The book was an albatross around my neck. I thought we always needed to be working on the proverbial longer book project, but I have had tenure for almost 30 years, and I've already published 5 books. Once I renounced the book, it became clear that I had enough material for an infinite number of articles. It will be finite, because I won't live forever, but I have enough material for the rest of my career in the research I have already done. I also won't have to worry if I write an article about a non-Lorquian subject.
I awoke in the morning and began to write the first paragraph of the first article in my head, before even getting out of bed. After some coffee and the wordle and spelling bee, I began to write it, and quickly got to 300 words.
If your prose is not flowing out clearly and beautifully, it is because you haven't defined your relationship to the subject matter and to your own project with enough clarity.
3 comments:
Articles are FAR more interesting.
Really this is true. I wanted to book guy and not article guy for a long time, but that is just ego and professional expectations combining in a toxic cocktail of frustration.
"Blogposts are the first intensity." (E.P.)
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