Oh, right: I'm supposed to be writing now.

I'll be honest: I'm having something of a struggle getting into a rhythm now that my exams are done. I've been so focused on them for so long that the process of churning out intelligent prose seems daunting, even a little overwhelming. Or a lot overwhelming.

Plus, you know, there's grading. Which is going slowly and isn't being helped by my attitude and isn't being helped by the only way I can motivate myself sometimes is to keep a little window open to Netflix so I can watch something half-brainless.[1] I strive for 2 papers per episode, but when I'm tired that goes down to 1 paper per episode. If it goes longer than that, it's time to either (a) turn off the show, or (b) stop grading. Usually B.

But a whole day of grading-plus-dumb-TV makes for a really unsatisfying life. I find myself going to bed feeling crappy about myself and about my work and about the organization of books on my shelf and about the music on my iPhone and about, well, everything. If I write, well then, then I feel much better.

I've written just about every day (except yesterday. Yesterday was not good), but a few days it has been only for five minutes and it hasn't been any writing that really gets me anywhere. It's on topic, at least, but it's mostly high-level, thinking-about-the-big-issues stuff. Important, sure, but I can do that kind of writing all day long and never actually get anywhere. To really feel good, to know that I'm moving forward, I need to sit down and spread out some books and some notes and write something with substance, something that's attached to my primary texts or at least to significant scholarship.

I did some of that this morning. I wrote about a page for my prospectus (the intro section where I lay out the big picture and the theoretical framework and the scholarship to date) that counts as that kind of writing. It'll surely get revised down to about two sentences, but it is something. And it felt good.

So my progress for the week so far is one page of purposeful, happy writing and a few handwritten pages of mushy meandering writing/thinking. I've also just about finished reading a scholarly book and have waded through the numerous introductions leading up to a primary work I've recently added to my stable of primary works under consideration.



NOTES

[1] My half-brainless stuff-to-watch-while-grading used to be Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but I've now watched every episode on Netflix. I've started watching Bones, but it's not as good as L&O:CI. In fact, Bones is pretty dumb and it is both simplistic and condescending at the same time. But it is nice to have Emily Deschanel on screen.