My entry for monthlydiaryday.
Late again, as the week ran away with me.
I spent the first three hours of the 12th wide awake, having remembered rather late on Monday evening that I still hadn't done the su_herald entry. As I currently cover Sunday and Monday, that's quite a big deal, though it looked like the sad news about David Bowie had usurped the posting space of quite a few folks. It's quite enjoyable work, on the whole, though there are, as always, fics one might prefer not to have read, or attempted to read, because some writers are still working towards mastering certain rules of grammar etc.
Having finished the entry some insane impulse made me write a brief fic, which had been stewing in my head much of the day, so it really was stupid o'clock before I got to bed.
I intended to get up at a reasonable time, but it was somewhat later than I'd planned, particularly since F rang and we chatted for about an hour. She's in the late stage of pregnancy, so there were updates and a certain amount of discussion of how much it sucks to be pregnant.
Finally up, showered and dressed and then breakfasted while scanning LJ and FB.
Then I packed up my laptop and stuck half a dozen Shakespeares into a bag along with a couple of theatrical autobiographies and an A4 notepad. I drove down to Stratford, about 13 miles, and managed to claim the last parking space at the Shakespeare Institute. And so into the Library.
After some 34 years of telling teenagers never to leave work to the last minute, guess what I had done? My excuses are Barcelona, Christmas and New Year, but also a terrible procrastination on my part. I did manage to get the other two essays submitted over the weekend, but I had only done a quarter of the 4,000 word essay due in by noon on the 13th. I worked steadily for four hours, took a break, then another two hours.
The autobiographies were required reading for one of this term's courses starting on Thursday. It turned out that I had both books already, from a habit of never willingly passing a second-hand bookshop, and a tendency to feel it's immoral to leave one without buying. This meant that I was able to lend Tyrone Guthrie's A Life in Theatre to one of the other students while I was working my way through the essay and accumulating stacks of extra Arden editions by my side - I think I ended up citing about eight or nine plays and a poem. It was all about the silence of the female characters in the Elizabethan plays - the way they fall silent at the end or are silenced, literally or metaphorically or both in the tragedies.
Around 7.30 I packed up, failed to find K, who had the book, decided it didn't really matter, as I'd done the reading already and would see her at the class. I drove home and took an hour off, watching half of a really interesting semi-reality show about Victorian bakers.
Then back to work for another three hours, getting the essay finished, edited and posted. I seem to have worked out how to use Word to create citations and insert a bibliography; I just hope they are approved by TPTB.At the last minute I realised they had to be double-spaced, so I reformatted the other two and resubmitted them. This university prefers submissions in pdf form for Turnitin, so I suppose double spacing makes it easier to read. Not that my kids ever bothered with assessed work for me, but at University level the tutors demand more.
Much to my surprise, the version of my fic I'd posted on AO3 had received a lot of hits - it's now pulling ahead of most of the others on Kudos, too. I had quite a few kind comments on my own LJ, so I answered them and wound down with a little internet time before collapsing into bed.
This term I am continuing with the Research Methods course - compulsory on all MAs, I think. At least now it has a more specific focus on writing about performance, evaluating sources and so on. And the other course, History of Shakespeare in Performance, bids fair to be fascinating. I have a lot of reading to do for it, however - a play (Knight of the Burning Pestle) and two books to read for next Thursday. Really, really interesting, however - what can we actually know for certain about rehearsal and performance in Shakespeare's own theatre? Watch this space?
BTW - 17 kudos now, which is astonishing. Must be all the Bowie fans, I suppose.
I spent the first three hours of the 12th wide awake, having remembered rather late on Monday evening that I still hadn't done the su_herald entry. As I currently cover Sunday and Monday, that's quite a big deal, though it looked like the sad news about David Bowie had usurped the posting space of quite a few folks. It's quite enjoyable work, on the whole, though there are, as always, fics one might prefer not to have read, or attempted to read, because some writers are still working towards mastering certain rules of grammar etc.
Having finished the entry some insane impulse made me write a brief fic, which had been stewing in my head much of the day, so it really was stupid o'clock before I got to bed.
I intended to get up at a reasonable time, but it was somewhat later than I'd planned, particularly since F rang and we chatted for about an hour. She's in the late stage of pregnancy, so there were updates and a certain amount of discussion of how much it sucks to be pregnant.
Finally up, showered and dressed and then breakfasted while scanning LJ and FB.
Then I packed up my laptop and stuck half a dozen Shakespeares into a bag along with a couple of theatrical autobiographies and an A4 notepad. I drove down to Stratford, about 13 miles, and managed to claim the last parking space at the Shakespeare Institute. And so into the Library.
After some 34 years of telling teenagers never to leave work to the last minute, guess what I had done? My excuses are Barcelona, Christmas and New Year, but also a terrible procrastination on my part. I did manage to get the other two essays submitted over the weekend, but I had only done a quarter of the 4,000 word essay due in by noon on the 13th. I worked steadily for four hours, took a break, then another two hours.
The autobiographies were required reading for one of this term's courses starting on Thursday. It turned out that I had both books already, from a habit of never willingly passing a second-hand bookshop, and a tendency to feel it's immoral to leave one without buying. This meant that I was able to lend Tyrone Guthrie's A Life in Theatre to one of the other students while I was working my way through the essay and accumulating stacks of extra Arden editions by my side - I think I ended up citing about eight or nine plays and a poem. It was all about the silence of the female characters in the Elizabethan plays - the way they fall silent at the end or are silenced, literally or metaphorically or both in the tragedies.
Around 7.30 I packed up, failed to find K, who had the book, decided it didn't really matter, as I'd done the reading already and would see her at the class. I drove home and took an hour off, watching half of a really interesting semi-reality show about Victorian bakers.
Then back to work for another three hours, getting the essay finished, edited and posted. I seem to have worked out how to use Word to create citations and insert a bibliography; I just hope they are approved by TPTB.At the last minute I realised they had to be double-spaced, so I reformatted the other two and resubmitted them. This university prefers submissions in pdf form for Turnitin, so I suppose double spacing makes it easier to read. Not that my kids ever bothered with assessed work for me, but at University level the tutors demand more.
Much to my surprise, the version of my fic I'd posted on AO3 had received a lot of hits - it's now pulling ahead of most of the others on Kudos, too. I had quite a few kind comments on my own LJ, so I answered them and wound down with a little internet time before collapsing into bed.
This term I am continuing with the Research Methods course - compulsory on all MAs, I think. At least now it has a more specific focus on writing about performance, evaluating sources and so on. And the other course, History of Shakespeare in Performance, bids fair to be fascinating. I have a lot of reading to do for it, however - a play (Knight of the Burning Pestle) and two books to read for next Thursday. Really, really interesting, however - what can we actually know for certain about rehearsal and performance in Shakespeare's own theatre? Watch this space?
BTW - 17 kudos now, which is astonishing. Must be all the Bowie fans, I suppose.