I’m feeling very…

I'm feeling very jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none today. Maybe that's being awake at 2 a.m., unable to get back to sleep. Not lit crit enough for the lit crit academic folks; we have someone coming in to do a job talk today who looks awesome in that way, and while reviewing her C.V. I was briefly wistful that I didn't focus on lit crit in an academic way. Oh, I give an occasional conference talk, but when I have to pick, time-wise, between finishing writing those up and submitting them and all that vs. writing creative work, you know what I pick. So yes, I'm a writer, but these days I'm not sure I'm lit fic enough for the lit fic folks; I see all the awesome stuff people like Nicole Walker are doing, and I think, maybe that's what I should be doing. I write books, and my agent tells me he can't sell them. They're not the right kind of books, or I didn't write them the right way. I apply to grants, but I'm not sure they actually want writers who write the way I do. I miss erotica, but I'm definitely not erotica-writing-enough to call myself that these days, not that I really want to be a purely-focused erotica writer anymore anyway. But sometimes I miss hanging with those people. They were fun, and they're doing the lord's work; it was good to have a mission. And then there's SF/F, and why doesn't anyone want to buy my fantasy trilogy, huh? I think it's pretty good. I read broadly, my interests are widely scattered, and I'm not an expert in anything. There may only be three people in the world who understand the math Kevin does, but at least they know he knows exactly what he's talking about. Narrow, but super-deep. No one is going to ever hire me to be the Mistress-of-Facebook-reposting, I'm pretty sure. That would be a sweet gig. And yes, I have a stack of papers to grade, why do you ask? If I can't sleep, I might as well go get started on them. Don't mind me, this is just the periodic 2 a.m. angst.