Session 2,Week 2
Ok, first time posting and a little nervous in case this doesn't work!
The photo is inspired by JaneB's post last week reminding us that writing should be fun. I took some time in the afternoon last Thursday, when none of the archives were open, to go for a walk round Toledo, found a little garden with a cafe, and sat and wrote. It's been a while since I did any writing in different settings and enjoyed it, so thank you Jane for the prompt.
This week's prompt is partly inspired by Dame Eleanor's tribute to Elizabeth Anne Mitchell, which mentioned among other things her blogs on writing. I'd like to hear what kinds of writing, or writers on writing, you find inspiring. This prompt also comes out of self-interest, as I haven't actually read many writers on writing and think I should. The closest is probably Virginia Woolf's diaries, which have some great passages on writer's block, on how it feels when prose is flowing and how different kinds of writing - keeping a diary, writing reviews - helped her as a novelist. I'm actually reading Stephen King's On Writing at the moment, and am not that impressed yet, but maybe there's better to come. And I was introduced a year ago to a podcast, In Writing, where writers talk about writing - where they write, routines, what works for them etc. But I'd love more, if people have favourites.
I sometimes find styles of writing inspiring, which is harder to explain. I love Sarah Moss's books and find there's something about her prose and the way she can describe quite everyday stuff like routines energising, if that doesn't sound weird.
Last week's goals:
JaneB
1) self care. this week's goals are about setting baselines - recording what I actually do, and making some brainstorming lists of different things that might be useful to try, or worth doing, or just need to be on a list I can access when I'm stressed and can't think of anything to make for dinner... oh, and I will aim to sort through the small green bucket of random post from Spring which I never opened. Sigh. There is... more of that than I like to admit (did I mention I recently found out I have ADHD? Let's just say that _everything_ I read about ADHD seems to be an "so it's not just me being pathetic?" moment right now. It's not an excuse - I still need to improve a lot of things, especially after all the stresses of the last three years - but it's an explanation of WHY I get into these stupid Jane-ish messes and why some things other people seem to do easily are just unbearably difficult some days, and somehow feeling less inadequate helps. I'm an academic, explanations HELP).
2) Researcher. reschedule meetings for poor abandoned multi-author paper and other paper with FormerPDF. Focus is Wish-we-never-started project - at least 5 hours of work on my part of that needs to happen, on top of meetings.
3) Teaching: read/comment on a lump of text for Senior Grad Student. Hopefully find out about the summer-only MSc projects. Do the end of year paperwork following on from the Happy Sheets. Deal with whatever comes up (we're still at the "loads of emails" stage of the year & will be until marks are out).
4) fun. hopefully play D&D this coming weekend (this one was a no-go because of the dread exam season for most of the players), and work on the 'Lithrops' blanket - I made a solid amount of progress during the virtual conference yesterday and the body is done, I now get to start the border! So that's exciting... oh, and finish the current non-fiction book I'm reading, it's interesting enough to finish but the writing style is like one of those ultra-annoying documentries which keeps switching to dramatic re-enactment (with a lot of repetition throughout the episode and series) with loud cinematic music then back to interesting information so it is a bit chore-like. But I'm past the half way point!
2) Researcher. reschedule meetings for poor abandoned multi-author paper and other paper with FormerPDF. Focus is Wish-we-never-started project - at least 5 hours of work on my part of that needs to happen, on top of meetings.
3) Teaching: read/comment on a lump of text for Senior Grad Student. Hopefully find out about the summer-only MSc projects. Do the end of year paperwork following on from the Happy Sheets. Deal with whatever comes up (we're still at the "loads of emails" stage of the year & will be until marks are out).
4) fun. hopefully play D&D this coming weekend (this one was a no-go because of the dread exam season for most of the players), and work on the 'Lithrops' blanket - I made a solid amount of progress during the virtual conference yesterday and the body is done, I now get to start the border! So that's exciting... oh, and finish the current non-fiction book I'm reading, it's interesting enough to finish but the writing style is like one of those ultra-annoying documentries which keeps switching to dramatic re-enactment (with a lot of repetition throughout the episode and series) with loud cinematic music then back to interesting information so it is a bit chore-like. But I'm past the half way point!
heumihi
1. Return to ch. 2 (I was at a conference for the last few days) and see where I am
2. Add Peter, Goscelin, and maybe MP sections
3. Read AF to see if she's relevant
4. Make a modest 5 pages
5. Submit receipts, mow, catch up on the ordinary stuff of life
2. Add Peter, Goscelin, and maybe MP sections
3. Read AF to see if she's relevant
4. Make a modest 5 pages
5. Submit receipts, mow, catch up on the ordinary stuff of life
Dame Eleanor
1000 words or more on article expansion
- read Relevant Medieval Romance
- do some financial research
- e-mail 3 friends
- write to great-niece
- make a pair of earrings
- read Relevant Medieval Romance
- do some financial research
- e-mail 3 friends
- write to great-niece
- make a pair of earrings
humming42
Make the list of session goals!
Wrap up everything from the Spring semester
Revisit Boredom and create a 2-week plan to finish the draft
Wrap up everything from the Spring semester
Revisit Boredom and create a 2-week plan to finish the draft
Susan
Set session goals, keeping things flexible. We're thinking of you.
Thank you for the good thoughts.
ReplyDeleteMy mother died on Friday morning, so most of this week will be NOT WORK. I'm mostly dealing with stuff (we have taken many bags to the Goodwill, and many bags to the trash) and my siblings (who are basically great). The memorial is on Thursday. I may or may not go to my brother's for the weekend. (Trying to decide whether I want company, or to catch up with myself.)
Goals for this week are miniscule:
1. Finish almost complete task that was officially due on Friday.
2. Sort out reading assignments for the book prize
3. Be kind to myself and to my brother and sister.
I'm so sorry about your mother. It sounds like you and your siblings are being very organized, which is better than the alternative. I hope the memorial goes well; we'll be thinking of you that day. (This is DEH; Blogger is being squirrelly about logging me in.)
DeleteSo sorry about your mother. I feel for you on trying to decide whether you want company or not. One of the worst things about grief is not knowing what you want or need half the time, which makes all the well-meaning 'what can I do?' questions from friends really hard. As Dame Eleanor says, we'll be thinking of you on Thursday. Hope there are many happy memories to sustain you.
DeleteSo sorry for your loss Susan. Sending good thoughts and courage for the coming weeks and dealing with everything you need to do. Thinking of you and wishing you peace in this difficult time.
DeleteSusan, sending peace your way. I admire your appreciation for grieving in the ways you need to--and we can't know what we'll need until we are in the midst of it. Take good care.
DeleteSo sorry for your loss. I hope all the arrangements go smoothly and you find time and space to share the good memories amidst the sadness.
DeleteI'm so sorry. I hope that you'll find some peace and comfort in the days ahead.
DeleteOh, now it logs me in. Thpppbbbt. Anyway! Hola, Julie, gracias for the photo and letting us enjoy your archive trip with you!
ReplyDeleteOn writers about writing, Undine at Notofgeneralinterest has a label for that topic: https://notofgeneralinterest.blogspot.com/search/label/writers%20on%20writing
and I also like Jonathan Mayhew's Stupid Motivational Tricks blog, though the best stuff about writing is back towards the beginning, with 2011 being (IMO) an especially good year.
How I did:
- 1000 words or more on article expansion. NO. Maybe 250 plus some moving around of others.
- read Relevant Medieval Romance. About 200 lines of it.
- do some financial research. YES.
- e-mail 3 friends. ONE.
- write to great-niece. NO.
- make a pair of earrings. NO.
OTHER: met with grad student; met with undergrad director about fall course cancellation/reassigned time; organized cat sitting for June conference trip.
It was not a good week for work. Finding out for sure about Elizabeth Anne Mitchell, though I'd long had dire suspicions, knocked me sideways. I've spent a lot of time sitting by water and working on a difficult jigsaw puzzle (Tiffany peacock, here's a link: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0051/9290/8872/products/9781787558878-PT03_1024x1024.jpg?v=1587802915), both soothing activities.
There's stuff going on this week, some nice and some not, so I'm not going to set goals. Just say "no goals set" for me, and next week I'll report on what I did, if anything.
Sorry to hear it's a tough week this week as well. Sitting by water is a good thing to do. And thanks for the blog suggestions. Hope this week is kinder to you than expected.
DeleteSending you good thoughts... That is a rough week, EAM was such a lovely presence for so many years, she is missed... Sit by the water, look at the spring flowers, and do whatever brings you peace.
DeleteThe news definitely added an extra layer of grey to last week here too, on top of a lot. And I had some substantial dental work (in the chair for over an hour, sigh) and got extra anxious about it...
DeleteUgh, dental work does me in, too. Sorry you had a bad time. My Dreaded Thing is now over, so I'm going to try to enjoy the weekend and hope you can as well.
DeleteHow I did:
ReplyDelete1. Maximise time in archives - remember it's a reconnaissance mission, there will be chances to revisit stuff. -YES (mostly - couldn't resist temptation to request digital copies of some stuff and suddenly found I'd spent 69 euros. Oops!). As always, there is way more stuff than the online catalogues suggest.
2. Spend day i.e. rest of today frantically packing/briefing parents over childcare/celebrating daughter's birthday.- YES (note to self, try not to leave for archives the day after significant event)
3. Enjoy weekend with some of my Spanish family. - YES (particularly with my 93 great-aunt, who has essentially stood in for the grandmother I never got to meet. Although I did get some kind of food poisoning/bad reaction to something, which knocked out a chunk of it.)
This week's goals:
1. Maximise time in different set of archives Monday and Tuesday (I'm now in Burgos, and thinking of Susan especially, as it's full of people doing the Camino).
2. Claim expenses for trip.
3. Upload photos and write up notes before I forget what everything is.
4. Get ready for holiday next week.
Nothing better than being in the place where your work is so immediate and tangible! Hope you enjoy every minute!
DeleteLots of yes, and YAY for finding a lot more than you expected (one of my grad students finally got around to going to an archive and found a lot less than expected - there were multiple boxes but each was close to empty and nothing was missing according to the inventories - a good thing they're not central to their project)
DeleteIt sounds like a very busy and memorable week! I'm glad that you've had some good experiences; sorry about the food poisoning/reaction!
DeleteJoining in late because I’m traveling a lot this month, first week was field school (best teaching of the year, so much fun), and just got back from 2 weeks’ work in Spain (which was glorious!) and leaving again for a week-long conference tomorrow (much less glamorous location). I’m home for a grand total of 6 days this month…
ReplyDeleteWhat I like about writing (from last week’s prompt) – first thought is that I like “having written: (apologies to original writer who said that…). I do enjoy the rare times when it feels like words are flowing, but with the stuff I write it is almost always more mechanical than flowy. Which is fine, I don’t do great with flowy anyway. I do love making figures, which is a huge part of my kind of writing so I’m definitely counting that. But I have to say, my absolute favourite part of writing is working on revisions after getting comments back (either reviews or co-authors) and making the original better. Even bad reviews and extensive edits are fun for this, don’t know why…
The only fiction writer on writing I remember reading is Anne Lamott’s “Bird by bird”. She is funny and practical. My go-to for anything writing-related for me and mostly for students is Stephen B. Heard’s “A Scientist’s Guide to Writing” which is more a “how-to” than a “what I do” but is still personal enough to be engaging and is spot-on for actual advice.
This week’s goals
Two conference talks (write and give - hahahaha)
Write and submit small grant application
Write and give a bunch of reports for association stuff
Talk to lots of people at conference and have fun
Definitely have fun! That's the most important part...
DeleteMy group uses Robert Day's how to write & publish a scientific paper as our go-to book for academic papers - short chapters, a dry tone which encourages without being dictatorial, and it works pretty well.
DeleteI like Bird by Bird: it's funny and practical, and the number of times I tell myself *and my students* "shitty first drafts" cannot be counted. Also, Wendy Belcher's Writing your Journal Article in 12 weeks is sometimes useful.
DeleteWriters on Writing - for the mechanics of "how to write" I like Peter Elbow - 'Writing without Teachers", "Writing with power" - they helped me maximise the value of free-writing for me, think differently about writing in my teaching (most students in my STEM-leaning subject are not the kind of people who write much unless made to), and affirmed some of the things I'd sort of worked out for myself. For writing fun stuff, I mostly get inspired by reading different writers whose work I admire even if it's not what I want to actually produce (Diana Wynne Jones, TS Elliot, Ursula le Guin, Becky Chambers come to mind). Ursula le Guin's non-fiction writing is a consistent inspiration, Cassandra's short pieces were an early source, and "Save the Cat" has been helpful with my ongoing attempts to write a novel.
ReplyDeleteLAST WEEK GOALS:
Last week wasn't great - between dental anxiety and work stress, and the weather changing towards warm, I'm just not thriving.
1) self care. this week's goals are about setting baselines - recording what I actually do, making some brainstorming lists, and sort through the small green bucket of random post from Spring ish, no and yes
2) Researcher. reschedule meetings for poor abandoned multi-author paper and other paper with FormerPDF. Focus is Wish-we-never-started project - at least 5 hours of work on my part of that needs to happen, on top of meetings. yes and it's closer to done than we thought. No - no reply, she may be away or she may be mad at me, but. About 4 hours on the darn project.
3) Teaching: read/comment on a lump of text for Senior Grad Student. Hopefully find out about the summer-only MSc projects. Do the end of year paperwork following on from the Happy Sheets. Deal with whatever comes up (we're still at the "loads of emails" stage of the year & will be until marks are out). yes, yes-ish sigh I have three students allocated, yes, and ish
4) fun. hopefully play D&D this coming weekend (this one was a no-go because of the dread exam season for most of the players), and work on the 'Lithrops' blanket - I made a solid amount of progress during the virtual conference yesterday and the body is done, I now get to start the border! So that's exciting... oh, and finish the current non-fiction book I'm reading no due to exams again, yes (I finished the pattern-border but decided that I needed to add more border so had to order more yarn), and yes
COMING WEEK:
DeleteI think - I've spent the whole day fretting about it, and I'm 90% sure - that I'm going to give up taking part in the Marking and Assessment boycott. Because I appear to be the last person actually doing it at Northern Uni (weak local union branch, no support, and this boycott is HARD) - I got two emails about people dropping out so started to ask around and I think I am the last. Which is ridiculous - it has no effect on "the bosses", it just sets me up to be targetted, and the pay deduction is not something I can absorb if it's having no effect - I'd rather save against future strike action. But I am so stressed right now about ALL OF IT. Whatever I do will feel wrong...
1) self care. baselines again - recording what I actually do, making some brainstorming lists, and sort through the Pile On The Chair and the Pile In The Hall.
2) Researcher. Focus is Wish-we-never-started project - at least 5 hours of work. Also at least three "small jobs" (there are 5 or 6 on my rolling list).
3) Teaching: If I do quit the MAB then I have marking to occupy my time! On top of that, contact my summer-only MSc project students, make a summer list.
4) fun. hopefully play D&D this coming weekend (this one was a no-go because of the dread exam season for most of the players), and work on the 'Lithrops' blanket.
From what you've described, it sounds like the Marking Boycott is really only punishing *you* at this point, and you're the last person who deserves it. I say give it up with a clear conscience.
DeleteI agree with heu mihi! No point in punishing yourself.
DeleteI love this question about writers on writing. Building on Julie’s post, I’ll use Stephen King as an example of my sideways glance. I appreciate what King has to say, and I think that On Writing is a good read. But I don’t care to read any of his fiction, so I read On Writing more like a memoir than advice to other writers. On the other hand, I really love Ella Frances Sanders, who writes The Sometimes Newsletter (on Substack). She writes magical sentences. I also have a decades-long attachment to Natalie Goldberg, whose fiction I don’t love but who has twice helped me restart my habitual writing.
ReplyDeleteRevisiting my tiny goals from last week:
Make the list of session goals!: well, yes.
Wrap up everything from the Spring semester: Not quite.
Revisit Boredom and create a 2-week plan to finish the draft: Yes. The chapter has a reasonable word count and I am about a third of the way there. In rereading, I found a reference to a specific pandemic-related situation, in present tense. The closeness to and distance from pandemic is difficult to get my head around.
This week:
Get to ¾ completed for Boredom
Wrap up Spring!
Outline conference presentation for Squares
Finish reading current review book
Seconding the sideways glance at Stephen King - he's very successful but I am not the audience for his product nor do I wish to produce it, except in the most general of ways of wanting to produce coherent and pleasing writing.
DeleteTalking to current final year students who started with us online, or whose first year was the first pandemic year, really brought home the near-and-far-and-now of it - time has gone Most Peculiar, hasn't it?
I liked what King said about not making writing a central and important thing, or big intimidating deal, but fitting it into the corners and just getting it done.
DeleteJumping in quickly because it's already Tuesday and I'm going to forget to check in altogether if I don't just do it. Last week was somewhat busy for some reason--I spent four (!!) hours in on-campus meetings on Friday, which is a heck of a way to end a sabbatical, let me tell you. (There's still summer....) We also got our annual firewood delivery, so stacking that is a big part of our current chore load.
ReplyDelete1. Return to ch. 2 (I was at a conference for the last few days) and see where I am
YES. I did work on the chapter; I'm not sure what specifically I was going to do, but I did Things, so that's good.
2. Add Peter, Goscelin, and maybe MP sections
No (had the wrong passage), yes, decided MP gets one paragraph and that's it
3. Read AF to see if she's relevant
...Oh yeah! Yes, I did this. It was short. AF is moderately relevant and gets a couple of paragraphs in the conclusion.
4. Make a modest 5 pages
I made 10 pages! Or thereabouts. I sort of lost count. But more than 5. Maybe I'll actually finish my book-making project this summer, although it's way too early to count my chickens.
5. Submit receipts, mow, catch up on the ordinary stuff of life
Yes; husband did this; yes, whatever that entailed
I also brewed beer and moved the strike plate on my son's door, so that it finally closes properly.
This week:
1. Read over proofs of article for collection
2. Make more progress on ch. 2--trying to get the draft in reasonably good working order by 5/31
3. Enjoy the outdoors--irises, lupine, and day lilies are blooming; the May apples are peeking out from under their umbrella-leaves; my late-blooming lilac is about to; and the sweet William should be in full glorious color in a week or so
4. Allow myself some flexibility on routines. Treat them as menu options rather than requirements.
5. Get ready for parental visit this weekend
6. Make 5-10 pages
Doing Things is always productive! I often feel as if setting goals causes me to get something done, just not the something I actually thought I'd do (or maybe just to recognise the small somethings that just get done unnoticed without this group...)
DeleteI hope the conference was energizing! I decided I wasn't up to it this year, but in the past it has often been a real boost at the start of the summer.
DeleteDEH--It was fun! So nice to see people in person. But much smaller than in the past (from what I heard, there were about 1300 in person this year, compared to 3k in 2019). Not many panels on subjects of interest to my research, but a few really good teaching-related sessions.
DeleteJaneB--Today (Thursday) I really took the day off from my lists and instead got a lot of yard work done, trimmed the cats' nails, and watched a Netflix show over lunch. Bliss!