The PhD Thesis: Take Two

Now: I don’t know if this is sensible of me, or just Goddamn stupid, but I have accepted an offer to turn my PhD thesis into a book.

The reason I have accepted this offer is because the offer comes with a nice chunk of MONEY.  Enough for a frugal ex-PhD student to live on for a year or so.

The other reason I accepted the offer was – what, d’you think I’d turn down an offer to become a Paid Writer?... After all the years and all the blogs and unfinished movie scripts?... Surely to say ‘no’ now would be madness... 

I do wonder, however, if I can really do this. I wonder if I can stomach working on my PhD thesis again. But I am willing to give it a go. The thing is – I really do want my PhD thesis to become a book. I’ve already put so much work into the damn thing. And I still firmly believe that it is quite racy.

And a year is enough time to work on not just the thesis, but other little projects, too.

This offer has been in the pipeline for some time. I still went to job interviews; I am still trying to set up some (unpaid) work experience. But I have finished with the soul-destroying Job, and, slowly but surely, I am letting myself enjoy my decision: for one year – and bugger the consequences – I am going to be a writer. (Who knows what might happen in a year?...)

(‘Consequences’ – I have sort of thought, you know, of the old maxim: ‘Give the woman a book grant, you feed her for a year; give the woman a job, you feed her for life’… or something. But then again, seeing as no job is forthcoming, and a book grant beckons…)

So here it is. I am going to be a Paid Writer for one year.

It really was quite exciting, telling someone down the pub last night (in response to the usual ‘And what do you do’ question’) - ‘I am going to be a Paid Writer’. And I’m bloody well going to enjoy it.

You just never know, do you, where this PhD stuff will lead you one day. You never know…