So, wow.

[truepenny]

There are a lot of y'all reading this blog.

I'm figuring it's time for one of those periodic getting-to-know-you posts. So if you'd like to introduce yourself, or you'd like to ask a question (any question, although I reserve the right not to answer), here's a superlative spot to do it at.

This is not a pressure-y kind of thing. Only an invitation.

And I'll reiterate a couple of things:

1. I almost never add people reciprocally. Because, well, I have 25 people on my reading list right now, and that's almost too many. There are many people whom I like and admire whose blogs I don't read. Apparently, I just need that processing power for something else.

2. I only reply to comments if I actually have something to say. However, I read all comments, and I am always, always grateful for them. (N.b., excluding the occasional and inevitable troll.) I forget to say that a lot, because sometimes I'm kind of a rotten excuse for a human being. But I'm definitely reading and interested.

So here. The lines are open and you're on the air.

Comments

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

Introduction bit: I found you through reading someone else's friendslist, and only /then/ picked up your books (to my great enjoyment). Ah, the internet, strangest of marketing tools. I myself am about to be a graduate student, in either Religion or History depending on who gives me the better offer, and will work on diplomacy and religion in the medieval eastern Mediterranean regardless. Also sometimes I write early modern fantasy. I'm working up to the whole 'get in line to be rejected by magazines' bit. Short stories r hard, etc.

Question bit: Did you ever think of being a "serious" -- i.e. professional -- academic? How did that desire -- if it existed at all! -- interact with your writing?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ai-yi-yi.

The very short answer is, yes, I did.

The longer answer goes something like this: I was very good at school. I mean, terrifyingly good. So the natural progression from high school to B.A. to M.A. to Ph.D. bopped along like there was never any other way it could be. Published an article, etc. etc. However, comma, about the time I passed prelims (otherwise known as comps or quals depending on the jargon of one's program), I came to a staggeringly unpleasant realization, namely that I did not enjoy teaching, and more or less as a corollary, I wasn't very good at it.

Now, I don't think I was a bad teacher. But I have friends who are gifted, passionate, brilliant teachers, friends who care about their teaching deeply, and I just wasn't like them. It wasn't what I wanted to do.

And about that same time, I'd gotten an agent, started going to cons, started trying to sell short stories.

So I re-evaluated my life (I'm pained to admit that, yes, I was 25, right on schedule for the trendy "quarter-life crisis"), decided to finish the Ph.D.--because I was already so damn close and because I am nothing if not obstinate like a pig--and stopped teaching. Evaluation of my subsequent mood and demeanor suggested that this was in fact the right thing to do.

I ended up teaching again for a semester in the fall of 2005 (the department had an emergency), and while that was a much more positive experience in general (grad students, especially TAs? are in a craptastic position as far as trying to set boundaries goes), it didn't change my mind.

I was writing fiction the whole time (mostly working on Mélusine and The Virtu, as it happens), and the fact that the academic writing didn't kill the fiction writing (as the academic reading did kill the fiction (and nonfiction) reading for quite some time) stands as proof that the writing was the real thing.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

Forgive me for the awkward phrasing, but that's an absolutely fascinating story. I'm not sure whether I should say that I'm sorry that academia didn't work out for you, or congratulate you on figuring out what did (and so successfully, too!)

My full sympathies, as well, on the sense of being almost foreordained on the path through B.A.-M.A.-Ph.D. I've started getting the kind of offers and attention that apparently mean that I'm good at this, and it's just slightly freaky. I've yet to teach, myself. We'll see, I assume.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, also? Your research sounds way cool.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

*grins!* Thank you. I like to think it is, but y'know academics and our pet fields.