When Work Itself Becomes Procrastination

As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, my current writing project is getting a revise-and-resubmit put away before I need to pack up and move across the country for a fellowship year. This has involved reading books and articles written my people working in fields adjacent to my own, so I can make work on medieval history relevant to the non-medievalists who read this journal. So, off and on for the past month, I've been going through stacks of books and articles in fields not my own, in order to write perhaps two paragraphs for the introduction.

So, it is with pleasure that I report that I have at long last become more efficient: today, I collected six books from the library, immediately rejected two as irrelevant, and in a little over two hours, gutted the other four to extract the bits I needed. I also found three blessedly short articles that will help, printed them out, and am determined to be just as ruthless with them.

Of course, it occurs to me that, by working on these revisions, I may subconsciously be putting off working on the much more complicated and intimidating book manuscript. In honor of this bit of self-analysis, I am inaugurating a new "procrastination" subject label. I'm hoping I won't have too much occasion to use it over the next year, but I fear I might.

on reading for pleasure

I grew up surrounded by books, with weekly trips to the library, where I was eternally frustrated that my mom would only let me check out three books at a time. My parents read to me; later, I read to myself, for pleasure. I read Madeline l'Engel, trashy grown-up novels at sleepovers with friends where we giggled over the dirty parts, and historical fiction which led me semi-directly to my current career. So, whenever I'm in Home City, one of the places that I always make a point of stopping at least twice is Big Independent Bookstore. BIB is one of the last of a dying breed. But it's going strong.

The one in Home City has a number of branches in that town, and I visited two of them, and bought two academic books, and one novel (Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which has been on my "to read" list for about five years now). I loved being so surrounded by books that I could get lost. I loved the fact that the selection was determined by the owners and employees, not some national headquarters. I loved the fact that they sold books -- not CDs, DVDs, toys, character-licensed merchandise... just books. (Well, okay: there was coffee, too.)

But the best part of visiting BIB is that there are ample spaces to plonk yourself down and dive into a book, right there. And people were doing just that. =>

Now, with no children of my own, I read to my niece & nephew whenever I get a chance. And I love to see other adults doing the same. This kid is obviously engrossed, and there's not a hand-held video game in sight.

So, I invite readers out there (yes, all three of you) to use the comment space to shamelessly promote your favorite indie bookstores, and encourage you to patronize them, either in person or online. Let's make sure that the next generation of geeky little readers has the same opportunity as we do.

Arrived

I'm in Home City now, and as always, it's like I never left, for both good and ill. I'm staying at the family home, in a bedroom across the hall from the one I grew up in. I'm in a twin bed -- again, same as it ever was. And there is the inevitable low-frequency background hum of minor family drama. But I find it's like living in a high-traffic neighborhood: after a while, you get used to the noise, until you no longer notice it at all.

Home city is a wonderful place. And yes, I did bring a few photocopied articles with me. I'm determined to get through them while I'm here. But there are friends to visit, a great local bookstore to wallow in, and the general city ambiance to soak up. So, reports over the next couple of days are likely to have less than usual to do with matters academic.

Oh! But on several recommendations, I'm reading Anne Lamott's "Bird By Bird." I started it on the plane, and it's wonderful. For anyone looking to fall in love with writing again, this is a good place to start.

"Summers Off"

So, no posts lately. In part because I've had an out-of-town guest who just departed, and tomorrow I'm embarking on a trip to Home City, but largely because I've not done much of note. Yet we are at July 15, the official halfway point of the summer, and I have dilly-dallied, and find myself with little accomplished.

It is a constant of academic bloggers, contributors to the forums on the Chronicle of Higher Education, and academics in general that nobody understands that our "summers off" are anything but. We cry that we are researching, writing, developing courses... on and on. But my self-assessment at the halfway mark leaves me with a sobering realization: I do tend to treat summer as "time off," much more than I should, even though I know that I need to be working.

Now, this may not be a bad thing. After all, after pushing hard all year long, we need time to recharge the batteries a bit. We also need to do all those things that we didn't have time for while teaching (and yes, the 55-hour teaching workweek is no lie) -- things like schedule long-delayed medical appointments, visit the family, sleep more than six hours a night, and (my personal favorite) clean the house. Seriously, if you're not an academic, you have no idea what messes our houses can become the last six weeks of the semester. And, of course, like any working stiff, we need a bit of vacation time.

But, for me at least, this bit of slack can extend far into what is supposed to be productive work time. And for many of us, guilt becomes an inherent feature of relaxation.

So, I've finally hit the point where I'm ready to buckle down. But now it's off for a week with friends and family. And yes: I'll be bringing reading with me.

Words! Actual Words! (and a note about footnotes)

Okay, so many of them are reworked from an earlier piece. And it still needs a bit of "thickening-up" with secondary sources. And I have no idea what the analytical throughline is going to be with this particular bit. But screw it: I GOT 941 WORDS TODAY! According to my handy-dandy word-count tracker, this brings me a full percentage point closer to my goal.

And now, the part of the post dedicated to my friend Not Nurse Ratched: One of the things that I did today was to pull 90% of the discursive footnotes up into the text. Now, unlike NNR, I do not believe that footnotes are a pernicious evil second only to pedophiles and people who text-message on their cell phones in movie theaters. I am a fan of discursive notes, which can allow an author to explore an interesting tangent without disrupting the flow of the argument at hand. However, I am bowing to the reality that, even among academic publishers, the trend is towards endnotes. As a reader, I find endnotes endlessly obnoxious -- all that flipping back and forth to find out where your author got any bit of information. But even worse is the reality that the reader is less likely ever to read your stunning-but-tangential insights, rendered in beautiful and sometimes witty prose** if your notes are at the back of the book, rather than at the bottom of the page. I hate to waste what wit I have. So it's into the text with as much of it as I can possibly manage.


**Think I'm kidding? Read the notes -- footnotes, mind you -- to David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence. His argument in the text is incisive and original, and he sticks to it throughout. Below the footnote line, however, lurk all those stories that don't necessarily fit, but that are just too damned good to leave out.

Books 'n' Veggies

Today, inspired by the blog of one of my dearest and oldest friends The Lazy Gardener, I bought a copy of Leanne Kitchen's The Produce Bible. No, I'm not planning on taking up gardening, but I am close to several farmers' markets, and have always wanted to be the kind of person who could base meals around what was fresh and in season. This book is very cool: it has a four- to eight-page section on about a zillion fruits, veggies, and nuts, each introducing the item in question, the season it's best in, how to select one, and then a few simple recipes featuring each. Oh -- and the photographs of both raw materials and finished dishes are gorgeous. I can't wait to take it for a spin.

But never let it be thought that there was no work accomplished. Au contraire! No, no actual words yet. But I did take an important set of steps:

1. I outlined, more or less, what I need to do in the last third of the chapter I am working on.

2. I went through my document files, and picked out the documents that corresponded to each sub-section of the outline.

3. I decided on which two subsections I was going to work on first (LESSON ALERT: break chapters down into manageable three-page chunks; these are easier to envision yourself actually writing than trying to think of the whole chapter, or even major section of a chapter).

4. I ordered up the books and articles that I will need to work on those particular sections.

Which left me at 9:15 with plenty of time for fun: blogging, and now a movie rental, with soda and popcorn.

A Very Good Day, I think.

Starting the Next Phase

Today I finally did it: I got to the phase where I've ordered up materials for an actual, real-live chapter. I've started going through some older documents, too, and deciding what the final categories for this chapter should be. It may not be much, but it's something.

And in other news: it's my birthday. I'm not yet pushing 40, I don't think, but I am now most definitely pulling 30. But right now, I feel like that's no big deal.