Could the timing be worse? (and the writing meme)

[lls_mutant]

So I was eating breakfast this morning and flipping through C&EN when I noticed something... an open faculty position at Lasalle University.

Starting in Fall of 2005.

WHY NOW????? I would LOVE to teach at Lasalle! It's nearby, it's a smaller, mainly undergrad university, and the department head knows my current boss, so he might at least LOOK at my resume. I even finish my job in September! But because of the baby... yeah. It's just out. ::Sigh:: I mean, I know they can't refuse you a job on the basis of pregnancy, but let's face it. I am not a strong enough candidate for a teaching job (I have one post-doc under my belt, and no real teaching experience, AND it's a p-chem position, and I'm a fuel scientist) for them not to find a perfectly good, legal, and valid reason to hire someone else over the lady who's going to need 3 months maternity leave three months into the job. Honestly.

Of course, the baby would be born right around finals and all...

No. Reasons why I can not even think about this:

1.) There's a REASON I'm opting to stay home.
2.) I have very few refereed pubs. Do I really think I've got a shot anyway?
3.) First year teaching job = many, many hours to be put in. Hubby is still working 70-80 hour weeks. This is not a good combination with a newborn.

Couldn't they have wanted someone for Fall 2006? ::Sniff::

Anyway. Gakking this from everyone else:

Ask me anything about my stories and/or writing process: inspiration, process, what the hell was I thinking, etc. No limit on questions, just ask away.

And to answer the one I know is coming- I hope sometime next week.

Comments

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

The stuff about academia and kids is good to know. I haven't done a lot of research yet on it, and I'm sort of skeptical of being able to get an academic position anyway, especially since I don't want to move. (But I live near Philly.) I'm a post-doc now, so... yeah. Kids are good right now!

Now, as to your stories (rubs hands in glee): when you write, do you write in a linear fashion (one chapter/story at a time) or do you have several chapters/stories going at once?

This is really interesting because the answer isn't always the same!

When my cowriter and I wrote our huge Pern fanfic Through the Fire, we patchworked a lot- wrote the scenes as they came to us. There's value in that, in that we wrote scenes when we had the inspiration, but there's difficulty in that as well in that it can be hard to tie them together. We also did that with our original stuff. But at the same time, I'd have other stories going on as well. Usually, these were shorter stories, although a couple (like one of my favorites called "Fly") took a LONG time.

With HP fanfic, I'm very linear. I know how certain scenes should go, but I don't always write in order. That was especially true for Deny Thy Father, and the first 4 parts of Accidentally In Love. Part 5 was much harder, mainly because of the Turkey trip. (I have a harder time writing the adventure sections.) Mentors was a patchwork effort. Parts 5 and 8 of AIL (both parts that are heavy on the adventure) have been more patchwork.

There's only one AIL scene I actually wrote long before I needed it, and that was the scene with James and Sirius in Wandwavers. Even then, the whole scene wasn't down- just that long paragraph where Sirius talks about dancing. I did write the ending for Part 8 last night, even though I'm not quite there, and I have the beginning for Part 9 in my head... it's wierd.

But every now and then I'll get a plotbunny of something short, and I'll write it. Ten Galleons was written in a few hours, and Cooking Lessons took about a day. Collecting Spoils was written at a convention as I listened to talks on glycerol utilization. Heh.

So a little from column A, a little from column B.