Captain Raz to Doctor Tonks: A Reflection

Way back in the mists of time (okay, like four years ago) when I switched this blog from being specifically about my PhD to being a more general blog, I spoke about the reasoning behind my tagline. Captain Raz to Doctor Tonks.

Captain Raz is one of my oldest nicknames; I think I’ve been using it fairly regularly since I was bout thirteen, fourteen. It’s my most often used internet handle (there you go, now it’s a bunch easier to find me online) and ended up being the domain name I bought for my blog. Tonks is the name I’ve been using for about nine years now. Most of my friends know me as Tonks, their parents know me as Tonks, my husband mostly calls me Tonks… its my name. The doctor part came from the fact I was pursuing a PhD.

Was. It’s done. It’s finished.

It’s a little odd to look at that tagline and know that I am Doctor Tonks now. I graduated last month. I got to wear the silly robes and the floppy hat and I have a shiny certificate from my university. It’s official. No one can take it away from me now.

Honestly, I never thought I’d get here. Whenever I imagined being on the other side of my PhD it was always in the context of failure; having dropped out because I couldn’t deal or my research was going nowhere or my supervisor thought I was stupid. I never really imagined I’d be sat on the other side having succeeded. That was a dream always slightly out of reach, something that was nice to imagine but wouldn’t ever be reality.

I’m not gonna lie; doing a PhD is hard. It was a long slog and there are honestly times when I thought it would kill me. When it nearly did kill me. It wrecked my mental health, but a strain on most of the rest of my life and had me in tears more time than I could count. I never felt good enough, never felt like I belonged in academia. I was convinced that the only way it would end was in failure.

And yet… here I am. I did my research, I wrote my thesis and submitted it. I sat my viva and somehow (unfathomably) didn’t make a tit of myself. My corrections went in and were accepted.

I graduated.

And now comes the great slump, the question of what happens next. People have been asking me that for months and the simple answer is: I have no idea.

I don’t want a career in academia, I’ve known that for a while. A PhD means I’m overqualified for a lot of things and don’t have the right experience for the rest. Do I regret doing it? No. I said when I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor one day and I managed it, even if not quite in the way I meant.

Ultimately I want to write, but that’s not something that happens over night. That’s a long term goal, and requires a hell of a lot of slog. Which is fine, I’m used to working hard for years in order to accomplish something I want.

In the meantime I’m investigating freelancing, and there may be part time employment in my future, I don’t know. I’m mostly just enjoying not doing a PhD while I can. And working on my writing.

Never fear, that’s happening.

It is reassuring to know that, no matter my goal, I am capable of achieving it. I will achieve it, eventually, I’ve proved that to myself.

Everything else is just life. I’ll take it as it comes.

State of the Tonks Address

I was musing earlier about how much I'd written this month. I had a vague inkling that it was one of my more prolific months writing wise (now that the dreaded thesis is out of the way—hurrah! Just the dreaded viva left) but I didn't really understand how prolific until I looked at the numbers.

With a day and a bit left to go I'm on track to have written 15,000 words during October, making it a pretty good month overall. Not my best this year, but pretty good.

Except, for possibly the first time in my life, the vast majority of those words have been for original fiction, quite a lot of which has been inflicted on an unsuspecting public. I'm quite proud of my output for this month wanted to take a moment to brag a little and point you in the direction of any stories that might have slipped under your radar.

October started off slow on the writing front. Mostly due to the fact I was on a cruise for the first nine days of it, but also partly because I was basking in the glory of having (finally!) submitted my thesis. When you've been working on a document for over a year it feels good when it's finally done. A little weird, but good. Nevertheless I managed to write a few words while ostensibly on holiday, but the real work started when I got back.

Since October 10th I have written three stories for the weekly whimword flash fiction competition. The prompts were Glow, Featureless and Hallow. I'm proud of all three pieces, but especially Glow, which was declared the winner that week!

In addition to this I cooked up 750 words of horror for a competition; results still pending on that one. When the results are announced I'll decide what I'm going to do with both the pieces I entered (one was written months ago) that is assuming I don't win, in which case they’ll be published elsewhere. Exciting.

Over on twitter the inestimable @FrogCroakley set up a SF story swap which has had a great response. Somewhere in the region of 60 of us threw prompts into the pot and the majority of us completed the task, resulting in something of a headache for Mr Frog. My piece is a slightly whimsical ode to some of my favourite childhood films and can be found over here.

I also sent in a bizarre spoken word piece (yes, spoken word; I know, with this voice) to the inaugural Lies Dreaming podcast. It's an eldritch tale involving Tim Henman and I'll no doubt post here when it's release to the world. Assuming they don't decide either the content or my voice are unsuitable for the general public.

I also wrote a triptych of flash pieces that I’m quite proud of, though I've yet to work out quite what I'm doing with them. They're a little to close to real life to be sci fi I'm not sure what else to call it. My big achievement though was the 4k words I wrote on a story I started way back in June or something like that, finally getting that done. That too was supposed to be a flash piece and is now sat at 6.5k words. Oh well, never mind; sometimes things get away from you. I'll be looking for a home for that in the near future too.

I went into this month wanting to be relatively prolific as a bit of a warm up for next month in which I will be attempting NaNoWriMo. This will be my first year but after two successful Camp NaNos under my belt I decided it was time. Next month I will be attempting a complete redraft of a novel I first wrote about 8 years ago. The original was a hell of an achievement at the time but I've improved a lot in the intervening years and it isn't really salvageable in its current state. So I will be starting again from scratch and looking to hit 50,000 words by the end of November.

With a bit of luck (and a lot of discipline) I'll be blogging here every day, recording my experience of NaNoWriMo. Possibly so that when I'm considering doing it again next year I have evidence of it being a terrible idea. Almost everything else is being put on hold for NaNo. I might do a whimword or two, but there are no guarantees.

And I still have a viva to sit next month too.

I keep pointing out that I'm not a sensible person.

After November? Well I'm crossing my fingers that my viva goes well and I'll be doing thesis corrections to submit before Christmas. Then it'll be time to look for a proper grown up job.

Writing wise my post November plans are to start sending stories out for publication, and finish my current works in progress. I have some exciting (and no doubt foolish) plans for next year and I want to draw a line under this year's efforts.

Keep your eyes peeled for more from me. My PhD is almost over but my writing career is just beginning. Just wait and see.