If you have a project in mind after the one you are completing now, as I usually do, this could present a problem. The next project could demand to be started; it could cannibalize your present efforts. My rule is not to think too much about future projects, keep them at the level of fantasy. Oftentimes, the next project is not even the next project, but a kind of distracting notion that I should be doing something else, anything else, because I am sick to death of the current project.
My next book was going to be on Antonio Gamoneda. Then it was supposed to be another book on Lorca. Then it was going to be two books, one on performativity in poetry and the other on Spanish modernism. Then the performativity book and the modernism project collapsed into a single book, which has a chapter on Gamoneda from the first book-that-never-was, plus elements from the other three ideas.
Now my next project is nicknamed (for internal use only) Another Damned Lorca Book. I don't yet know whether it is just reflecting my sense that I have more to say about Lorca I cannot fit in What Lorca Knew, or whether it's something I really need to write. In any case, there will be a volume 6 of my complete critical works, but I'm not sure it will be end up being ADLB or not.
Blogging is actually great for generating new ideas and discussing them without actually having to begin them. I will be blogging on Bemsha Swing a good deal about ADLB.
3 comments:
Based on the 43 folders idea I am thinking of bringing back some uses of paper files I gave up at one point, but which my electronic versions of never worked so well.
I had a box in which I would put (not even file, just put) index cards on which I wrote down the ideas I had that wouldn't fit into the current project. I'd pick a card for random inspiration if I got stuck, and put it back.
Then after the current project was finished I would actually sort those cards and see what they looked like as a corpus; that would give me the idea of the true shape of the next project.
That's an amazing idea. I should try that one.
I like the idea, too!
It's very useful to see a project develop from the very start and learn about how you organize it.
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