#i put revising it on hold mostly because i'm writing like. a real book now

[lowkeyorloki]

Hurts my soul to see SSH isn't praised enough as much as Asis, I get that you're proud of that piece and its a huge part of your life but come on SSH is my favorite of your works and has a very special place in my heart.

oh my gosh anon. you have no idea how much this means to me :')

i actually really love ssh. don't get me wrong - i REALLY need to revise that work and atone for my 19 year old self's grammatical mistakes (i really loved to jump between tenses - i still find myself doing that), but i think it captures the classic loki aesthetic, as well as the beautiful and ugly parts of his character. and, above all else, i really stand by that ending.

the reason ssh doesn't get too much attention and is seldom referenced by me is because the reception to that fic left a really bitter taste in my mouth. if you go to the comments on the last few chapters, you'll see some sentiment with varying degrees of positivity. i got a lot more comments that were a lot stronger than that that i ended up deleting because they were so mean they just weren't productive. ssh also showed up in some tiktoks and tiktok comment sections that were honestly just shitting on the fic. i don't have any ill will towards the content creators, and a few reached out to me to apologize, but some of them literally said to their thousands of followers that they take back everything good they said about ssh because the ending is shit. from a technical standpoint, i agree. the last chapter probably doesn't even break 1k words. but we all know that's not what they're referring to.

i do plan on going over ssh and fixing up the writing and combining chapters to make it flow a bit better overall. i think doing that - which i have begun - will be my last loki project. a sendoff, if you will. that fic really does have a special place in my heart: it was the kickstarter for all these other loki fics. but i feel defensive when it's brought up and i still get cagey about so many people suddenly kind of being rude to me after i spent the pandemic making this fic for free. and not even the free part is really what matters to me - it's that i put so much effort in it and crazed loki fans can't handle any depiction of loki other than UwU poor boy does nothing wrong. i didn't deserve to have my work shit on like that. because the few comments i get now still aren't particularly positive, that narrative has stuck.

sorry to complain/get on a soapbox. what i'm saying is: i hear you, and i almost agree. but the ssh experience was really impacted by weird tiktoks and unnecessarily phrased comments for me. because that's most of the attention it gets, i'm sadly okay to leave it unmentioned.

[chayscribbles]

chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ january 2024

☆ STATISTICS.

projects worked on: The Gemini Heist. also i glanced at Andromeda Rogue but gave up on that real quick

proudest accomplishment: i uhhh drew some really cool gemini heist aus

books read: The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers; The Blighted Stars by Megan E O'Keefe; System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells. i got the first one for christmas and I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH. the other too were really good too.

☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.

hi! i have been very scarce from writeblr lately (and that's probably not gonna change soon) but i am alive and still creating! i mostly drew this month tbh but i did get some writing in, surprisingly!

you may or may not have noticed, but i'm no longer putting my wordcount in these updates. i've realized it's just not a valid metric for me to be measuring my progress. like, just because i haven't written any words in my draft doesn't mean i didn't make progress on my wip in other ways. and it doesn't make sense to use it for things like editing or revising, where words get cut all the time.

in wip news: i'm still reaaaally struggling to edit andromeda rogue, and after tinkering with it a bit at the beginning of the month, i made myself put it aside until february. which is... tomorrow. we'll see how that goes.

in the meantime i got some progress on gemini heist!

more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.

☆ COMMENTS: THE GEMINI HEIST (draft 0)

this has got to be the messiest drafts i've ever written. my first drafts are usually somewhat clean, but this? it's placeholder city in here, i've skipped writing any kind of description, there are plot holes that i only realized existed later but forced myself to ignore for now in favour of moving forward. this is fine.

i'm not going to lie... i still don't have most of the heist figured out. i'm a plantser but i've been pantsing a lot more than planning and it feels like i'm flying blind and i'm gonna crash into a wall at any moment. this is totally fine.

not to mention, a ship i did not expect has emerged and punched me in the face, and since i have little self control, everything is even more messy, especially between these characters, and i have no clue how the hell i'm gonna resolve any of this. everything is fine. (and no, i'm not saying who is involved, but at least [REDACTED] has two hands. sorta.)

i'm having fun, though. that's what matters, right?

☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.

since i haven't really posted any writing in a hot minute, here's a slightly longer, VERY gay excerpt 😏 for context, this is right before the girls are set to crash a coronation party, and Gabi has asked Euna to help with her makeup 😌

“Thank you,” Gabi said, beginning to stand. “It’s not done,” Euna protested, taking her wrist to pull her back down. “I still have to do your lips.” “Oh,” Gabi said, settling back onto the bunk. She squirmed in place. “It’s not that important— I don’t want to take up any more of your time—” “It won’t take long,” Euna promised, taking out a tube of shimmering pink lipstick. She brought her other hand up to Gabi’s face, pausing right before touching her. “May I?” Gabi nodded, her neck bobbing slightly as she swallowed.  Euna gently cupped Gabi’s chin and drew her closer so she could see better, uncapping the tube with her teeth and spitting it out onto the bunk. Gabi sucked in an audible breath as Euna pressed the lipstick against her top lip and carefully smeared colour and glitter from one side to the other. Her hand slowed as it dragged the stick in the opposite direction along Gabi’s bottom lip, coming to a complete stop when she reached the end. For a moment, she stayed frozen in place, holding the lipstick to the corner of Gabi’s mouth, her other palm pressed against Gabi’s warm cheek, feeling her racing pulse at the tips of her fingers.  “Is… is something wrong?” Gabi asked in a whisper, barely moving her lips. Euna quickly withdrew both her hands from Gabi’s face. “No,” she said, groping the covers around her to retrieve the cap. “Just, ah, making sure I’d done it correctly.”

☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to any of them.

general taglist:

@nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @onomatopiya @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation @chazzawrites @bardolatrycore @innocentlymacabre

gemini heist taglist:

@florraisons @akindofmagictoo @cream-and-tea @nicola-writes @memento-morri-writes @antique-symbolism @rose-bookblood @afoolandathief @pepperdee @avi-why @zonnemaagd @chazzawrites @analogued @enchanted-lightning-aes @innocentlymacabre @kahvilahuhut @celestepens @cilly-the-writer @extra-magichours @onomatopiya @outpost51

[jeannereames]

Hello, Dr. Reames! I love your work (and am very excited to read your novels very soon!). I am thinking of doing a phd (not history or classics, but maybe sort of related to Alexander) but I'm scared that I'm not going to have the motivation to go through with the whole thing... Do you ever lose motivation and get discouraged when researching/writing and how do you deal with it? I know that this is completely unrelated to Alexander/ancient history so feel free to ignore it☺

Hi, there! This reply is going to be in 3 parts. First, about my own motivation…

I think everybody (even Alexander!) has periods of feeling discouraged. It’s part of being human. This is especially true when something you put days, weeks, or sometimes *years* of effort into doesn’t work out, or isn’t well-received, or comes back with “revise and resubmit.” Ha.

So, real life recent example:  About a year and a half ago, I finished an article that took me (literally) 5 years to research and write, because it combined research into two different areas, only one of which is my research area. It took a huge amount of reading, and I’d even presented it at a couple of conferences, where I received good feedback. It was supposed to be published in conference proceedings, but that fell through (not my part of it, the entire publication didn’t happen because the editor quit). So I had to shop it around to journals. It went out to three readers, and all three returned it with “Revise (substantially) and resubmit,” + large *additional* bibliography (mostly not in English) in the area not my field. Two of the readers thought my chief point was valid, but needed more support. (The third just flat disagreed with me, but it’s academia; that happens.) But that was after it had been presented 3xs already, and revised after each.

OTOH, I was pretty discouraged. But OTOH, the suggestions and reading lists were helpful. These are blind reviews, so it wasn’t personal. And the entire point of peer review is to help a book or article improve. Lord knows, nobody wants to put out something that will get you laughed at. But after all the time I’d already spent on it, it was still really discouraging as I’d thought it in pretty good shape.

Almost everybody in academia is going to have an article or three turned down, or a book refused, etc. And after a while, it can be really hard to keep trying. And it’s not just in academia.

Do you know how long it took me to sell Dancing with the Lion? 15 years! I got my first serious query from an agent in 1996. (The first words of the novel were written in December of 1988–that’s how old it is.) That agent eventually decided it wasn’t for her. I’ve had a couple others since…same thing. I’ve sent out probably around 500 queries to agents or publishers. In fact, I’d put the book AWAY and started a completely different trilogy (which I’m in the middle of now), because I figured it would only sell later.

Then I happened to read comments about Madeline Miller’s A Song for Achilles written by an English professor and new acquisitions editor at Riptide. She liked it, but there were a couple of things she really didn’t like. And they were the very ways (I thought) my novel was different. So I emailed her. She asked for sample chapters, then the whole thing, and finally, Riptide offered me a contract. They’re not a major press, they’re a Romance publisher primarily, but they were willing to take a chance on my coming-of-age historical, so I grabbed the opportunity. Now the book is out (well, the first half is), and it’s getting pretty decent reviews.

So persistence can pay off.

That said, if someone else had told me that story 10 years ago, I’d have snorted and said (in my mind), “Maybe it did for you. Maybe I’m just a bad writer and I’ll never succeed.” I’d also just been through a divorce and was having trouble selling my house in the housing bust, etc., etc. So a lot of things in my life were pear-shaped at the time, and that can make it really hard to keep trudging.

The “Dark Night of the Soul” is a real thing, and we all go through it.

The only way I get through it, myself, is to remember things in the past that went well, times I succeeded. Plus, I’m just a really stubborn SOB. Ha.

But discouragement is normal, and there will be points in everybody’s life where not just one or two things are going wrong, but it seems as if EVERYthing is going wrong and you’re just a total failure. You have to believe it’ll get better.

Now, part #2, about motivation to complete a degree. It’s a bit like the AA motto: one day at a time. Or really, one semester at a time. One hurdle at a time. When I first got to Penn State, the long, long road ahead made me freak out a little, but Gene Borza (my advisor) told me to take it in bites. And to remember that other people had made it through; I could, as well.

Also, don’t let yourself get thrown by “Imposter’s Syndrome.” This is the feeling that you don’t belong somewhere: in grad school, in a PhD program, in a department (or really, ANY arena). You’re not as good as the others. Minorities, women, and first-generation college students are those most likely to suffer imposter’s syndrome, but it can hit others too, such as the children of academics (I’ll never measure up to mom/dad), etc.

Last, part #3, and this may seem an odd coda to all the above rah-rah cheerleading. But as a (now former) graduate program chair, I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t put out a warning.

Not only is the field of humanities in trouble right now, in the US and Canada, and elsewhere, too, but the entire university system is changing. This latter is especially true in the US, but I hear rumblings from other places. Partly, this owes to the rise of online education. But even more, it’s what I call the “Wal-martization” of the university, where tenure-track lines are being replaced by a bunch of part-time instructors who have to teach 6 classes just to make enough to EAT. “Adjunct” professors, even those with PhDs, are paid a pittance. It’s absolutely immoral and ridiculous.

Universities are turning into profit more than education, with a degree seen as “job training” instead of learning to think critically and exploring Big Questions, which are increasingly viewed as a waste of time. Administration levels are increasingly bloated with deans, assistant deans, supervisory boards, etc. They’re (mostly) not teaching, but their paycheques are high. Tenured faculty positions are being eliminated. Colleges and unis realized that they could turn over a lot of (especially intro and survey) courses to part-time instructors for a *fraction* of what they paid tenured and tenure-track faculty, but still reap high tuition.

When I was finishing up in the ‘90s, I was teaching as an adjunct while writing my dissertation, then for a bit after, as was expected for “teaching experience” before being hired. The phenomenon of the “Visiting Assistant Professor” (or VAP) was *starting* to gain traction, but was still usually just a year or two until these people would find a tenure-track position (VAP is not tenure-track). But now, I know people who’ve been VAPping for YEARS. And some just give up. Also, adjuncting like what I was doing has gone from “teaching experience for a real job” into “the only lane for employment” for a lot of PhD (and some MA) graduates. Especially women PhDs get caught in that trap.

These are the realities of where we are right  now.

And THE MOST USELESS DEGREE ON THE PLANET is a PhD in the humanities. I say that as one who holds it. With a few exceptions, a humanities PhD prepares you for pretty much one job: being a professor. And those jobs are winking out of existence with frightening speed. This is a change that has accelerated over the last 10 years, and especially over the last 5. We’re turning out PhDs with no available positions. Museum studies, Classics, archaeology, philosophy are in even worse shape. SOME history PhDs are more popular. This year, H-Net has a bunch of Latin American positions open, for instance.

An MA in history (or related) is still useful. There are certain jobs that like them, ranging from state jobs like the Park Service to the FBI and CIA.

But a PhD? Think loooooong and hard before investing that time and money. This is not a matter of *you* not being able to do the work to get one. It’s a matter of the university system as we’ve known it crumbling away under our very feet. I have no idea what the American university will look like in 10 years. And once you have a PhD, it educates you out of most other jobs.

So that’s the unfortunate bad news. And I’d be a very irresponsible advisor if I didn’t tell you the truth. IME, people who really want a PhD will ignore me and go after it anyway. But at least you’ll go in with your eyes open.