race against time
Friday is the end of September. The new academic year always starts the first of October, mentally if not actually. Wednesday is matriculation. Thursday I run a study skills workshop and meet my advisees. The following Monday is my first lecture. Sometime before then I want to meet with my tutors for my intro class. At that meeting, they will expect me to have a clue about what I am planning to do. I do, but I'm not sure that clue extends beyond the first lecture, which is unfair to both them and to the students. I need to map out at least the first term's worth of topics, start sketching homework topics even if not homework assignments.
I have been amazingly lucky to have been able to spend the last three weeks basically dropping everything else in order to write. I wake up in the morning, wake Gwen, we get dressed, we eat, we walk to school. I may spend an hour or so reading emails, etc.; I learned long ago that I cannot simply turn up to my office and work, I have to fritter away at least 30 minutes, usually closer to an hour. I became a lot more productive when I realized this and gave myself permission to do so, years ago while still in grad school.
But then I settle in my rocking chair, pull up another chair next to me to balance the computer, another in front to serve as my footstool, and then I write. I write until lunch time, or through lunch time when I forget, I write until my tea is gone and I need to make more, and then I write more, until my alarm goes off at 16:45 so that I can be up to get Gwen before 5:00pm and we don't have to pay the extra 5GBP for after school care. On the walk up to the bailey, I think and reflect and plot and plan. On the walk home, I am still distracted. We make supper, eat it, clean up afterwards. Gwen does her homework, watches a video with me. We have snuggle time and then I read her a story and sing her a song, a song from the music that I have been listening to on repeat in my office, loudly and in gratitude to the fact that no one else is in my stairwell to be bothered by it. Then she is in bed, and despite my best intentions, there is always about an hour of TV on the couch before anything else happens. But 8 o'clock roll around, and then the music comes back on, and the paper comes out, and I write, I write until it is late enough that Joel is home and he expresses surprise that I am still awake, that I have often still been awake when he comes home.
It's something like 10 hours a day, my primary purpose has been to write. Even when we went to the Netherlands for Borefts this last weekend, I wrote on the ferry, I wrote on the bus, I wrote -- legibly and sensibly! -- while drinking beer. My pagination of handwritten pages is up to page 88; the PDF is 166 pages long. wc -w tells me I have 32792 words, though some of them are commented out; roughly all but 8000 of those have been written in the last three weeks. My three alpha readers have been so encouraging (I expect it from my mom. She has loved every word I have ever written. She is the very best of alpha readers. It has been wholly unexpected from others, to have them enjoy what I am writing so much, to hear from them that reading it has kept them from other work they should be doing).
But I cannot keep this up. I feel like I'm writing against a deadline, when the end of Friday comes (or maybe Saturday; Saturday morning I get 1.5 glorious hours uninterrupted at the public library while Gwen is at her drama lessons) and I will have to face up to the fact that I actually am employed to do something other than write a novel. So I will write all that I can before then, and then? I don't know how I'll arrange things then, but I'll arrange something. Because I now cannot imagine not finishing this, and soon.
And when it is done, I'll know how to write a book. I never felt like I learned that, while writing the dissertation, and since then, the idea of writing a book has frankly terrified me: A book is just so big. I have been very lucky that even though in my field, a book is expected, in my niche field, they are not, so I have been able to get away without writing on yet. But somehow, I feel like once I have completed this, the shear dint of having done so will make doing it a second time infinitely easier.
And this is why I have given myself permission to basically ignore everything else, these last three weeks, and simply to write. Because I am teaching myself an important skill that I need to have, and will make use of again in the near future.
This, folks, is why you give academics tenure.
I have been amazingly lucky to have been able to spend the last three weeks basically dropping everything else in order to write. I wake up in the morning, wake Gwen, we get dressed, we eat, we walk to school. I may spend an hour or so reading emails, etc.; I learned long ago that I cannot simply turn up to my office and work, I have to fritter away at least 30 minutes, usually closer to an hour. I became a lot more productive when I realized this and gave myself permission to do so, years ago while still in grad school.
But then I settle in my rocking chair, pull up another chair next to me to balance the computer, another in front to serve as my footstool, and then I write. I write until lunch time, or through lunch time when I forget, I write until my tea is gone and I need to make more, and then I write more, until my alarm goes off at 16:45 so that I can be up to get Gwen before 5:00pm and we don't have to pay the extra 5GBP for after school care. On the walk up to the bailey, I think and reflect and plot and plan. On the walk home, I am still distracted. We make supper, eat it, clean up afterwards. Gwen does her homework, watches a video with me. We have snuggle time and then I read her a story and sing her a song, a song from the music that I have been listening to on repeat in my office, loudly and in gratitude to the fact that no one else is in my stairwell to be bothered by it. Then she is in bed, and despite my best intentions, there is always about an hour of TV on the couch before anything else happens. But 8 o'clock roll around, and then the music comes back on, and the paper comes out, and I write, I write until it is late enough that Joel is home and he expresses surprise that I am still awake, that I have often still been awake when he comes home.
It's something like 10 hours a day, my primary purpose has been to write. Even when we went to the Netherlands for Borefts this last weekend, I wrote on the ferry, I wrote on the bus, I wrote -- legibly and sensibly! -- while drinking beer. My pagination of handwritten pages is up to page 88; the PDF is 166 pages long. wc -w tells me I have 32792 words, though some of them are commented out; roughly all but 8000 of those have been written in the last three weeks. My three alpha readers have been so encouraging (I expect it from my mom. She has loved every word I have ever written. She is the very best of alpha readers. It has been wholly unexpected from others, to have them enjoy what I am writing so much, to hear from them that reading it has kept them from other work they should be doing).
But I cannot keep this up. I feel like I'm writing against a deadline, when the end of Friday comes (or maybe Saturday; Saturday morning I get 1.5 glorious hours uninterrupted at the public library while Gwen is at her drama lessons) and I will have to face up to the fact that I actually am employed to do something other than write a novel. So I will write all that I can before then, and then? I don't know how I'll arrange things then, but I'll arrange something. Because I now cannot imagine not finishing this, and soon.
And when it is done, I'll know how to write a book. I never felt like I learned that, while writing the dissertation, and since then, the idea of writing a book has frankly terrified me: A book is just so big. I have been very lucky that even though in my field, a book is expected, in my niche field, they are not, so I have been able to get away without writing on yet. But somehow, I feel like once I have completed this, the shear dint of having done so will make doing it a second time infinitely easier.
And this is why I have given myself permission to basically ignore everything else, these last three weeks, and simply to write. Because I am teaching myself an important skill that I need to have, and will make use of again in the near future.
This, folks, is why you give academics tenure.