Did I really just do that?

I may be off by a few days.  I may have a few more proofreads and some footnotes to format. But...

BUT...

I think I just wrote an 8,000-word article, start to finish,[1] in the month of January.

Holy moly.

...

...

I wonder if I could do that again?


[1] To be fair, I'd done 90% of the research already. And the idea had been kicking around in my head for over a year. But the writing. I wrote the thing. All of it. In a month.

The Accidental Writer

I haven't been writing much about writing. In general, writing is a frustrating process for me, and talking about how frustrating it is often finds me with my head further up my ass than when I began. Or, even worse, writing about writing takes away time that I should be using to write.

So it is with real pleasure that I share a bit of news. I may have shared at some point about "procrastivity" -- that is, procrastination, accidental or deliberate, that somehow turns into productivity.

This was not real procrastination. Rather, it was prioritizing a talk over writing my book. That's productive, sure, but not the thing I was supposed to be working on. But there it is: this semester found me plugging away at a "what I did on my leave" presentation for my department. I was supposed to present on my research for about 40 minutes, after which there would be another 40 minutes of Q & A, and then we'd all go home. It's actually a very nice thing our department does, and something you don't often find outside of research universities.

So I started writing. And here's the amazing cool thing that happened:

.....................................................
Late September: Should I present a chapter? No: since I'm close to done with this project, I should present an overview. So this will include narrations about what my big question is, and also what each chapter is, and how it contributes to the whole.

Early October: But then there's the question of audience: If my presentation is all medieval, then my colleagues (almost all historians of the 19th and 20th centuries) might find themselves at a loss for how to engage. So... Okay, I'll make sure to have a lot in there about approach and methodology and maybe even a little of that Cool New Theoretical Framework I've been trying to use.

Mid-October: This thing is getting kind of way to long. Remember THAT ONE PRESENTATION that never ended? You don't want to do that. Nobody ever complained that a presentation ran short after all. But I don't want to dam the flow. I'll just write it as it comes out of my brain, and the fact that it's about 8,500 words long is okay; I'll just cut it down for the presentation....

Hey. 

Wait just one minute.

8,500 words. With question, argument, methodology, theory, narrative chapter outline...

DID I JUST ACCIDENTALLY WRITE A DRAFT OF MY BOOK'S INTRODUCTION?

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I did.
.....................................................

Huzzah for procrastivity!!!

The University of All Our Besties

I just found out that a good friend of mine is going to be in Blerg City this summer. We were supposed to be there together last summer, but she had to cut her trip short for very good reasons. So: she will be there, and will need a pseudonym. And Osito, another one of my favorite folks, will also be there for a couple days. And a couple other folks just up the road.

And I thought about something that occurs to me quite frequently: as academics, we move around a lot. If we are lucky, every place we land we have some good colleagues, and at least one friend who truly "gets" us. And then we get thrown into other professional situations -- seminars, conferences, even blogospheres -- and we meet other people who get us, on a real, deep level. People who you can make up silly songs about washing underwear for, and who will sing along. People who will suggest ice cream for dinner. People (in my case) who think it's perfectly appropriate for a middle-aged spinster auntie to swear like a sailor.

BFFs. Your Tribe. Besties.

Wouldn't it be nice, then, if we could just found our own university, and pack it with our besties. Jesus, we'd never get anything done for all the giggling and eye-rolling. But it would be a whole hill of fun.

Large to Small, and Back Again

About a month ago, I switched tracks from the chapter I put to bed (ready or not) so I could distill a paper from it. Anyone who's been reading my agonized posts knows that this chapter has been giving me fits. It was chock full o' facts, and even finally had an argument, but it just felt... flat. No, worse: it was simultaneously flat and bloated. How does that happen?

In any case, a few weeks ago I made the decision to put the chapter to bed. It was a draft; it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I knew where the holes were, but I knew they could be filled later, and I didn't want to spend another month tinkering with it right now. Besides, I had a deadline: I had a paper to present at the Brain Ranch (not Hogwarts, but nearby) in three weeks, and I had to somehow condense something from the flat-yet-bloated chapter into 25-30 nice, tight, coherent minutes. Oh, and I had to make maps and genealogical charts.

I've always worked from small to large. I write a conference paper or two or three. Sometimes I expand them into articles. But probably a third of my first-book manuscript originated as conference papers. These gave me concrete deadlines and forced me to dig in and argue.

Here, I was trying to compress something big and sprawling into something short and compelling. And it was hard. I kept excising things. But here's what happened: that excision process forced me to think: "I've only got 12 pages. What's really important here?" 

And in the process of writing that short paper, I finally discovered my chapter.

(Oh. And the maps and charts turned out nice, too.)

And the award for best birthday present EVER goes to...

the Supreme Court of the United States.

Seriously, guys: I didn't think you could top your gift from two years ago. I know that technically, this gift's not for me; it's something meant to share with my friends. And I know that some of you only signed the card grudgingly. But it's really, truly, the best thing ever. Better than shoes; better than cheese; better than an all-expenses-paid trip around the world.

Thanks.

That's (Full) Professor Notorious to You

Yesterday, one of the things on my to-do list was to go through the piles of papers and stacks of accumulated mail for the past two weeks that the semester end + kalamazoo + grading had kept me from. In there, I found a notice of an overdue bill payment (seriously, I just plain forgot!), and...

notice of my promotion to full professor.

Holy shit.

How the Second-Book Fellowship Year Began

Let's kick this right off, shall we? Not content with reveling in the thought of the academic year off, I've decided to think about how my fellowship actually began the minute I submitted my grades for this past semester. In fact, I actually gave that last senior portfolio a kiss when I picked it up.

Of course, the first 48 hours of my leave have been less than spectacular, given the fact that my Kalamazoo cold is still lingering, to the point where I only go out in public if I can maintain a three-foot distance between myself and the nearest other human being. The week-long sore throat is gone, but my apartment looks like the place where Kleenex go to die.

Still, I'm not too troubled. I count on a full week to ten days at the end of every academic year to be sick, get well, and be a couch potato. So that's what I've embarked upon. There have been TV shows (Game of Thrones and The Fall, in case you're wondering), there has been a great round of long-delayed self-care appointment-scheduling (dentist, hair, chiropractor, massage, orthopedist, etc), and there has been gazing at the piles of papers and two weeks' worth of unopened mail and wondering whether today has been the day I'll tackle it.

My goal is to enter June with a clean-ish, organized-ish home and office, so I can set about the business of really thinking about my summer research trip, in which I will, at long last, tackle the notarial archives, which are always a bitch to sort through.[1]

And now... I think I need to get at least one chore knocked off my list.


[1] Oh, and about that research trip: since my secret identity is less secret with every passing year, I'm probably no longer gonna be quite so guarded about what I'm working on. You may even see pictures from Blarg City that clearly identify it. I will, however, continue to make up and insist on pseudonyms for people and places (myself included) -- purely because it amuses me to do so.

Saying Yes to Adventure Time

Remember when I said something a while back in my mid-career crisis about how one of the ways we set ourselves up for crisis is by spending 10+ years ignoring what we love in favor of The Job? And how one way to start feeling better, post-tenure, was to reconnect with all that stuff?

Yeah, well, apparently I talk a good line, but am really bad on follow-through. Part of this is that, as I've aged, I tend to like more and more to spend time alone, just recovering my resources. I get easily overwhelmed by too much activity. I can do a four-day conference of nonstop people everywhere (Hello: Kalamazoo?) or go to a party if such is required. But then I shut myself away for a while.

But the other part is that I'm still convincing myself that spending an! entire! day! doing nothing but recreation is somehow going to put me horribly behind on what I need to do. That, given the choice between Something Fun and work, I should choose work.

Case in point: Historiann is in town for a bit. Or rather, not too far away. I invited her & the family down for an afternoon of fun. She countered with "Let's go on a day-long adventure to [fun place I've never been but have always meant to go]!"

My first reaction was to immediately decline. Because that's a whole day. And I should be grading. Or revising my Kalamazoo paper. Or whatever.

And then I remembered that I used to like fun.

So, to sum up: I'm going on an adventure tomorrow, with Historiann! All day! To a place I've always wanted to see but have told myself that I just don't have time, and maybe next month. And honestly, I have this feeling that all will be well. Better than well, even: Fun. Which is not something you're supposed to feel guilty about on the weekend.

But, because I am who I am, I'll be doubling down on the work today.  Baby steps, after all.

A Much More Civilized Way to Do It

Today I'm doing work at a research library. And it's an odyssey.
Let me explain: Grit City University is a real, live four-year university. We also awards masters' degrees, but our main mission is undergrad-focused. So our library has always been geared towards the undergraduate audience. Then you combine that with decades of funding cutbacks, and what we find is that most of our books are out of date or just plain inappropriate for serious research above the level of an undergraduate research paper (and often not even that). Sure, we have a fantastic interlibrary loan service, and decent research databases (I've fought like hell to keep the one on medieval stuff, which almost got the axe a few years back), but nothing that I could do real research at -- you know, the kind where you sit down with a multi-volume published source collection from the early 1900s or a run of journals or a hard-to-get reference work and just work in the library all day.

Fortunately, GCU is only two and a half hours away from Major Research University (MRU), so sometimes I just come up here and work for a day.

Except: did I mention the "two and a half hours" thing? Yeah, that's each way. And, for me: on public transit. So, research trip math: 2.5 hours times two plus timing to make sure that I'm not in the rush-hour commute but still home before 10 pm and not up before 6 and... I generally get 4 hours of research time for five hours of commute.

You can see why I don't do this very often. Then, last time I did, I hit on a solution: I would stay the night. MRU is actually in a really nice area, with restaurants and coffee shops and stores and such. And a couple years back I got a tip on a seen-better-days pension-style 1930s budget hotel for a really ridiculous price per night. The first time I stayed there, it was warm enough out that everyone had their windows open, and I could hear, from three rooms down, a very talented person practicing the violin, all drifting in my window with the breeze. I thought: "This is the kind of place that one might check into for a month to finish one's novel."

The Room. With room-key.

So now, I take the transit up. I stop on the way and have breakfast. I settle in. I get lunch near MRU. I work for 5 hours. Nice dinner. Sleep. Morning coffee and pastry around the corner, because the MRU library doesn't open until 9 on Saturdays. And then it's 6-7 hours of work (with a coffee break) before I head back home. And it all feels like a little research vacation in the city. Actually, it reminds me of my life when I'm on research trips in Blargistan. Just like then, I'm not living in the lap of luxury, by most standards. But by mine... yeah. I could like this.

Good News, with a Side of Nostalgia

This morning, I had occasion to visit my very first post on this blog. That was way back in June of 2007, almost 8 years ago. Yes, I've been blogging for that long. Not as regularly as some, but I've been hanging in there.

This post, among other things, announced a bit of my motivation for starting the blog: I had just gotten a fellowship. And just in the nick of time: I had tenure review staring me in the face and one lousy article plus one revise & resubmit (one that I didn't know at the time would plague me for a full year). And I needed to finish a book.

So I figure that chronicling the first-book process would be cool, and that I'd actually have time to do it. And I did.

And then my post-tenure malaise set in, and blogging declined for... oh, half a decade or so. Inspiration waned. For everything. Until... one magical day, the shape of the next book -- the one that had been digging in its heels -- appeared fully-formed in my head. And I wanted to write it. But how? with what time?

And so I applied for fellowships again. Two long-shots.

And I got one.

So, next year, I am off to Fancy-Pants Institute (FPI) to write, write, write. A book, one hopes.

And maybe even a few blog posts.

Putting Down that Load: Service to the Profession Edition

A few years ago, I made the mistake of voicing my doubts about how a certain Big Ongoing Project transition should be handled. Stuff along the lines of, "Hey, have we really thought these things through?"

Silly me: They put me in charge of it.

Anyway, Big Project ended up being a five-year commitment. Every fall, I'd start working on Big Project. Every fall, it would nag at me mercilessly, yet another thing to do. And because I'm a perfectionist, everything needed to be perfect.

And it was always later than I'd like. I always wanted it done by early October. And usually, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas was more like it.

Here's the thing: as of two days before Christmas this year, my five-year commitment was finished. Oddly enough, "Auld Lang Syne" was playing on my parents' radio as I sent off the last official communiqué and handed the whole thing over to my successor.

Here's the thing: when you're mid-career, your service load expands. A lot. And one of those things is "service to the profession," wherein you serve on the boards of organizations, read and review book and article manuscripts, and do other stuff. This labor is mostly uncompensated. And it's actually pretty fulfilling. And it's all voluntary. So you can't complain that you're having this foisted on you. I actually enjoyed working on Big Project -- sometimes quite a lot!

But it also felt good to put it down and move on to other things.

44, or, La plus ça change...

...is how old I am today. Some facts about my life at this, the halfway point (if I'm very lucky and the damage hasn't already been done):

• Education/Employment: Gainfully employed in my field, tenured, and about to go up for promotion to full professor
• Housing: a very nice (albeit small) one-bedroom cottage apartment in a good neighborhood within walking distance of half a dozen coffee shops
• Transportation: Trek Lexa entry-level road bike
• Relationship status: happily unattached
• Most recent international trip: Last summer, to Italy, for a yoga retreat and intensive language courses
• Best recent accomplishment: Book award
• Thing that needs to go away: I can't believe I started smoking again. Crap.
• Overall state of mind: utterly content

At 33:

• Education/Employment: Just got a job offer and will be headed out to Grit City next week to look for an apartment
• Housing: Tiny attic studio in the student ghetto that I actually fixed up to be pretty nice... but damn it's hot. And I can be counted on to bash my head against the slanted ceilings at least once every six weeks. And I caught a mouse under the sink -- which is an improvement over the poisonous spiders in the previous place I lived, but still. A mouse.
• Transportation: Trek 530 hybrid bike, about 10 years old
• Relationship status: complicated
• Most recent international trip: Mop-up research trip to Blargistan, during the winter 18 months ago
• Best recent accomplishment: Defended my dissertation!
• Thing that needs to go away: See above, re: "relationship status"
• Overall state: relieved and a bit at sea

At 22:

• Education/Employment: Just completed first year at a fancy four-year college after two years at community college; working two food service jobs (a fancy restaurant and a coffee shop near school) at about 20 hours a week apiece.
• Housing: Downtown puddletown apartment in a great 1930s building, shared with a roommate. In this arrangement, I am in the role of obnoxious slob.
• Transportation: incredibly heavy 5-speed bike (circa 1978) + city bus.
• Relationship status: [redacted]
• Most recent international trip: 7-week solo trip to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland two years ago
• Best recent accomplishment: Accepted to junior year abroad trip to Munich
• Thing that needs to go away: As with most college students recently turned 21, I am drinking far too much alcohol (spoiler alert: A year in Munich is not going to help in this regard...)
• Overall state: Pretty screwed up, though blissfully unaware of how much so.

Looked at that way, it looks like I've done better for myself than I've any right to. Happy Birthday to me.

It's official: I am writing a second book.

This announcement may come as a surprise: not that I'm writing a book -- I've had that "another damn book" tag over in my sidebar for a while, after all -- but that I'm only just now getting around to making it official. But I really consider today my kick-off, because today, I took the first real steps.

That may seem strange to say. I started collecting documents in 2010, after all.[1] And in the summer of that same year, I transcribed, oh, let's say a hundred or so folios and started grouping them into topics to explore, complete with freewriting and ruminations on things I needed to find out about. In the interim, I produced one very short article and a few conference presentations. I drew up lists and bibliographies. But in general, it's felt like I've hardly been working on it at all for years.

And then, just this April, I was (finally!) hit with the inspiration for how this thing should go together. I pulled together a draft proposal and presented to my editor, and received general enthusiasm and a couple of good suggestions. And last week, I organized all the files so I could figure out what I had and where it all was.

But today was different. Today I took the first steps in working on a piece of what will, gods willing, become the book that I now see in my head. It was a small step: I identified a small section that needed filling in, and took notes on a relevant book section, plus identified the other three books I needed to look at to finish what, in the end, will likely amount to no more than 300 words of the finished piece. Yet it's forward motion, with a purpose.

This is my Big Writing Summer. By the end of this summer, I hope to have a draft of a chapter and the rough outlines of a second one, along with an article that dovetails with Chapter Draft One and a well thought-out book proposal.

I have officially embarked on the road to the second book. Wish me luck.


[1] Jeez. Has it really been that long?!?

Awesome Stuff on the Near Horizon

Today promises to be a grueling day: Two meetings, one of which promises to be filled with pointless and unproductive negativity, which suits me not at all. Worst of all, these meetings (one of which was called with less than 24 hours' notice) are being held right in the middle of my writing group. I thought I'd miss an hour of it; now it looks like I'll be missing the whole thing. For meetings.

Also, it's unseasonably hot, and dry, which means I'm cranky and have a nosebleed.

BUT... better things are on the horizon, for lo: I have a full summer to write! Even better: I have my mojo back. Two weeks ago, inspiration struck. After years of wrestling, I know what my next book is going to be doing. I pitch it to Dream Press at the 'zoo in a week. That's cool. But even cooler: I'm excited to write, and I actually have the time to do so.

Hell, yeah!

So bring on that meeting! Bring on two! Try to suck me down into the swamp of negativity, if you dare. I'll just be hanging out on shore, doing the butt-dance.

Please, ma'am: May I have some more?

Today is my last teaching day before spring break. And while most of my classes this week have been replaced by conferences for upcoming papers, I did have one to get through: Western Civilization. A 100-level class, and today we were discussing El Cid. And let me tell you, I was dreading it. This is a really fun story, and I'd been selling it to them for a couple of weeks: Battles! Honor! Valor! Betrayal! Christians and Muslims! But walking into class today, I knew I had several things working against me:

• These are not history majors. Most of them are taking this class as a General Education requirement, so they're only here because they have to be.
• A medieval epic may be exciting to a medieval historian, but it's not everybody's cup of tea.
• It's the last class before spring break.

So, you will appreciate how pleasantly surprised I was that the 60% or so of the class who actually participated did so with some real enthusiasm. But even more than that, there was this conversation after class:

"Yes, Susie? Did you have a question?"

"Well, it's kind of off-topic..."

"I love off-topic questions. Shoot."

"Well... I really liked this book! I read it all in one night. Like, I had to do laundry, and I was really mad because I had to put the book down! And so... I was wondering... Are there other books like this that you can recommend?"

That's right: My undergraduate, non-major, taking-this-required-course student just asked me for more medieval literature. Because it was so awesome.

How I Won the Week

::whew!::

What to say about this week? These days, it feels like a minor triumph just to keep ahead of my normal workload. But I've managed to do all that and take care of some backed-up e-mails and arrangements about upcoming conferences, plus three letters of recommendation, helping plan a shower for a friend, and getting off an application for a campus program that could really work in my favor if I get it. In other words, I'm keeping all of the balls in the air. This is an accomplishment for me. In addition to all that, I've been negotiating some class-three rapids in a way that had potential to embroil me in something I don't want to be embroiled in, and I think I managed to do so with a bit of grace and come out okay. All right, so there's one person who's likely not happy, but I'm secure in knowing that I acted ethically, so things will turn out all right in the end.

Extra bonus: Visit from a good friend and former colleague who moved back to her home country several years ago. She's a real dear, and it's always lovely to spend time with her.

Extra-extra bonus: By noon tomorrow, I should be fully caught up on my grading! I could push that to tonight, but I've decided that I've earned an extra yoga class tonight and an early bedtime.

Life is pretty darned good chez Notorieuse.

Time for a Little Pick-Me-Up

Last week, commenter Tree of Knowledge asked if I'd do a request on the "evidence of teaching excellence" thing, so I think that'll be next on the job search series, followed by a post on prepping for conference or phone interviews. Look for us to get back to that Monday.

In the meantime, something of perhaps more general interest. We're at a point in the semester when things can get difficult, whether we're grad students, lecturers, or proffies of whatever level. The shine of the new semester has long ago worn off, and it seems like we're drowning in a sea of work, barely keeping our heads above water, and sometimes not even that. Personally, this has been a craptacular discouraging week for me: a few rough things have come my way, and once I start down that road, it's hard for me to see anything but the negative side of things, and that's an ugly spiral to be in.

So, in an attempt to turn things around, I invite commenters to chime in, here at the end of a week: What's one thing you accomplished this week that you're proud of?

Here's mine: Over the course of the week, I finished grading three stacks of essays and two of midterms. These had been hanging over my head like a dark cloud. I just had more come in, but I got the old ones out in time, and if I work at this pace over the weekend, I should get the new batch out before the next ones come in on Tuesday. My goal is to buy myself 24 hours with no grading to do.

How about you?

I wish I had time

...to write a real post about yesterday. It was my birthday, and the Supreme Court, who up until yesterday had seemed intent on rolling back civil rights to the 1950s, surprised me by giving me an excellent, excellent birthday present: an affirmation of equality for my LGBT friends.

Unfortunately, after all the excitement of yesterday, today is the day I head to the airport. In about 7 minutes, actually. But this morning I took one last walk through the streets of Bologna. Even though I was sad to be leaving, I found myself singing under my breath, smiling like an idiot at nothing, and walking with a spring in my step that was just short of breaking into a dance.  So. Much. Happy.

And now I leave, to return to a country that seems, while still highly imperfect, just a little better.

Arrivederci, Bologna.

An Excellent Start

Now that's the way to start the year!  Here are excerpts from an e-mail in my inbox this morning, regarding a grant I was awarded in 2011:

I am happy to be able to report to you that the grant you were awarded in 2011 will be sent out today. [...] We are sorry that this took so long, and appreciate your patience.  I am sure you are all aware of the economic situation in [funding country]; I imagine that many of you may had given up hope that you would ever see your grants, so I hope this news brings a bit of good cheer to your new year.

Ha! Because you know, just yesterday I had resolved to give up on this grant. The money was spent, so... whatever. And now? It's like money fallen from the sky!

Also: I recently found out that my book (its story to be found here) got a prize. So, that's also nice.

No... it's better than nice. Blogger doesn't support GIFs, so I invite you to click here to see a truly excellent happy dance.

Here are a couple of pictures from what I was doing in between panels at the AHA. As you can see, I need to go back with more time, and more lenses.

French Quarter, 7:15 a.m.

Portrait of frequent commenter "Susan"

New Orleans has the world's coolest cemeteries.

Happy 2013!

Feeling good about this

21 days since my last cigarette.

I still have a residual sore throat, but I think I'll survive it.

Yay, me.