Blog Archives
You Mean It’s…2018?!, or Just WHERE the Hell Have I Been?!
I am a little shocked that I haven’t posted here since last New Year’s Day. I mean last New Year’s Day, 2017. A lot has happened…and not much has happened, too. If you want the short of it: I’m doing well, so is my family, and I’m nearly done with grad school. Once I am, I’ll post here more. I hope you’ll forgive my lack of posting (though I’m not entirely sure anyone really cares about these blog posts). And that’s it! See you when I see you.
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All right, that was the short of it. I didn’t do the thing with the ellipses up there to be cute, though. They’re there if anyone doesn’t want to read beyond that brief, general update. If you’re still here, it might get long. We’ll see.
Anyway, 2017 was an interesting year, wasn’t it? We went from having one of the best presidents in modern history to…well…HELP US!!!
Yeah, and that was just January 2017.
I had a not-so-great year at the day job. Being a teacher is great, but sometimes things are tough, mainly from adults. Still, that wasn’t the only problem, because I was having issues, too.
As I mentioned in my last post, I thought I may have been suffering from depression. Well, in May I finally saw my doctor and spoke to her about. She said, “You’re a textbook case of depression.” We talked about mental health and how even that can be “broken” or something like that. She prescribed something and by the summer, I was feeling better, and by late summer I was feeling the best I’ve felt since I was a little boy. Things at work got better and–most importantly–things inside me got better.
Most of my free time was spent working on grad school through 2017, or grading. I turned 40 in August. Forty. I mean…I’m an adult now. Except that…well…you know.
There was a leeeetle Bill Gauthier writing done here and there, though nothing finished. Grad school and papers took up too much of that time. And grading. And being a father to a 19-year-old. And being a father to a four-now-five-year-old. And being a husband. And a dutiful son. And… You get it. Still, don’t you worry! My plan is to finish grad school–I should be done by May–and then take a few weeks just to veg out. Then I’ll be jumping right back into Echoes on the Pond, making another sweep through, and attempting to submit it. I’ll start working on other projects that have been on the back burner for far too long. We’ll see how everything goes. One thing that grad school taught me was that I was capable of far more than I thought.
Let’s see…what else about 2017…?
Oh! The Dark Tower movie! Loved it. Justice League! Loved it. Wonder Woman!! LOVED it!!! Coco! Loved it! Star Wars: The Last Jedi!!!! Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?! I LOVED it! Oh! IT! Loved it! I could go on, by why bother? I enjoyed most of what I saw. And as far as The Last Jedi, I feel as though I could write my master’s capstone on that!
Am I missing anything? Except for the fear of the impending End of Civilization®, not much else. Of course, I’ll post this, walk away, and think of seventy other things, but for now, I’m going to take my leave. I’m looking forward to getting my Master’s Degree and getting back into writing for myself and, hopefully, for you.
Until next time…
One Term Ends & Another Begins, or More Random Stuff For Your Entertainment Pleasure
All right, let’s do this!
Yeah, I don’t buy that enthusiasm, either. Term 1 is done and so is my first grad class, which I passed with an A. I’ve already begun term 2. Go me.
Echoes on the Pond, aka the novel, is finished. For real this time. It now weighs in at 114,800 words, which is still long for a “first novel” but it’s what I could do right now. I think the novel is strong and, as of about two minutes ago, I just sent a query letter to an agent. So we’ll see where that goes. I suspect that by next week, I’ll have signed the Standard Bestselling Writer Contract. Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly outta my butt.
Star Wars is opening tonight. I’m here. I’ll see it tomorrow. I’d planned on doing my movie essays about the previous six, but, as the lady said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.” This is the first Star Wars I haven’t seen opening night since I was a kid. Ah, well, that’s what happens when you grow up and your friends move away.
I already know the next novel, so I’m itching to begin it. I want to do a little more work on synopses for Echoes before I begin the next novel.
I’ve had a lot to say lately but little time to say it. I began first drafts of two posts that never made it here because I didn’t think they were good enough. So here’s what you get.
Take care, and have a great holiday season!
Wherein I Peek Out, Blink, & Weep, or What the Hell Is Going On, Anyway?
I posted a quick update at the end of week 1 of my grad school online course and wrote, “when I look at the syllabus, I see that the remaining nine weeks are going to be very busy.” I am at the start of week 8 of 10. I haven’t completed week 7 yet. I shouldn’t be here, but fuck it. I drank coffee between 8:30 and 9:30 so I could work on a paper that was due tonight by midnight and that I’m still working on because…well…I’ll get there. I promise.
First, the good news. I’ve been maintaining a mid-90s grade. For weeks I was at 94. I dropped to 93 last week, then to 91, and now back to 93. I’m happy. Considering I have little idea of what I’m doing, I seem to be doing it well. I do feel as though the readings have been sinking in, though I rarely understand what I’m reading. I keep looking at the novel I began reading in August, The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne, which I’ve read tiny snippets of in between Freud, Marx, Lacan, Jackson, Conrad, Woolf, and many more, and want to cry. I’ve loved Byrne’s prose since beginning it but, goddamn, no time. I have Stephen King’s new collection, The Bazaar or Bad Dreams, Christopher Golden’s new novel Dead Ringers (about doppelgangers, which I fucking love), two collections by Charles Beaumont, and more novels that I’m eagerly awaiting to read. Shit! I forgot! The PS Publishing collectible re-issue of Harlan Ellison’s Ellison Wonderland that I’m so eager to read….
But…work. Work-work. School-work. Report card grades were due in the last few weeks. Discussion posts, prospectuses, proposals, analyses were all due in the last seven weeks (and still more are due in the coming three), and that’s not the personal stuff.
Pamela’s car died at the end of September. My computer died this past week, which means this is the first thing I’ve truly written on my brand new HP Pavilion All-In-One desktop computer. Whee. Well, that I’ve truly written that wasn’t for my class. Oh, and my teenager got her driver’s license and my toddler turned three. I found out that my sudden (and by sudden, I mean since the spring) exhaustion is not anemia but may be related to my Crohn’s Disease, so my meds have changed a little, but only in the last two days. So I’m still a refugee from a George Romero flick most of the time.
But, Bill, I hear you say. What about the novel? Are you working on that? We’re waiting for this masterpiece you’ve spent the last century or so talking to us about!
First, it’s not a masterpiece. It’s good, I promise, but not masterpiece material. Maybe future classic… But seriously, I’ve worked on the last edit three times since starting the course. I intended on working on it this weekend when my notebook died. That threw out that idea. However, perhaps later this week. I have about 50 pages left to edit, and then I’m bringing the edits to my manuscript. I still have to check to see if my queries that I’d written had been backed up to Dropbox. I believe they were but I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m afraid to check. I may try to see if I can get the stuff from my hard drive soon.
Anyway, I’m still alive and still dreaming. My goal is to have the novel completed and have begun the query process by the end of the year. I can’t wait to start writing the next book, too. It’s about a man and his child and…oh, you’re going to have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll be returning to the world of the girl, her therapist, and the ghost to tie up loose ends, and working on my grad school work.
Be good to yourselves and good to others. The world needs more of that right now. I’ll try to check in again around Thanksgiving.
Grad School: Week 1, or Through the Looking Glass & What Bill Learned There
Today is the end of my first week as a grad student. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. Because I don’t have time to drive and attend an actual brick-and-mortar class, I’m doing my Master’s program online. I decided to do English Lit because that’s what I did for undergrad and because I think my life isn’t painful enough. Also, I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer by anyone what online school’s education programs would be accepted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
So it goes like this: the professor (they use instructor) gives you reading and an assignment. You have to post one assignment by 11:59 PM on Thursday, and a second by 11:59 PM on Sunday, and that’s your module. So I did a fuckload of reading last weekend including Freud and Marx and others, and Shirley Jackson’s classic “The Lottery,” which really was the sugar that helped the medicine go down, and then wrote my response, commented on at least two, and then took a quiz for today. The academic writing was…well…you know how I’m writing this right now? You know how it reads? Yeah, well, it’s the opposite of this. It’s like Alice through the looking glass. I’m writing, something I know how to do (and some say I know how to do well), but I don’t feel like I’m writing. I feel like I’m…I don’t know. Farting in the wind?
Anyway, I posted my writing Tuesday night and wasn’t able to sign in again until yesterday. It seems fairly well received, except I threw out all MLA citations and stuff because fuck you, that’s why. Apparently, mostly everyone else did, too, so the instructoprofessor will be nice to all us grad students who should know better.
Then, yesterday, I signed on to take a quiz about two future major projects. The two questions were so mind-numbingly…devoid of anything I read, that I was shocked.
Still, when I look at the syllabus, I see that the remaining nine weeks are going to be very busy. I should be reading right now, but I know you missed me.
I also decided the role I would play was frightened and super-stressed new grad student with an extremely busy home life. It’s an easy role to play since it’s 99.9% true. That .1% is just an asshole part of me that refuses to tell the truth. When I look at the syllabus, I’m like, “Wait! Isn’t this online schooling supposed to be easier?”
But the school’s all like, “No way, man. We need to prove that we’re a legitimate institution and not something that has Sally Struthers in the commercials.”
I let the school know I diggit, and I’m proud of it, and then we go out for coffee at the student café, which is very comfortable and always has a good acoustic performer. It’s a good time.
All right, so now I have to read about this, that, and the other thing, and start rereading Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, which I last read a decade ago. I can’t remember much about it so this should be fun.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 