Publishing again.

http://www.marginalia.co.uk/journal/06cambridge/

I've got an article and a review in the latest Marginalia. It is the 2006 Cambridge year book so all the articles are MPhil essays recommended by faculty. Mine is the one I was working on a year ago to be handed in at the beginning of January.

Online journals have a funny status in academia. Some people say they wouldn't have them on their CV. But I'm quite happy to have published a few articles online. At this stage in my career (where I'm not sure I've got a 'c' let alone an 'areer') it's good to get things to a wider audience.

Anyway, click the link and it'll make the Marginalia website look *really* popular!!

LJ and blog

Since I started LJing, this blog has ground to a resounding halt. I think LJ has won out because of the community aspect: I have friends on LJ who read and comment on my posts just as I read and comment on their post.

However, I needed my username for Blogger to be able to post on another site and realised I should update it, not least because the previous entry contains good news which is now out-of-date. The novel I was so positive about in February has recently been the cause of much wailing and gnashing of teeth. My redrafting has not achieved what the agent wanted and so I'm left wondering what to do next. I'm going to allow a few weeks of space between the email which broke this news to me and the impulse to tear into the manuscript and rewrite. I think I still believe in the novel... it's just not quite ready yet.

Things happen

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of things happening. My novel found itself an agent, lovely Karolina at ICM. It all happened so quickly and easily that it was quite unbelievable; after all, we're constantly told how difficult it is to find an agent and to get the publishing process started. Karolina had some interesting ideas about developing the narrative, so I wrote another 15ooo words in 6 days last week and kept on waking up at 3.30 am with a thought about structure or an idea for the beginning.
It was quite hard to concentrate on the MPhil stuff. But I wasn't the only one with a wandering mind. My best friend (Ruth) has become affianced after her boyfriend proposed on 'pretend Valentine's day'!! She now has a platinum and diamond distraction weighing down her left hand...
But yesterday, we found out that we both got distinctions for our first coursework essays. Being slightly neurotic perfectionists, we were worried we hadn't done well enough, that our distinctions were only borderline. Then some of our other friends told us to get a life!
On the medical front, I've been having a few worries waiting for the tests to come through from the QE. I now have a date for the Echo and the possibility that the exercise test might be on the same day. The nadir of that worry was when the consultant's secretary told me that 'most of our patients are in and out of A & E while waiting' ... super. Something's rotten in the state of cardiology when there isn't enough money to get people seen before they clock up expensive visits to other parts of the NHS.

Voices

A friend recently asked the question 'do you hear the voice of narration when you read?'

Generally I don't: I think I go too quickly for the words to be formed fully by a voice. But I have noticed that when reading the work of someone I know (whether from real life or from the radio!), I can hear their voice in the narrative. In fiction, this has been most profound when reading novels by Melvyn Bragg whose voice is so distinctive on radio 4, and by Caron Freeborn, whom I know well. Caron's narrative technique is particularly concerned with the recreation of idiom so perhaps consciousness of sound is not surprising when reading her work.

Today I'm reading some literary criticism by a man who used to be professor of Medieval and Renaissance lit here so I remember his voice from lectures. It feels as though he is talking about Gower to me himself!

PS I am aware of the bus effect with my blog: you wait a month for a post to arrive... then two come at once :-)

Tea leaves

I just had a tea leaf incident: my special tea boule opened as I pulled it out of my mug... lapsang leaves every where. But I'm quite proud of myself: I managed a rescue effort involving another tea strainer, two more cups and a sink. Tea equilibrium was thus restored.

You can't please all of the people...

so, rather stupidly, I asked two different professors for advice on my prototype PhD proposal. Unfortunately their comments are diametrically opposed ("concentrate on central texts" "choose something obscure rather than a central text which has been overdone" etc etc). Now I'm just confused, wondering perhaps whether my idea was any good in the first place. At least I now know that there is no point writing a proposal to aim to please a panel of people: there will never be unanimity.

Happy New Year!

2006 has arrived. It came in quietly for me, at home revising some writing that I've been doing. With it has come the pressure of a couple of deadlines: the first (on 16th Jan) is for my PhD proposal; the second (the following day) is for my first coursework essay for the MPhil.

The essay seems to be going OK, but with the week I'll be spending in Michigan, I don't have much time to work on it before it is due in. So tomorrow I'll be in the UL checking a few words in the obscure dictionaries in the Reading Room. Top of the list are 'testamentum' and 'bereth' from the Medieval Latin and Hebrew dictionaries, which are apparently all on one wall to the left of the room, so I'll have to retreat there for most of the morning....

The proposal needs a different kind of work. I've got something written, which two of my supervisors have looked at, and criticised, and now... I need to reconcile what they have said with my ideas, and try to figure out what my ideas actually are. Ugh.

So it'll be a busy few days before I set off for Heathrow to visit Katie in Michigan.

One More Sleep!

It's Christmas eve, so we've been for our annual horribly early trip to M&S to get turkey and 'things' for the meat eaters. This year the M&S 7.30 opening time in Solihull was trumped by the 6am start at Sainsbury's Marshall Lake. So we set off just after 6 to get such things as carrots and olives, came home to put those away, and then joined the madding crowd in Poplar Way.

Now the house is filled with church members who have come for coffee and mince pies. So I'm hiding in the study, retreating into the safety of my blog.

Even with my bleary eyes, and the prospect of a long day (singing solos at the crib service at Solihull at 3, and the Shirley midnight communion), I'm still over excited because it's just one more sleep!!!

Wow!

I've actually figured out how to make a post on this blog at home. I'm at a bit of a loose end because of my 'cleaner in the house' guilt. At college, I always go out on the morning when the bedder does our rooms, because I hate that lazy feeling of having someone tidy up for you.

Yesterday I made over 60 mince pies for the 'open house' tomorrow. That's where I put on my domestic goddess apron. Because I make my own (suet free) mincemeat and my own pastry. I could be quite smug about it if I wanted to. But I won't. Honest.

There are other things that I'm not entitled to be smug about. I wrote most of my novel for NaNoWriMo in November, but haven't been disciplined enough to finish off the final few chapters yet this month. I progressed a bit further yesterday, but I keep on distracting myself with the whole present wrapping and festive cheerfulness thing.

I even went out carol singing on Weds, with a group from Solihull Methodist church. We had NCH carol sheets, new this year, which had not been proofread. This meant that the inhabitants of the quiet suburban streets we visited learnt, for example, that Christ was 'Born himself a woman'. Hmmm. Adds a whole new aspect to the dual nature of Christ...

I *am* a princess

Well I had a princess moment in Borders this morning. I'd ordered a grande Earl Grey tea (with just one tea bag please: have you ever had two bags in a single cup bleurgh), and after paying, I asked for some soya milk to go in the tea. The girl behind the counter got it but proceeded to tell me that she would let me off from paying for it this time because she had already rung up the transaction.
Now I know that you don't have to pay for soya milk in tea; it only costs extra when it's the basis of the whole drink (as in a cappuccino or a latte). So I told her so. And she told me I was wrong. Which I wasn't. So I told her I wasn't. And it nearly turned into a contretemps.
It left me feeling a bit battered and bruised. I should know better than to enter into debate with shop assistants at this time of year: I've had Christmas jobs in shops and the last thing you want is for people to tell you that, actually, they know the rules of your organisation better than you do.
But I did know better and I can't bear being told that I'm wrong!

What is she trying to say?

My Christmas present from Ruth...
(in case you can't read it, the words say 'I'm a princess')

Time passing

I posted the other day about the strange necessity of summing up a year in a Christmas card: how can we convey the ways in which time has changed us?
This morning I've been rereading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and found the following line, which expresses just what I have been feeling:
'A yere yernes ful yerne, and yeldes never lyke;
The forme to the fynisment foldes ful selden.' (SGGK 498-99)
The Everyman edition translates it thus: 'A year passes very quickly, and never gives back the same; the beginning is very seldom like the end.'
I couldn't (and didn't) say it better myself!

Hooray!

I posted all my cards this morning, and two parcels to friends who live far away so I'm feeling extremely virtuous. Trouble is that all these Christmas preparations are making it hard to concentrate on Lee Paterson's "What Man Artow": Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee. I'd much rather plan out the presents I'm going to give to my family.

525600 minutes

As the cast ask in Rent, how do you measure a year?
I haven't done one of those infamous round robin letters, but I am putting little notes in my cards as I write them. Most of the cards are quite small, forcing me to encapsulate an entire 12 months into a couple of sentences. Do I simply say what I'm doing now ("I've started an MPhil in Medieval Literature")? Should I mention my graduation? Or is it impossible that any such message could really convey the ups and downs of the past year: the friendships made and those that have slipped away; the anxieties and the excitements. There are highlights in books I've read, films I've watched and plays I have seen. In fact this Saturday's performance of Canterbury Tales will probably be something else that I'll remember as part of 2005.
I suppose it is inescapable that twelve months or 525600 seconds will change us, and that is something that can only be expressed in some form of contact more personal than a simple message in a Christmas card.

Christmas *is* coming

I bought a couple of cheap Christmas CDs this morning so I can write my cards now! Actual work will have to wait...

My Mini Christmas

Christmas is coming...

So it's been months (again) since my last post. Now I'm sitting in a warm room in a very cold Cambridge, feeling vaguely Christmassy (due to the pile of Christmas cards next to me that I need to write) but not properly there yet. That's really because I'm still here, and still working. As an undergrad, I was able to go home at the very beginning of December, and get into the swing of yuletide merriment through little rituals like making my own mincemeat or listening to Christmas music.
I tried to write my cards last night. But couldn't. Not without a Christmas album on the CD player. And preferably the AES Tring/Royal Philharmonic Christmas album as well. I have no Christmas CDs here, and no DVDs to play while I write cards and wrap presents. So it just doesn't feel right.
Instead I'm filling my time with 'my' manuscript (SJC G.25), a coursework essay, a PhD proposal, a presentation on Melibee, a presentation on the Vernon manuscript and, as perfect procrastination, updating my website and writing this blog.
Oh. And I did do my laundry this morning as well...

about funding

It's hard to become an academic in the UK. There are plenty of excellent postgraduate courses around. But for arts and humanities subjects, the question is not whether one has been accepted onto a course but whether one can get funding. The Arts and Humanities Research Council can fund only a quarter of the applications it receives. So for me, and for many of my friends, progression to the next stage of an academic career depends not upon ability but upon money.
Of course one could argue that the AHRC provide a filter for ability. However experience has shown me just how random the allocation can be. Students with firsts are turned down; others with 2.1s receive money.
I admit that my perspective on this is tinged with the bitterness of rejection. And I'm lucky because I've been able to get money together for my MPhil this year. But my dream of continuing to work at Cambridge for my PhD next year seems very distant when the pot of money is so limited.
In the USA, a place at graduate school is usually fully funded. So I've put in applications to some American colleges. The programmes are excellent there, but I admit that I would not have considered applying overseas were it not for the fact that I may find myself in the position of being unable to pay for a PhD in the UK.

borders

Tomorrow the English Faculty holds its induction for new graduate students. So life as a grad. student will get under way. Thursday even promises actual classes!
In the midst of all this newness, it was refreshing to meet up with two friends today. I'd not seen either since before graduation. In their company, I began to feel more like me. It's odd really: self definition relies so much on other people. Alone, it's easy to lose grasp of what 'me-ness' essentially is.
In Borders, sitting once again with a Starbucks mug in my hand, laughing at an anecdote, the months since July began to dissolve away and I *belonged* again here.

Out of hibernation

Exams took over... then plans for graduation... then I was at home and not using this computer. So my blog has been static for over 4 months.
But I'm back in Cam now, so there's no more excuse for silence. This week I'll start my MPhil in medieval lit. I suppose that makes me a grown up graduate student. Hmmm.