Category Archives: writing

A Special Kind of Hell

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I seem to have hit that special place in finals.

Here’s a convoluted mixed metaphor for you:

Kid's got it right....

Writing a paper is like birthing a baby.  At first you start with your research.  That little niggling idea at the back of your head that’s based on something which you think you know but really have only the slightest idea about.  Maybe you’ve babysat it in the past.  Maybe you’ve flirted with it while walking by on the street.  In any case, you know it exists, you know that other people have done something like it, but you’re ready to try it for yourself now.

So you research and you research and you go along at a fair clip and one day, you realize, this has taken over your life.  This is all you do.  The only thing you want to talk about is your paper.  The only thing you can think about is this thing.  And it’s stressful and time-consuming and you can’t imagine that it’ll ever be done, but there’s so much to do, and at the same time that deadline is looming Damocles-like over your head (no matter how far off it may seem).

And then, one day, you sit down at your desk for hours and you create.  You stack up your research, you write, you attempt to gain some semblance of hold over what it is that you’ve found over the past few months/years.  And at the end, exhausted and brain mushy, you collapse in your chair knowing that this is only the beginning.

Now it’s time to hone, refine, attempt to comprehend what you’ve created.  It’s still in its infancy so it takes some time and sensitivity to really understand the personality of what it is that you’ve made.  You need to listen, but at the same time be a bit harsh with it, but not too harsh because then you’ll just convince yourself that you suck at everything.  You need to know when it’s time to write and know when it’s time to quite for the day and understand that some days will be better than others.

You sit at the forge and hone.  You grind off the spiky edges.  You adjust the awkward bits.  You crouch over your work in the most uncomfortable positions at the most uncomfortable of times because it needs to be perfected and challenged.  It needs to have the right amount of pressure put on it, the right amount of heat put under it, and the right amount of nurturing added to it.

And one day you think you’ll never get through it and god why did you even start this

Ah yes, mister Greenblatt. Someday I will have your career. Somehow.

project it’s so inane how could you ever think this was interesting you suck you suck you suck.  And the next day you realize that this isn’t half bad, in fact, it’s quite good.  It could really turn into something.  And the next day you realize maybe it has become something.  Maybe it’s worth something.  Maybe this is the elusive bit of “work” that you’ve been striving after for your whole career.  Maybe this is what makes you the next Stephen Greenblatt.

And, at some point, you need to let go.  You need to say “I’ve done everything I can” and, even though you know your little fledgling paper isn’t perfect, it needs to go out into the world and prosper.  Well… at least you hope it’ll prosper because an entire semester’s or year’s or years’ worth of work is on the line here and if it doesn’t prosper then it’s just a giant waste of time and your time really means something and can’t the professor/the professional world see how important this is to you and to the academy at large?

I’m thick in the drafting process of two papers, the third is still broiling on the back-burner and will need to be drafted in the next week.  As such, I feel like I’m riding a roller coaster of textual uncertainty.  The highs, the lows, the long nights with the firm knowledge that my martini glass is the only thing in the world that understands me.  It really makes me feel alive.  And by “alive” I mean exhausted on every possible level; physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Just a heads up, if the world has something important or potentially spirit-crushing or even slightly unpleasant to tell me, it should wait a few weeks.  Telling me now will only warrant a sure-fire over-reaction resulting in shouting, tears, physical violence, or potentially all of the above.

At the same time, that ever-creeping light at the end of the ever-narrowing tunnel keeps getting closer.  I can almost feel it on my face.  Oh the glorious resplendence of a break!  The conference preparation, the fellowship applications, the book reviews I’ve been putting off writing, the search for CFPs, the revision of publishable material, the preliminary tackling of the comps list, the… oh hell who am I kidding.  Breaks don’t exist.  I’m a grown-up now.  I’m lucky if I get a few moments to glance mournfully at my knitting basket.

I guess my comfort lies in the fact that, despite all of this, I’m still happy with my life choices.  I guess I am doing something right.

Three’s a Crowd

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So I have a new roommate.

We seem to get along pretty well. He’s into theatre (like… REALLY into theatre), he’s directed a bunch of stuff (even a lot of Shakespeare which is neat because we can talk about it at great length), he’s written a few published items, he’s smart, talented, and really I don’t think I’m over-emphasizing how great he is when I say he’s a visionary and the voice of a generation. He demands a lot of attention though and I’ve found that spending time with him has really cut into my social time (as well as hours I can devote to other projects). He just has a lot to say and I find that, when I think a conversation has finished, it’s only just beginning. He could talk for hours and hours.

Well, I guess he has the prerogative to do so since he is an eighty-seven year old man.

I’m getting to the point now, though, that I really wish he’d just stop talking. I mean, I know a great deal about him (and you can always know more, but sometimes there’s knowing someone and KNOWING someone and you really don’t need to KNOW everybody). His stories are beginning to conflict. I’m starting to develop cross information and mixed signals. It may just be that he’s somewhat forgetful…

To make matters worse, the more I know the more I feel like I’m obligated to tell other people when I go to introduce him. It’s no longer good enough to say “Hey, this is Peter and he’s a director.” Now I have to tell them about the shows he’s directed, the places he’s lived, random bits about his personal life… I mean, most of his accounts are professional so I don’t know too inordinately much about his personal life (not enough to be awkward at least) but I do know a thing or two.

His presence in my apartment is really beginning to put a cramp on my life. I have spent the weekend almost entirely devoted to him. Tonight I’m home alone with him while my roommate goes out gallivanting with her girlfriends. I mean, he’s not possessive or anything, but I’m beginning to wonder if my obsession with him is bordering on “unhealthy”. I feel like he’s watching me every time I sit down at my desk to type. He does tend to hang out on my desk (and sometimes even on my desktop). I’ve pushed Jerry aside in favor of his company multiple times. I even precluded plans with other friends to hang out with Peter. Tonight I started googling childhood images of him and I’m in the process of making a powerpoint about all the things I’ve learned…

He does have a charming accent though, so that helps matters a bit.

….working on a big scary presentation about RSC founding Director Peter Brook. I feel

The B-Man

like that’s all I have to talk about these days. Would love to review Whistler in the Dark’s Dogg’s Hamlet Cahoot’s Macbeth or The Donkey Show (both of which I saw in this past week), but am unable to wrap my brain around anything that doesn’t involve my new English beau.

Oh, and by the way, night-time Pajama-clad trips to the library didn’t go out of style in your undergrad. Or at least I hope they didn’t because if they did, I’m about to commit a gigantic fashion faux-pas. Maybe if I wait long enough, the library will empty of credible witnesses…

Exercises in Style

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Today I called my mom, then went to the gym.  When I returned, I made an appointment for my car to have an oil change.  I am now doing copious amounts of laundry.  None of this is apropos to anything I usually talk about on this blog.  Luckily school starts the week after next which should provide plenty of fodder for blogging.  The first hints of nerves have hit.  Also luckily, there is an abundance of shipyard pumpkinhead in my fridge.  Coincidence?  I think not.

A La Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It had not escaped my attention that my living companion had neglected, for some time now, domestic duties which certainly required due and diligent attendance.  The laundry had piled up, telephone messages accumulated, and vehicles required certain regular maintenance.  She must have gotten in a mood this particular afternoon as once she began to take care of these things, she continued until they were well and truly attended to.  Of course, the usual personal habits of my living companion are not generally fodder for my notes, but in the lack of any cases this week these habits make an appearance due to a gross under-abundance of things to speak about.  I am hoping that should change in the coming weeks, what with new stimulation vis-à-vis the scholarly inclination to speak.  For the moment, she seems to be dousing any dullness in the comforting depths of foaming beauty that is beer.

A La James Joyce

Riverun past phone call past mother past gym.  Returning to the sound of a necessary

L. Moholy-Nagy's graphic organizer of Finnegan's Wake... yea... not even people who claim to understand this book understand this book

beep requiring attention in the vehicular department.  Thumping suds and clean sheet pave the way towards an afternoon of adjustment, broaching topics previously abandoned.  Pools of disinterest.  Chug Chug Chug down the way towards more open pastures.  Butterflies flutter lightly.  Rivers of beer slide slippingly, trippingly, dippingly.  There are no coincidences.

A La Kurt Vonnegut

A mundane phone call followed by the mundane motions of exercise ensued followed by the even more mundane task of laundry.  She didn’t like doing laundry, but she liked having clean sheets.  None of this is really very interesting.  To her, it was simply the facts of living as she did.  She hoped life would be more interesting in the following weeks, but for the meantime had a cold beer.  She liked beer.

A La J.R.R. Tolkein

 Danielle daughter of Jennifer daughter of Sulamith stood speaking fervently to her matriarchal ancestor, planning the upcoming excursion to the land of York.  She set down her telephone, bidding the messenger farewell as she did so.  She then proceeded to step outside her door for her semi-daily constitutional (humans are well known for such tendencies, though those from her homeland of York were perhaps best renown for it).  When the constitutional had met its end, she returned home through the summer air.  The pavement was gray as a goosehawk’s back and the leaves at their greenest.  The temperature was moderate, and the week’s weather patterns had proven reliable for such things.  As she returned to her abode, she set about the mundane tasks which demanded her attention and hardly need mentioning here.  They are the same sort which her ancestors performed, and their ancestors before them, and which perhaps would have caught the attention of a scholar or wizard only in their quirky deviations from the mundane.  With luck, the coming weeks would provide activity which would merit mentioning (of course, provided the weather held).  These activities provide a certain level of anxiety for Danielle daughter of Jennifer daughter of Sulamith, but she quelled the feeling with the liberal application of fine ales.

A La Eugene Ionesco

everyone, however, understand Rhinoceros.

What started as a normal day devolves into chaos as a rhinoceros rips through the scene.  Danielle enters chewing on several blades of grass.

Shakespeare by Another Genre

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Apologies for the radio silence last week.  You see, I found myself enraptured in an impromptu project which occupied all of my brainpower at the week’s end.  I could barely type full sentences, much less eloquent ones.

And it’s because of this.

Every year, gamechef holds a week-long RPG writing competition.  They give you a theme which must be the focal point of your game, then four elements of which you must include three.  This year’s theme was Shakespeare.

As you can imagine, the prospect made me incredibly excited… though my geek card had yet to be punched in the “writes RPGs” department.  Luckily, I have some pretty awesome and smart friends who were willing to walk me through the process and collaborate with me to boot!

So here it is; “Revenge of the Groundlings”.  We are pretty proud of it, and I hope you can glean some enjoyment from it as well.

Extra special thanks to my cohort, Mister Brian Paul, as well as Steph Tyll for her layout expertise and Angelo Calderone for bouncing some factual concepts with me.

>The Birth of a Paper

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After a whirlwind weekend of just-enough-could-have-been-too-much, I am back and banging out the work like nobody’s business.
This past weekend was the NEPCA 2010 conference at which I finally gave the ill-fated vampire paper (ill-fated due to its previous fledgling attempts at coming into the world which involved a volcano thwarting my conference-going experience).  The paper was well received and despite feeling slightly out-classed by the insane lunch-time ballroom of awesome in which we were wined and dined, I managed to keep things together and deliver a pretty solid presentation. 
Now that I’m back in New Jersey, I’ve hit the ground running this week.  I have a pile of grading, the Austen midterm looming, and PhD applications to roll out.  If I emerge from this month with my sanity, I will count myself lucky.
I’ve had several people ask about my drafting process for a paper.  How do you go from concept to product, what steps do you take, and how does this all come together?  As I’m currently in the throes of such a process, there’s no time like the present to take you through this.  Thanks to my handy dandy iPhone, it will be a multi-media presentation.

So, here it is.  Papers like a pro in five easy, simple, arduous and time-consuming, hellish, easy-to-follow steps.

Step One: Research
Honestly, it’s a toss-up whether step one is research or paper conception.  Sometimes I have an idea and know just what I want to write about.  Sometimes it’s a little more amorphous.  Either way, early in the process I hit the stacks.  This is good old Dana library:
Don’t let her measly exterior fool you.  She may be small, but she be fierce… and she has mad ILL connections, yo.  I order books and articles which I then take back to my lair (sometimes after bashing them over the head and dragging them).
This is my reading corner/bookshelf.  Please ignore the mess, eccentric genius at work.
As I have previously mentioned, I compile my research into a word document.  Single-spaced, times new roman, size twelve font.  All the citations I need and all the quotes I may or may not want go into this document.  When the single-spaced document is the approximate length of my double-spaced paper, I know it’s time to move on.
Step Two: “Pile it up”
I’m a kinesthetic learner.  This does not mesh well with English lit.  Since I am so tactile, I really have to be able to touch the way my argument is shaped before I make it.  In order to contend with this, I have developed the following tactic.
I print out my word document and cut up the research into little bits.  I label each bit with a number corresponding to the citation where it came from.  Then I literally pile the bits into “concepts”.  I put the things that feel like they go together in their own piles.  I label the piles with post-its and take notes on my thoughts/ideas as they occur to me.  The entire process looks like this:
It does take a great deal of space, so I usually use my floor rather than any civilized table.  Sitting on the ground with my research arrayed around me makes it feel more visceral, more real, a rush and tumult of ideas and notions right there at my fingertips.  Writing papers this way means literally getting down and dirty with the text.
I re-arrange the piles to correspond with how the argument will lay out.  Basically, my floor becomes a soundboard for the paper.  By the time I’m done with this, I’m usually pretty burnt out so it’s time for step three…
Step Three: A Shower
No, really, I leave my research in piles on the floor, and go take a shower.  It gives me time to clear my head, it helps me put my thoughts in order, and for whatever reason I always have my best ideas in the shower.
This step is sometimes repeated if I get stuck against a brick wall.  Something about hot water and nice-smelling soap just makes my brain work better.  You can tell how much trouble a paper is giving me by how nice I smell.
….no pictures for this one, sorry.
Step Four: Preliminary Vomit Draft
Once thoroughly clean, I make a pot of tea and prepare for the long haul.  This is my least favorite step in the drafting process.  I pre-format my headers and footers, I insert a place-marker for my title (usually “better title to follow”), and I make myself write.  Usually this is little more than me inserting quotes in an order which makes sense to me with nominal input from my own thinking.  This input is no more than a sentence here or there as to what my argument is, where it’s going, etc. 
Generally, this draft is awful.  The important thing about it is that it exists.  It gets me past the blank-screen-blinking-cursor-of-doom, and it gets me really mulling through my paper.  Most importantly, it gets me to my favorite part of the entire process…
Step Five: Drafting
There is nothing more satisfying to me than a good red-penning.  Nothing.  The rush of crossing things out.  The flourish of adding new writing.  The excitement of shifting paragraphs.
Contemporary pedagogical theory says that we, as writing teachers, should never red-pen our students’ work.  We should keep our markings on their papers to a minimum, and probably in pencil rather than anything else.  But it’s so niggling to know that something is wrong and you can’t just fix it… so upsetting to have this inkling that a swoosh of ink would make it just fine…
But with my own work, I can tell myself I’m wrong as much as I want without harming my ego!
More importantly, this is where the real writing takes place.  This is where my ideas are honed, crafted, added, revisited, and overall made smart.  In general, it takes me six to eight drafts to produce a solid ten to twenty page paper.  The progression of the drafts is as such:
Draft One: vomit draft, nobody look, let’s pretend this never happened.
Draft Two: this will never be done on time, why can’t I write anything, god I’m an awful human being and can’t formulate a smart thought to save my life.
Draft Three: this… wasn’t as bad as I had thought.  I mean, it still needs work, but it’s got some potential.  This may just be pretty good when it’s all done…
Draft Four: I say some pretty smart things in here.  Not sure I’m ready to turn it in, but I’d consider letting someone I trust maybe have a look at this…
Draft Five: Not bad, not bad if I do say so myself.  Gotta double-check for typos.
Draft Six: Oh bloody hell, this part doesn’t belong at all, why did I let myself write a paragraph that has nothing to do with anything and…. Well maybe I’ll just take it out.
Draft Seven: I think this is done.  I hope this is done.  Typo on page seven.  Gotta re-print.
Draft Eight: Okay, putting this on the prof’s desk whether it’s done or not.  I can’t stand to look at this anymore.  …maybe if I just add this bit of criticism it’ll be perfect and… no.  We’re turning it in.
Of course, no writing is ever finished.  I could draft until the world burns doomsday.  Like starting a piece, “finishing” is sometimes just a matter of “put the paper down and step away from the keyboard”. 
In any case, the Austen paper is currently hovering above draft three.  I’m not sure if it’ll make it to eight on time…. But right now, I’m feeling pretty accomplished.