I'm getting nervous about the Victorian project again. I've frozen up so many times on this project (more than I've recorded here) and I always seem to freeze up in the matter of beginnings and structure. Even since its humble beginnings as an abstract last fall, my idea about this particular section of this particular poem has resisted my attempts to frame and situate it. Somehow, I managed to muddle through and get the abstract selected. Then there was the conference paper--same problem. I ended up writing a lame-ish intro just to get it done and figured that since I was the first paper on the morning's first panel on the last day of the conference, no one would really remember it anyway. And I think I was mostly right in this and was much praised afterwards--except for when Adviser told me later that someone had said to him that things were a little slow at the beginning. Two months ago, when I was writing up a pitch of sorts to VIE--same problem, and this time a fraught conversation with The Professor in West Village Coffeeshop ensued. (He was good at that particular function, when I could get him to actually help me with it rather than tell me to go reread a certain book which works better for him than for me because he never really understood what I was asking.) And so I threw something up.
Now, obviously, since I'm in a revision stage at the moment, based on a number of incredibly generous and thoughtful suggestions from VIE (seriously, dude is *amazing* and I never would have believed a year ago that I would be on a somewhat still starstruck and tentative first-name basis with him....), I have an introduction, right? But I'm not happy with it. Thematically, it privileges one part of my argument over all the others, and it's somewhat embarrassing that the name of the poet I'm discussing doesn't appear until page 6. (Did I mention that, if all goes well, this is appearing in a bicentennial issue of this particularly important journal for said poet?) Not okay. So there's the part where, from a structural standpoint, I need to raise certain issues earlier like, you know, the section I'm discussing. And then there's the fact that the intro that I'm trying to write my way out of was the result of some spectacular time-wasting on Google Books--lots of impressive sleuthing and a surprise encounter with Mrs. Gaskell ensued, but I'm a little bit wary of presenting this to the audience of this journal and people who are actually seasoned Victorianists without doing some archival work that I don't have the time or ability to do. The whole thing was basically a heuristic, and I kind of got seduced enough by it in the last draft to leave it in. But now I'm scared, and the several days that I've spent rereading and making notes on the 33-page original have convinced me that all it does anyway is set me up for some really annoying repetitions about 15 pages in. (Of course, when I mentioned to VIE that I was planning to redo the introduction, he was all like "Don't kill [anecdote] too quickly! It's representative of [idea that is interesting but increasingly beside the main point of my argument." So I'm thinking footnote.)
The larger problem I think is that I love the re-envisioning part of revision. Seriously, I've spent like three days writing ideas on the paper copy of this article (which is 33 pages, though somewhat less on screen after I inputted VIE's edits), going over the criticism that I need to work in, crossing things out, making questions in the margins--almost as if I was looking at someone else's work entirely. And of course that's kind of the case. I am able to distance myself from my work pretty quickly (except, of course, when The Professor was reading it, but we've solved that problem)* and I'm also fairly good at putting off decisions to the future self who will be writing. Thus, it's very easy for me to forget that I'm also going to have to be the one who puts all of these ideas into motion, into writing. (Unrelatedly, I'm sure this is both symptomatic and constitutive of why I'm a fairly good composition teacher.) So Friday's self is not particularly pleased with Wednesday's self--or even my afternoon self who was so thrilled to discover a parallel in theological discourse that would go so well with a discussion about knowledge and language. And, see, the problem that Writing Self has with Revising Self is often that my instincts in revision about what needs to be done are right.
And I have had moments with this project where I have been on top of things, really feeling like I'm engaged in hard core academic work, something really substantial. And it's exciting. But if I'm thinking carefully, these moments aren't the ones where I'm actually writing. Then, I start to get nervous, start reading blogs, drink a beer to loosen up, get tired, wonder if I'm too groggy to think. And it's sometimes hard for me to tell what's going on with myself.
This is actually something I'm trying to make room to examine through sitting zazen--not in a fully purposeful way, of course, since that's not really the point of this kind of meditation, but in the sense that one of the things I've realized even at this super-early stage of the practice of sitting still for 15-20 minutes first thing when I get up is just how fucked up my relationship to time really is. Like I can sometimes be very protective of it to the point of being ungenerous (especially for things like calling my parents) or of adding stress to my own life (I worry about it obsessively when planning trips to the city, going to the gym, and so on). And it was even a concern when I started thinking about taking up this practice, what it would do to my mornings, whether taking the time to do that would slow me down elsewhere. But then I started noticing that even though 15 minutes of sitting often has me wondering what time it is, whether I actually set the timer correctly or not (in my first attempt to sit, this question became so obsessive that I finally got up after like three minutes, verified that I had indeed set the timer correctly and then had to start over), I can still drop 30 minutes like *that* futzing around on the internet--I mean not even blogging, just clicking around, looking for something to read, something to do, hoping for an email that will rouse me for like three seconds and that I will probably put off responding to anyway. This is almost like a lower form of doing nothing...and I want something more.
But even though I've tried to actually be very aware of what I've been doing today and, if not prevent a lot of these driftings away, at least hold them in check, I'm still frustrated. It's very hard to stay in the present moment, to not have my mind racing over everything else I have to do--mainly, planning for my new class because it involves making a course packet that will probably take some time to process. But there's really nothing I can do on that until midweek anyway. Right now I should be grateful to be working with a generous editor at a prestigious journal and getting this opportunity before even writing a prospectus--but these are also all the things that make the beginning part really fraught, that make it a lot easier to scribble notes on the last draft and wonder if I need to go back and reread some more criticism just to be sure. (On that last point, I know I don't. I spent a couple of days doing some very focused reading and I know where my interventions need to be made.)
And now, of course, I'm at that liminal point in my night where I've been working pretty much for 12 hours (with admittedly varying degrees of productivity), where I'm not quite tired enough to sleep, wondering if I should pull an all nighter, worried about the effect it'll have on tomorrow if I do. There is obviously the Greenmarket, which will be a quick and strategic trip, as I have some food at home already and will be more oriented towards portable lunches, since I am racking up the drinking nights for the coming week--all the more reason why this edit needs to be more or less in shape by sometime on Monday. I'm also going to a party for a grad school friend in the evening...hopefully it will be small enough (if Facebook tells the truth) that I will not feel the need to get more drunk than the six pack of beers that I am bringing and talk inappropriately about The Poet and that I will be home early enough to get work done on Sunday. The Poet also said he'd call me tomorrow...he's in Puerto Rico for work (nice life, he has). Things are okay with us again. Minor adjustments.
On a happier note, today really seemed like early fall. I know that's kind of a perverse thing to say--the other way I could put it would be to observe that it was a really good day to work inside, by which I mean inside with the windows open and a lovely breeze with no need for the air conditioner to be on and storms rolling through and none of that humidity that makes thinking such an enormous pain in the ass. It may be a sign of my lack of full socialization into the academic profession that I don't dread August yet. It's obviously busy (though I get a reprieve, since New Teaching College starts a week later than my own institution), but there's a sense of possibility in the air (it is the new year, after all) and something shifts so that I no longer feel like I'm the only person in the world who's working. It's easier to concentrate this way.
Now if only I could produce the brilliant revision portended in the notes to my draft.
Oh, and the vaguely inappropriate dreams about people I know? Still continuing. Thanks, unconscious, for making me feel like a dirty old man instead of simply dating one.
*In the interest of fairness, I should mention that he did send me a text about 10 days ago apologizing for causing some of my recent meditations here. I sent back a reply that said basically, "it's okay, I think I know what my deal was now," and we haven't talked since.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment