Yet again I am at the office at 4 a.m. trying desperately to muster up the intellectual energy to produce anything resembling a thought that I can then hopefully translate into a coherent sentence. My goal was to have The Book ms ready to send out today (well, actually, my goal was to have it ready to send out a month a go, but so it goes). There are a couple of editors who are, unbelievably to me, willing to consider reviewing my work... if I could only screw up the courage to stare failure in the face and send the damn thing out. I am, yet again, amazed at the time/space of the academy as I sit here avoiding doing the proof reading that will, inevitably, convince me that what I have produced is a load of crap. I am in the Spring semester of my 4th year and so, technically, I should have 2 more years with which to do some work to hopefully get tenure. Not so, grasshopper. What I need is for the book ms to be done now so that I leave enough time for the publishing machine to review it so that I can hopefully have a contract within a year when my file is sent out to the external reviewers. So, when all is said and done, that 6th year is really meaningless in the tenure clock world.
Which all brings me to my favorite pastime lately. The game of "What will I do when I don't get tenure?"
1.Go further in debt by going to a)culinary school or b) law school. Both of these are really attractive to me. I have been teaching at one level or another for the last 15 years and so it feels like a career change wouldn't be such a bad idea. It would just be figuring out how to finance it.
2.Try to get another tenure-track job in academe (which would mean having to move away from Loving Husband since he is also an asst. prof and we all know how that goes)
3.Adjunct (though, can one adjunct at the school that denies one tenure?) This option would also mean selling the house because we could no longer afford the mortgage.
4. Wait tables. Ha ha funny, when I get to wait on the folks who used to be my students and colleagues. Also funny that I made more money when I waited tables during grad school than when I adjuncted...
It is at this point (like now) when I begin my internal (paranoid, obviously self indulgent, hyperbolic, and unfair) whine about the seemingly opaque nature of the book publishing game and how my livelihood is in the hands of editors and reviewers who may reject my work because they happen to be constipated that morning.
Remind me again why we do this?
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6 comments:
OK, I feel like this almost every day. I think that those who succeed are generally the ones who just see writing and sending things out as part of the daily grind. It's as much a persistence game as anything. Then there are the lucky few who are both fearless in their submitting and lucky in the timing of their topics. I think the biggest drawback is for those of us who try to be so meticulous and careful that we avoid writing and sending stuff out and always think of our own work as second-rate crap. I think we see it as so much more than a daily grind that the self-imposed standards get blown out of whack.
Oh, and the reason we got into it is because we loved it. If you can find out a way to love and zstill write it and send it out, then you will have solved the problem.
Thanks for the encouragement, Dr. M! Part of me knows that I need to get over the sense that I have to have something important to say in order to write. Silly me just has a difficult time inhabiting the dual subject position of judging some of the stuff that does get published and then producing stuff that is not better than that which I have judged.
Anyway, I know I am whining a bit and that I just need to get over my silly self and send the dang ms out :)
Dr. M's right on (as always). The publishing game is evil and stupid in a bunch of ways, but you still have to play. (I started blogging after having gone through the stage you're at now, but boy, I could tell you some stories.) You're ahead of the game in realizing that the ms does have to be done now, because it really does take a year - at least - to work your way through the system.
Maybe a little perspective would help. Think of your undergrads, especially the really good ones, who work themselves into nervous breakdowns over 5-page papers because they can't fully develop their ideas the way they want to and they're afraid you'll lose all respect for them. For you a paper like that would be so routine you could toss it off in a day and hardly notice. So look at it that way - the book is still important, it represents your effort and skills and ideas, but sending it out to publishers is just like turning in that paper. It's not the Ultimate Judgment on your Quality and Worthiness as a Human Being; it's just what you do in this business.
Good luck!!!
All y'all are right. All the insecurities and the affirmations are right. There's nothing comfortable about this simultaneity.
My midpoint review is currently in the hands of the college. I'll let you know how it goes, l'r. Solidarity, sister.
Pilgrim: Thanks for the dose of perspective. It is just the right medicine!
Lucyrain: Good luck on the review of your file! Methinks you are the bees knees ( I having no fucking idea what that really means, but it is fun to say and I think you're neat.)
Bolibuckness: I will happily think of myself as a master defecator :) LOL at the footnote idea and, Holy crap! A MWF with a Monday Seminar??!! That truly does suck up the weekends.
What they all said. Oh boy, do I understand this post.
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