe another draft about something close to my heart. I'm almost certain no one else could write this idea with the truthfulness required. The question is, do I have the courage? We'll see.

I'm taking part in two reading challenges this year: the Chunkster Challenge (books over 450 pages, details here) and the TBR Challenge (books languishing on my shelf for over a year unread, details here). I've picked out the books so just need to read them now. Easy...

I want to continue going to the gym 2-3 times a week, at least until my membership runs out in August.

I've asked for driving lessons as a birthday present in July. Whether this comes off is still undecided but I do need to learn and this year might be the year. Keep off Yorkshire roads in August.

I've been saying for four years I want to learn a little Italian. I don't really know why but it's a deep-seated thing I do intend to do at some point.

Work Diary Gone Awry

Back in July, I wrote about the benefits of the work diary I'd been using for a year at that point. I'd found that it made me feel like I'd accomplished something and keeping track of the various projects I was working on allowed me to see which ones I was neglecting. Amusingly, however, in recent weeks it's been the diary itself that has been neglected.

You see, November was a tad hectic. I explained about my other November commitments alongside NaNoWriNo at the end of October and, to be perfectly honest, it all ended up being much worse than I'd anticipated. This year has quite possibly been one of my worst and November was the iceberg that sank me.

My last decent work diary entry was on 31st October: 'Wrote 800 words of Downton essay'. For the next two weeks there are spasmodic references to work accomplished but with no detail - I say I worked on my thesis, for instance, but don't say how many words I got down on paper or whether I was editing or crying over the laptop. Not much of a reference tool for how much work I'd done. Since 14th November I haven't documented a single thing. I think my head was in too much of a whirl.

I was juggling essay edits with my firm determination to complete NaNoWriMo and a thesis chapter that was intent - and still is, I think - on not fitting together properly. In addition, some personal problems finally got the better of me and I spent much of late November in a haze. I woke up, tried to cope with whatever my inbox was throwing at me, worked until my brain gave up then collapsed in a heap. It's possibly no surprise that as soon as my final, final, final essay rewrites were done I succumbed to that monster cold that's been going around. I'm still not completely better now, which is a mark of how hard something had to hit me in order to force me to slow down. There's a lesson in there somewhere but I'm not sure it's one I'm ready to learn.

So what of the work diary? I'll try and pick it up again in January, though I'm not sure if I'll be successful. If I get back to the point where I'm too all over the place to document what I'm doing then I fear 2014 may be as tricky as 2013 has been. And that, dear reader, is a frightening prospect.

PhD Problems

I don't know if this is all in my head but writing the final chapter of my thesis (before going back to rewrite the rest, obviously) is proving to be more difficult than the other three put together. It could be that I'm on a vicious merry-go-round of work at the moment, drifting from thesis writing to essay rewriting to necessary secondary reading to NaNoWriMo writing (which, yes, I know is a choice but it isn't really because I'm as serious about writing as I am about my PhD so...). Whatever's happening, it's true that the structure of this chapter continues to stink and every time I try to fix it another problem crops up.

I suppose that, on a practical level, it's understandable this chapter is giving me trouble. Previous chapters have discussed a limited number of characters - four is my maximum so far and that was more like 'two sets of two'. In this chapter, I'm examining seven. It was eight until yesterday when I blindly crossed one out in a rage (although I think that was the right decision, rage or not). I do have arguments around groups of them but the organisation of the analysis is proving to be rather difficult. Necessarily, I have more contemporary context to include and this is also hampering my progress. What to put where? What to leave out? When to leave the building screaming?

I watched a One Foot in the Grave episode the other day called 'Rearranging the Dust'. Victor and Margaret are waiting to make a will in one of the grimiest waiting rooms known to man (there is bird poo on the inside of the window for a start). It prompts Victor to start thinking not only about dust itself but how similar to humanity dust is when it all comes down to it. I get the feeling that that's what I'm doing with this chapter - rearranging the dust of it and hoping it'll all settle in an appropriate place. Only, I've been trying this for a while now and it hasn't settled. It's actually swirling around me constantly, getting up my nose and giving me wild ideas about hitting the delete button. I have to be very careful with that urge.

I'm hoping that this time I've cracked it and the chapter will finally work but I won't hold my breath. Nor will I think about my personal schedule that's drifting somewhere on the sea of dust, the one that tells me I should be rewriting chapter one right now, not still buggering about with chapter four. Perhaps the key to arguing with all this dust is try and think about it as little as you can.

To Do Before 2014

As you do when you can't sleep, I spent a good proportion of the early hours of this morning cataloguing what I need to do before this year's out and also the things I would like to do. None of these, amazingly, seem rooted in fun. The things I'd like to do are just extensions of the things I need to do. Funny that.

• Final chapter of my thesis - Non-negotiable. This will be done and redrafted several times. 
• Rewriting first chapter of my thesis - I'm pragmatic enough to realise the final work on this may end up being done in January. It's a hefty job and it all depends how long writing the final chapter takes me. More details on my thesis completion schedule can be found here.  
• Research and write a Yates/Dickens article I've got in mind - Pie in the sky this one. I'll only have time to do it if the days are magically extended by fifty percent. 
• Research an article on dead insects in a Yates novel - Don't ask. Also, see above. 
• Corrections on Downton Abbey essay when these come back - Non-negotiable.

• Finish sixth draft of 'Danni' - This is essentially a polishing exercise. I finished the fifth draft earlier this year and now I'm trying to make it perfect. 
• Finish first draft of 'Izzy' - I last wrote about this here. I've been stopping and starting with this one all year and I know where it's going. Just need to get it finished. The first draft's about two-thirds done.
• Finish first draft of 'Kathy' - This is less than 20k in at the moment but I would like to complete it before the year's out. 
• Do NaNoWriMo - I'm determined to participate again, particularly because I have an excellent idea. The characters are roaming in my head and it's going to be set on a cruise ship - plenty of time for research when I go on my own cruise in a few weeks. 

These are only a fraction of the things I'd like to do but I'm trying to be realistic. I've got four other novel manuscripts in need of revision and I did say this would be a year for revision. But the most important thing at the moment is my PhD. It's much easier to write first drafts alongside my thesis because I don't have to worry about every individual word as I do with revisions. 

I feel a little like Eglantine... Anybody have a self-duplication spell?

London and VPFA Conference (Part 2)

So, yesterday I discussed the non-conference aspects of my London trip which can be summed up like this: Merrily We Roll Along, Charles Dickens and spending money I can't afford on books on tea. Now we get down to the reason I was in London in the first place - my first real academic conference where I actually gave a paper.

Me being me, of course, I panicked before I got on the train, when I was on the train, when I went to sleep on Tuesday night and when I was paying homage to Charles Dickens the next morning. I got a little lost, considered staying lost then, finally, pulled myself together and went to the conference. My paper wasn't until Thursday afternoon but there was a lot to keep me distracted until then.

The standard of papers was excellent, as were the plenaries by Dr Elizabeth Hurran and Professor Pamela Gilbert. I particularly enjoyed the guest speaker, Rose Collis, and her talk about 'Grave Matters'. With that and Hurran's paper focusing on anatomy, I came away from the conference a little overwhelmed by dead bodies.

It's difficult to say which of the panels I enjoyed most or, indeed, which individual papers. As I said, the standard was excellent and the topics were diverse. It was unfortunate that my panel 'The Male Body' was up against 'The Female Body (i)' as the papers in there were very interesting. But, really, choosing between panels over the two days was exceedingly difficult - that's a good thing.

And how did my paper ('Androgyny and Disability in Sensation Fiction') go? Well, here are the facts:

• I didn't flee the room
• I got through with minimal pauses and didn't stop for more than a few seconds at a time
• I didn't lose my voice
• The PowerPoint worked
• I answered a couple of questions without panicking

Take that as you will.

There is one other thing to mention about the conference - and that is how amazingly drunk I got on Wednesday night. Something to do with free white wine on an empty stomach. Nevertheless, it calmed me down a little and I started talking...and talking...and talking. I'm assured I didn't say anything I shouldn't have. Ahem! 

Progress For Progress's Sake

Why do I suddenly feel like Dolores Umbridge? I suppose I bear a passing resemblance to her at the moment as I turn bright red and begin to implode with my strength of emotion. I'm also beginning to sound as deranged as her so I'd better explain.

At lunchtime I signed onto the British Periodicals website to locate reviews of a particularly bad novel I'd just finished reading. Part of my ritual; part of my PhD. I read the reviews and left. Then I tried to sign on a few hours later to help me with details of novels by some other novelists - Mrs Hungerford and Mrs Alexander to name but two - however, the site seemed to be taking an age to load. And that's saying something. The site has always been slow but this hit exceptional levels. Then, as the page appeared, I realised why. ProQuest had overhauled the site (along with their entire range of sites) and had given it a brand new gloss and feel.

I know, I know. I can almost hear you rolling your eyes. The fact is, though, that this upgrade has done nothing to the accessibility of the site. It is more difficult to search and find the results you were actually looking for. It takes longer to load (and, boy, is that saying something), the display may be shinier but IT DID NOT NEED TO BE SHINY. It was a functional site before and that was why, although it annoyed me frequently, I enjoyed using it overall. I don't go into it for an 'experience'. I go there to find information that is unavailable elsewhere on the web. I go there because I can't spend day after day in Boston Spa.

It actually reduced me to tears as I sat mumbling incoherently to myself about not being able to find the information I wanted. So, well done, ProQuest. You've made the lives of some researchers that little bit more difficult. And next time you do a drastic and ridiculous overhaul - tell us first. That way we can rescue the lists of saved articles we wanted to read and which we can't now log into because the site's being idiotic.

So what has this progress achieved? Well, it's progress, isn't it? Therefore it must be fine. Excuse me while I find a quiet corner to sob in.