When Things Aren't Going So Well

Despite this profusion of good advice and handy though stupid tricks, you'll still find yourself stuck or stalled sometimes--unable to get into a good rhythm, your articles rejected. You might go through a bad spell of a month or even a year or two. Now it's time for a deep re-evaluation. The problem is likely to be one of deep motivation. Maybe you aren't doing the kind of scholarly writing you really want to be doing? Write out the following sentence: "What I really want to be working on is ?????" Then fill in the blank. Now figure out why you're not already writing about what you want to be writing about.

Vacation

I am going to take a vacation from writing during the last two weeks of July: 18-31. This is something I very rarely do, because being a productive scholar is what I most enjoy. For me, taking a vacation from everything else in order to write is my ideal. Normal life is what I find stressful. But I just will need at some point to stop for a few weeks just to see if that will help me in the long run.

You won't notice a difference here, because I write these posts several weeks in advance. This post, for example, was written on June 16 but is scheduled for publication on June 29. As long as I'm 14 days ahead when I start I won't have to write even blog posts during the vacation.

Paper

We call a "paper" a "paper" because it is written on paper. In this blog we've been examining some metaphors for writing, but this is a classic metonymy, like a "glass" of water. Container for the thing contained? Not quite, more like "writing surface for the thing written on it." The same way we might call a painting a "canvas" when what is important is not the canvas but the paint.

If you use better pens and inks, then you will find the need to use better paper as well, because fountain pen ink doesn't tend to do well with the cheap stuff. I just got a nice Clairefontaine notebook when I was in New York. I like Rhodia pads for the paper, but don't like their vertical orientation very much. Some go for Moleskin, but I don't find it great for fountain pens because it doesn't want to absorb any ink.

Much like fountain pens, even if they cost 75 bucks, get to be cheaper than bics that are rapidly thrown out or lost, good paper will tend to last longer: you will use it more economically in the long run, find more specialized and creative uses for them. I use cheap pads too, mind you. In fact, if is not a Rhodia pad or Clairefontaine, it should be as cheap as possible. With so much information exchanged electronically, we will have "papers" published on line that will have never been "papers" in the literal (or metonymic) sense at any stage of their production. At some point paper itself will only have a raison d'être as a craft or luxury item. The fountain pen may well outlast the bic.

The To-Do List With a Single Item (cont.)

It turns out that that the thing you are supposed to be doing is the hardest to do. Here's my work log for the summer so far:


Grade Student papers / submit grades May 12
Reviewed article for [Academic Journal] May 21
Reviewed article for [Academic journal] June 10
Professor X's (at XXU) tenure letter June 12
Review of "Poesia y química" June 13
Finish conference talk June 14

etc...

You'll notice that I did all these things, but the "to do list with a single item" had something else on it, something that I did not do / have not done yet. I kept putting other, smaller tasks before the single item on my list. So maybe my idea of the list with a single item was not so brilliant after all. It works fine, as long as you don't want to actually do main thing you set out to do.

More Stealth

The stealth attack requires some advance preparation. You need to know when to attack and have all the materials ready. The idea is to take a week when you will have some time to get as much as possible written on a particular chapter. You won't necessarily finish it: the idea is to sneak up behind it and get a lot done before the chapter or article has time to put up any defenses. If it sees you coming and you lose the element of surprise then it will never let you get a lot of work done on it.

Once you get 80% of it done you will basically have won. The article or chapter will no longer be able to put up serious resistance.

A Year of Reading

The rules for the year of reading is that I cannot write anything for publication or accept any new commissions. I will write in notebooks about my reading, and maybe blog a bit too. Things I've written previously might come out during this time. I can either stagger the year so that I don't miss an entire calendar year of writing, or else not stagger it so I don't lose parts of two separate years. The idea is that I will have another book coming out before I start the year of not writing, so my scholarly productivity will not suffer.

My topic will be Latin American poetry. I will read almost nothing but that for a year.

Writing in Ink with Feldman

I've always hated pencils for writing, associating them with elementary school where I was a slow learner. I use pens for everything, including crossword puzzles. The composer Morton Feldman was in my camp:

As a rule I write in ink. It sharpens one's concentration. Erasure gives you the illusion you're going to make a more meaningful solution. If Beethoven wrote in ink he would have had an easier time of it.

(Give my Regards to Eighth Street, 207)

I work with a pen and that's a very interesting phenomenon because when I work with a pen everything is crossed out. Some pages there is nothing crossed out and it's usually those pages when there is something of a continuity.

(Ibid. 162-63)

I have always found it more beneficial to experiment with fountain pens than with musical ideas.

(Ibid. 63).