I’ve been doing this writing on my laptop and sometimes the Alphasmart, hadn’t felt the need to update this site in a while. I think it’s better to do so, though (hence the posts below that I'd been keeping offline) so that it’s there before I need it, so to speak. We’ll see. I’ve fallen off the diary habit recently because the work’s been going well. I think my efforts around self-talk succeeded at least to some extent. I think it’d be good to return to the diary habit though, again for the sake of having the practice in place before I need it. We’ll see. Pleased that the writing’s going relatively well lately, generally speaking. One other thing, I copied all the old posts on here into a file so I have copies of everything, I hadn't been keeping copies early on. Total words in here= a little over 46,000 and I've done this at least semi-regularly for a little over year. That's satisfying.
Entry 149, Thursday Some trouble getting out the door at home this morning - some trouble just getting moving, felt very worn out upon waking up. (I can feel the guilt, the many guilts, fluttering above my head, landing on my shoulders.) I went straight to the gym this time. Felt very good. I should continue that. And now I’m writing in the diary as my first work thing. When I left the gym I texted a friend saying I was going to the coffee shop and he wrote back ‘I’m already here.’ I choose to take this is as a sign. My book is away in the care of another friend. I’m antsy to get back to it, to get on with it, to get it over. The usual impatience. (Is the impatience flocking among the guilts? Maybe it’s one of the branches the guilts perch on? Life amid a garden of unpleasantries.) In the interval away from the book I have some non-writing tasks which I feel like I, ever virtuous, simply must do instead of write. That’s a mistake to avoid. Perhaps write less, to the degree that other responsibilities may in fact require a real reallocation of my time, but still write first. This is me reminding myself to re-establish good habits that have slipped and to shore up the ones that remain in place. The trouble is, what to write? I need to start with the best one, of course. Of course not, that’s just dithering, self-obstructing. I’m going to set a time, give myself 5 minutes to choose, if I haven’t by the end then I will just number them and google ‘random number generator.’ Going to look at the list now. Looked at my to do list, moved all the writing tasks to the top, picked what I’m going to work on. NOW I NEED TO CHECK MY EMAIL SO URGENTLY AND I HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE ON TWITTER ABOUT IT. Deep breath. Another deep breath. One more for good measure. Here goes the work on the new article. Going to set a timer for 30 minutes. I can check my email after that, if I first write in here that I’m going to do so. Start timer, begin reading notes, starting now. I did a review of the earlier article draft. I think the new article will be substantially different, I’m excited about the new article, I’m going to treat the old article as raw material; it’s high quality raw material though. I wrote a to do list and did a little free writing. Onto other work. Entry 150, Friday Flawed start to the day, some sleep stuff, some family stuff, some logistical problems, some indiscipline. I am tired out. I have lots of feelings about this article and about the tenure requirements at work and so on and so on. Anyway. Resetting now. Setting timer for 30min of article work. Worked about 90 minutes. Entry 151, Monday I wrote first before diarying. diary first diary first diary first. re-establish the habits. Did free writing for my article. Hard to be back to figuring out a piece. I know I can figure out the article if I free write enough. Just keep going. Onto other work now. Monday night: feeling hopeless about this article. I wrote a bunch on it twice now and it’s all felt like false starts. I keep hoping I can find the answer in the prose I’ve already written. I do think I can re-use a lot of that but I need to write my way to the thing that will help me re-organize. What a pain in the neck this all is, what a stupid set of processes, I keep thinking the article sucks but remembering several people who liked it a great deal. Just sent one of them a thank you email. Entry 152, Tuesday Home w/ sleeping baby, rest of family is out at a ballet performance. I like that we can afford for my kids can go to stuff like this, it’s a thing I like about Des Moines. I’m reading a bit while wearing the baby in the carrier, taking some notes. I have some thoughts on how this article I’m reading might fit with my article that I’m hating, err, writing. Going to put down some thoughts now. Entry 153, Thursday Been more than a week and the latter bit has been a stupid fucking week; what are likely hate crimes on campus. ASLH conference was great before that, but between that plus family plus work this week I feel like a husk. Quick thought then I have to catch the bus: my paper is about situating Murray’s trial in relation to the reproduction of capitalist social relations; what light that moment can shed on that social process and vice versa. Okay gotta get to the bus. Wrote a while before bed. ARGH writing is so hard! Entry 154, Saturday I wrote some new stuff for my Murray paper yesterday and sent it to Will for his class to read, I sent it to Dan as well. I hate it at present. I wrote a blog post for Legal Form, about 1800 words. That felt good to get done, and Umut liked it, so that’s gratifying. Still feeling antsy about my book and anxious about the new article and SoTL piece. Sigh. Entry 155, Sunday Baby’s asleep, read a bit of Ghostly Matters on recommendation of a colleague, had some thoughts that I freewrote for the book (regarding memory and the Faulkner quote about the past not being past) then some more I’m going to free write now. Okay did that. Entry 156, Monday On the bus. A friend here in Des Moines texted me about applying for a job in another city. No one warned me about the loneliness that would come with an academic career, and all the people who I’d lose touch with. Sigh. I hope they get the job of course. Starting the morning at the library, not the coffee shop, shorter walk to teach afterward and there’s coffee there anyway. I talked to Evan over the weekend, Barbara gave him a copy of the McPhee writing book I recommended to her. That’s cool, nice to feel like I have something to contribute. Legal Form ran a blog post I wrote, that’s been nice too, good to be in conversation with people about ideas. Later in the day. I did a lot of syllabus writing this morning, which made sense but doing stuff other than writing always makes sense and that’s the problem. If only the context was ideal, I whine every time. Sigh. Have to live the life I have, not wish it away. So, I’m going to work 30 minutes now on my stuff. I wrote for like 90 minutes, worked on my essay about Law, Labor and Ideology. quick gym trip now. Entry 157, Wednesday Wrote before diarying. Stop that! I waste more time by not diarying, the diary is a warm up that results in better and more efficient work. I should make myself write that by hand 100 times... I did an hour’s writing, that’s good, and I spent time printing stuff to help myself get more done over the next few days in the corners of holiday time (it’s thanksgiving tomorrow) Entry 158, Thursday Thanksgiving was nice. Lots of time with my kids. I’ve especially had a lot of time with the baby this week, which is lovely. My family went out to an event at the library wednesday night and I got a lot of cooking done then, a bit more today. The meal turned out well, I’m pleased about that, proud of the work, glad they enjoyed it. I did a bit of free writing earlier while the baby slept in the Ergo carrier. I need to get to bed but thought I’d diary and do a bit of work for work writing, not sure what, going to check the to do list. Okay wrote for 20min. To bed now. Entry 159, Friday Another day off the job. Nice to be home with my family but hard to think about work at all - my wonderful kids are a big handful - and I dread the return to work, specifically am worried about a cold start trying to get back to writing. Read something tonight for someone I know. It’s so good, wrote some notes to them about it. Feeling a lot of doubt and negativity about my stuff. Got comments from a friend on my article, helpful stuff, and I hate the article, hate not having it figured out yet. Ugh. I need to get to bed but am going to do at least 15 minutes of writing related to the article then maybe another 15 for something else. Entry 160, Saturday Wearing the baby in the carrier while she naps. Freewrote a bit for the paper my friend and I are working on about writing groups. Should have diaried first. The habit matters. I don’t need it now but I need to act now to have it in place for when I do need. That’s part of the hard part. My kids have friends coming over for a playdate, I’m going to go to the library to work a while during that after the baby wakes up. I guess I’ll keep working on the writing group paper? Unsure. Should diary then to set and maintain focus. I stayed home and worked upstairs. It went fine. Occasionally distracted by the sounds of the kids. I read an article by someone I met at a conference recently - great stuff! I am jealous again! - and wrote them an email about it. I feel very tired out and kind of down about my work, lots of self doubt. It’s my job though, not optional, so just have to do the work while feeling those feelings. Okay did some more work on the co-authored paper. Not liking what I wrote. Oh well. The good writing is facilitated by the process, it requires the bad. I just counted and between today and the last two days I’ve written 2300 words toward this paper, a lot of repetition and very rough but I like the output level. Entry 161, Monday On the bus. Cold snap came, very unpleasant, my skin’s dry and cracked, let extra time for the bus in case of ice still had to run for it. Trying to recenter my head on work after a few days off. Was lovely to get sustained family time for several days, makes me look forward to the winter break. I’ll have to work during it but would like to aim for shorter days. What am I working on? First thing’s writing but what writing? I’ll free write again on article Dan commented on, then really read his comments closely then figure out a plan for work on the article. It doesn’t have to be a finished plan, just enough to start working and keep going. Lots of big feelings about the article. Gonna do it anyway. I wish people had been mean and rude about it, then I could get mad and cop an ‘I’ll show them!’ attitude. That people were polite and nice about it leaves me feeling worse in some ways, less to push against in order to leverage myself into the chair. Okay that article first, at least 15 minutes of writing, then the writing group piece, then the SoTL piece, then maybe pivot to conference papers? Spend some time reading? Unsure. Just stay in motion and track the time. Feels like a luxury to have this time to use and plan like this. Next semester will be harder, will need good habits then, so I should work on shoring them up again over the rest of this semester. At coffee shop, struggling to focus. Tons of awful bad news in the world, no motivation. Must remember that motivation is at best a mild reward and at worst an excuse for moral weakness. Do the work. There is no magic trick, the thing required to do the work is to do the work. Okay free writing for 15 minutes on my article. Did that, included some venting in it. I want the article to be angry, angering, but I want that to not just be rhetorical, I want it to show an appalling world I have now free written my way into a sense of possibility to the extent that I now can start the work despite the suffering I know it will involve and uncertainty I know I will feel as a result I can feel my impatience raging. Ponder on how to quiet that or step around it. Pay attention to when I begin to let it steer, and be sure to take back the wheel. I will want to cut corners on the new writing required. Be disciplined about not doing that. Lots of free writes, better more free writes than less. I am as usual afraid that starting anew will mean giving up, will take longer and oh! The consequences! While an understandable response for part of my mind to have, steering by that would be mistaken, self-defeating. going to walk to campus and begin the steps in the to-do list I wrote out in this free write. I did all that then taught and had meetings with three students and my brain feels like mush. I am going to do another 15 minutes with a timer on my article. then will do some other non-writing tasks for 15 minutes then am going to the gym. Okay I wrote 30min. Total 1000 words today. I feel hopeless, hate the article. Proud of the work I did though, this is a heavy weight that I carried. Entry 162, Tuesday On the bus. Cold, so tired - up early to go speak to Will’s class, up too late reading bedtime stories to my biggest kid, and slept badly. Been thinking about my article at the bus stop, going to free write on it. Free wrote. Went to Will’s class (went well, I have some notes on the convo and some reader responses from a few students who wrote on my stuff). Free wrote again for 15 minutes. I don’t think I know yet how to write this article. I don’t know if I’m ready to start doing real prose but I’ll try and will also keep on free writing. “Dear mom, I am writing about a bear...” Entry 163, Thursday I guess I didn’t write in here yesterday. I thought I did. Oh well. Write half an hour yesterday over the course of the day, should have diaried first. Don’t remember what all I did, free writes on my article I think. Today I worked a very long time - again no diary first though, gotta keep on this - on my article. Mostly re-organizing and whatnot. Hard work, not satisfying but I have regained at least a measure of a sense of possibility; earlier today I had really felt hopeless and wanted to just not write this piece. Glad to have pushed through that into a less hopeless space. Onto other work. Entry 164, Monday. More lack of discipline. Positives: I turned in a draft of the book and a short note explaining what I’ve done. I don’t know what happens next. I expect disaster, will settle for nothing less than unconditional approval, of course neither will happen. In a bit of a weird spot now between things. Not sure about this article given where the book is currently at. Feeling some pressure at work to get it out the door but I’m not convinced that’s the right move. I want to be like ‘I’m the author, it’s my call!’ but I am untenured, and I also don’t know if I trust my own decisions here either. Ugh. I have a new idea for another book which I’m excited about, and some other articles. I might turn to that stuff instead. I should review my notes and see all the future projects I have in mind and figure out what to do next. Will likely just mean a leap rather than a sense of certainty that I’ve picked the very best possible option. And of course I am beset with meetings right now, harder to think as a result. I looked at the permission page on the press and whatnot and I think I’m fine to write this article. That’s good (I GUESS!). I have a meeting in half an hour, I should make myself write. Okay I’m going to write this article. Later today I will find the materials for it and freewrite a little to find my way back into the process and whatnot. Will flip through the Belcher book as well and see about using it to make myself a timeline for writing it. Entry 164, Saturday All discombobulated by various work and life events. Sigh. I am going to write my way back into this article. What am I doing? I am writing this article. I’m going to go free write on its purpose. Entry 165, Monday Worked on writing a while yesterday, forgot to diary or to track the time. Sigh. I’m going to do 25 minutes now. Feeling tense, frustrated, disliking the article. Gonna do it anyway. I want to remember this for future purposes. Okay wrote half an hour. Feeling better about it now. Gonna eat and do some other stuff, then back to writing later in the day. Okay did another 30min. Again, feeling better. Starting to feel a bit tired. Took a break and did another. Draft is about 4800 words of body text so far. Put it in a file to print to review. Entry 166, Tuesday Once again starting writing before diarying then running out steam early. Lots of feelings about this article again, don’t want to have to do it, scared it will suck and people will hate it, bored of it, etc etc. My friend Tom once made a comic strip about Garfield turning his life around and starting to work out, one of the lines is “each day you must choose again.” Okay another session. 12:44 Entry 167, Wednesday didn’t diary first again. oh well. my habits too are a work in progress. Today ended up longer and more tiring at work than I expected. I got very close to being like ‘I’m too tired and busy to work on writing today’ but an email exchange with Alex made me do it. I’m going to tell him so and thank him. I worked for 25 minutes, did some small stuff in the article draft and added to my to-do list/plan for further work on the article. Wrote my way back to a sense of possibility on the article. Onto other responsibilities. Family comes back tonight, very excited to see them. Entry 168, Saturday Time off has been nice in that I’ve enjoyed family time and the break from writing, and that second bit is something I might pay for later in that I will need to ramp back up. Ah well. Tonight I did fixes on Angelica’s copy edits to the first 17 pages of the manuscript. There’s one bit I don’t know how to deal with yet, which I will return to. I’m going to do what she IDs plus the formatting required by the style guide. Later I will need to make sure all the notes are consistent style-wise. I also want to try to read the whole book out loud, for sound, might help with bits of it. Anyhow, progress. Entry 169, Wednesday Back to work in the new year. 2019. It’s the future. I’ve got a planner and a paper notebook, trying to maximize productivity. Going to start with going over Angelica’s edits so far. Entry 170, didn’t record day I can feel my impatience raging. Ponder on how to quiet that or step around it. Pay attention to when I begin to let it steer, and be sure to take back the wheel. I will want to cut corners on the new writing required. Be disciplined about not doing that. Lots of free writes, better more free writes than less. I am as usual afraid that starting anew will mean giving up, will take longer and oh! The consequences! While an understandable response for part of my mind to have, steering by that would be mistaken, self-defeating. Entry 171, didn’t record day, early January Testing the alphasmart.I might cover the screen. This is file 1 now. Later i will test out how to export stuff to the mac. Kit wants to type on here. She can do that in file 2. Ayla’s typing is in file 3. I think the files at a button - file 1, file 2,etc - would be very convenient for like opening up a file for the vent file then switching back to free writing. At present my plan is to use this for those two purposes and that’s all. I have to test the export to Mac and see how that goes. I notice a ‘clear file’ button. Hmm. Ok I tested it by typing a bit in file 4 then pressing it. It’s a y/n are you sure prompt. The big girls like the alphsmart so far. that’s cool. if the keep liking it hthen I’ll buy nanother one. I’m living with these typos. I can see them. I might try coviering the display on here, I dnunno. Anyway. I Today I started reading Boice again. I had a conversation with Alxex about writing gorals for the semester. I mentioned my goal of changing my mental habtsits. That mae me made me actually commit to starting today. Grateful for Alex, today and over all. So I started Boice ltate in the day and holy cow was it hard. Impacientience ragin, feeling like it was impossible to chanege my mentl habits. I started skimming super aggressively. I reset, decided I would read the book afresh at a reasonable pasce -- I don’t have to read it slow but I also don’t ahve to rush through it was I w as I waws doing earlier today. I read the preface. 4step process, automaticity, externality, self control, and social skills. I hink I’ve learned a lot of those things to an important extent bt but I think I ahve relative deficits in my self control skills. I’m going to read the book through on the theory that it can’t hrurt to worok work on skills Ive already acquired, and that may help me use those successes in working on the skills I’m focusing on. Later I’ll also read the Sword Airr and Light and Spceace and Time and also Jensen’s book. Will journal my way to new mental habits. Boice p3, regular modest amounts of writing time helps take up habits that promote long term productivity s well as well as efficient, painless, and successful writing. Cool. Thanks robert. Looking forward to it. And again I’m down the road to an important degree already. Giving up writing in exhausting binges. Yes. Part of the appeal of writing too long is that it feels good to be in motion and to not have to do the work of starting. That’s self-defeating and the gain are epaid w are repaid with interest. Internal critics (p8-9) mine are loud but indistinct, like Nirvana lyrics. They express that I am inadequate, a fake, that my work is unlikable, wrong, stupid, weird, bad. p9 ‘high apprehensives’ tend to leave too little time for planning and prewriting, and for editing. That’s me. Impatience because of anxiety. I hadn’t thought of that connection beofre. Thinking about my anxiety and impatience brings on the anxiety and impatience -- what if my book sucks, I hate my book, no one will like it, no one should read it, people will be mean about it and judge me for its defects which will be many. I just want to get it done ASAP and rush through the process so I can stop spending time with it, which will of course lead to more mistakes. That’s my internal monologue I think. i finished Boice’s chapter one. i recognize myself in a lot of the struggling writers he describes and quotes form. I also don’t haeve a lot of what the chapter covers, which is to say I’m farther down the road than I givemyself credit for. I feel for the writers he talks about, and I’ve been there myself a lot previously. I’m not where I want to be but I have achieved a lot not only in output and habits but as a result of those I actually feel better than I have sometimes. I take his point that its possible even likely to sometimes revert to old habits though, and even if that’s not a possibility I’m still not at the stopping point I want to be at. I’m going to do his exercise in a moment but I want to say that first I think a lot of my own troubles come at least in part from a fixed mindset about my own intelligence. Some of this also comes from having been bullied by shitty teachers (I had lots of great teachers too, though some of themalso helped encourage my fixed mindset). Wherever it came from, well, its not my fault I’m like this, I’m the product of forces beyond my own power. But moving on from here can only come from me and from what I create with likeminded friends and colleagues -- not my fault but still my responsibility. Okay, Boice’s first exercise, at end of chapter 1, describe your most recent attempts at writing, espcially those with problems. I often delay starting, do lots of things other than start writing, especially things that make me feele connected to other people. I sometmes feel lonely as a writer. Why bother writing, no one will read or care, it’s just going through the motions for my job and it will separate me from my loved ones, it’s hoity toity to write, it’s trying to rise above my station and leave my loved ones behind, it’s arrogant, and for such a dummy as me to be arrogant is especially bad. That stuff goes through my head in some way. Plus people will hate it, dislike and judge me for it, fear of evaluation stuff and perfectionism. So that goes through my head and I put off writing sometimes and then I get anxious about the time I’ve wasted and running out of time and I use that anxiety to help myself start writing. Then I feel guilty about wasting time by procrastinating. Once I actually start, after a while I feel better. My confidence shows up after I’ve written for 15-20 minutes. Then I struggle to stop at a moderate amount of time. Once in motion I want to stay in motion. The writing gets to be fun, and also there’s relief that it doesn’t hurt and there’s fear that it will hurt next time and so I feel like I need to keep going or there will be a consequence from stopping. That causes problems because of neglected responsibilities (which in turn can pile up and come to undermine my writing routine - if I put off other work long enough then I have a big heap of that work and so no time to write for a few days, which breaks my routine and I lose the benefits of the habit and have to do the work of re-establishing the routine). I can see how impatience is present across this and driven by anxiety. Boice’s questions beginning on p34. q1. I described the dislike above, theyre mostly about fear/doubt and I guess some self-talk that’s only semi-conscious (emotional habits, mental hygiene). I find it hard to start, and somewhat tiring but not too bad. I find my own reactiosn to writing more tiring than writing itself, and sometimes I get itno a flow state and it feels really good. q2.I have both too little and too much time. I feel like I lack the time to make writing happen and I resent the things that create that lack, and that I have to work to make up for it. And I feel like I have too much time in that I have to spend too much time writing or rather too much time in the presence of my own emotional responses to writing. Really this is a time management issue - and actually I’ve been quite successful for my career stage as a wrter - and above all an issue of what Boice calls self control/Sword’s emotional habits. q3. NO I DO NOT FEEL GOOD YES DOUBTS AND FEARS GET IN THE WAY. This one is huge for me, yes I feel like a fraud. q4. Anxiety: I get ansy, distracted, put my attention on other stuff, want to walk around, throw myself into other things, the internet is the worst for enabling this but there are many other enabling devices available, and so many that feel virtuous (‘really must get to my email!’ etc), and all the self talk stuff I mentioned. q5. hard to start, yes, this is recurrent, I procrastinate on starting. I work best if I write very first thing. q6. difficulty finishing, this is less of a thing for me, I’m more likely to under-revise, try for a successful single draft etc than to linger too long. q7.a. definitely can get overly negative. I cope by just doing the work I guess, talking to friends, walking around, reading about writing, social/accountability habits too. b. i don’t hurt myself professionally but I do overwork and sometimes make other work harder as a result becuse I have to do it in less than ideal circumstances. c. I dont get that issue so much of cramping. 1. six. 2. four 3. seven 4. eight 5. seven 6. three 7. four, four, zero Having concluded the chapter I think the main thing is more comfort than productivity. I’ve achieve productivity, I want it to be less painful or not painful at all, actively fun would be best.That would reduce the degree to which I have those other issues, which is not a high degree really. Okay, on chapter 4, p41. Calling it a night. One thought: maybe a book of self-reflection prompts and some nice journals, as a way to start writing, ease in, make that a habit perhaps? Worth trying. Once I’ve written anything it’s easier to write anything else next than it was to start in the first place. That is, once I’ve started it’s esier, I’ve got some momentum then. So think through the easiest and most habituable starts. Okay bed now. Following Boice’s spontaneous writing advice in the next chpter, I forget the number. am at home, family’s here, noisy, probly gonna inteerrupt me, fair enough. I find interruptions super ditracting when doing regular writing but I think with this is’s less of an issue becsause I’m jstust trying to make words, not worryig abouw ath what the content is. my knee was sore last night and it was too hot in here I slept really badly I am tired, and am tired fo of poor sleep. I cna’t find tee foam roller, I found the wood rolling pin and rolled out my right leg, SO PAINFUL. n I need to roll my legs more often clearly. need to walk more too I think. Kit made a spy codename generateor - two yogust containters, in one yogurt container a list of spy-ish adjectives, in the other nouns. Kit: code name Blue Fox. Ayla: code name Swift Cat, Charlotte codename Moon Panther, mine Black Death, Ang: Night Wolf. Pretty cool. Please call me Dr.Bubonic. NPR playing trying to tne it tune it out, or really when I’m writing and some flow happens I just do turn it out, that’s enjoyable to notice, funny to notice my non-noticing I suppse but it’s a skill, attention management. Okay I think this is enough spontaneous writing for now, just wanted to follow the book’s instructions. I have to write down properly the notes re: work chores that I wrote down on the back of my hand last night. Anyway, enough now. I’d forgotten that Boice recommends this kind of writing every day for 5 minutes as a warrm up, that’s a good practice, related to but not 100% identical to Jensen’s vent file, is sort of like Steinbeck’s Grapes diary (which btw I should start reading again). Entry 172, More Alphasmart files ported to laptop. I transferred my file to the work mac, saved it in scrivener in a folder (1-5-19).I should start doing date and time entries on this on here for the sake of transferring and organization. Boice says tenmintes of generative writing. I do this a lot but okay, I’ll go with the program. Long pause... haha... My new article is a reply to a piece calling for a shift in focus in legal studies toward distribution and distributive justice. I argue this shift needs to be broader, toward the economy and toward economic justice. I want the piece ot both amplify and engage the authos’ argument. I don’t say anything in it about class and perhaps I should.That may take things too far afield from the piece as crrently drafted. i dunno. Maybe clss is another later piece. Class piece for labor scholras? legalscholars? I dunno yet. The new piece is pretty far along, I’m going to keep workign on it. After that, time to do the Fraser conf paper and the industrial medicine conf paper as well. The fraser paper amounts to using employee injruy law reform to specificy/concretize the setting for a theoretical conversation between Fraser and Poulantzas. The gist: some crises are in fact generative for capitalism, hence boundary crises and boundary struggles need better specifying. I can draw on Marx ch10 (and 15 maybe?) of v1 re: hours laws as another example. That was a kind of crisis too, and was generative for capitalism. The industrial mecindicine piece is trying to use outtakes from the book to become something else. What do I want to say? well one thing is the Anderson point: private government, delegated sovereignty. Industrial physicians exercised a bit of that, and did so on behalf of a range of actors - the nation/the government, and employers. Physical exmination changed in its goals: serve health and nation and class (biopolitics, very macro), serve the employer and employee mutually as long as the former is especially benefitted (biopolitics localized), serve the employer against the employee (surplus population). In that final moment industrial physicians did a kind of emotional labor and representational labor as well: they took on the grief and regret, and whitewsahed programs so their employers didn’t have to take on those feelings.They were the human agents of dehumanizing policies, they personally carried out impersonal orders. In doing so they served higher ups, helping depict subordinates in an attenuated way that hurt those subordinates and helped superiors.OK that’s ten min. Oops. I was supposed to be writing about writing experiences! I did his GWS II before GWS I. Let me do that first one now. I remember being praised as a good writer multiple times. This came I think from my being a very avid and frankly precocious readerr. Having taken in a lot of those sentences, I learned to put them out. I tried to sound fancy like in books, and for my age I was good at it. I think it helped me acqire a fixed mindset though because it was about being and a state of affairs - I *am* a good writer, I *have* a good vocabulary - this quality of me, some entity.There was no recognition that I had learned this and no pointing out of (let alone praise for) effort. Genearlly with other kids if you were smart yo didn’t have to work, dumb kids struggled. I got put into a ‘gifted’ program, another entity - a gift, not learning. All of this somewhat helped my writing and in the long term hindered it in terms of comfort for all the fixed mindset reasons. Likewise re: my grades and my parents’ responses (‘A B? an A-? why not an A?’ lots of praise for straight As etc.) I think that cultivated impatience, I would rush through work - who needs to take time? only dumb kids - then get annoyed that the end product wasn’t great. I would also try to get the first drafts great, I rarely revised, other than line edits and even that rarely. No one taught me to write to think (I learned that from zines, I taught myself that), or how to revise in a substantial way. I also despite the praise only sort of thought ofmyself as a writer, I was more like a smart kid and a thinkerwith the writing just a transparent medium, no sense of craft and laboring over it. That took a long time to change, especially re: aademic stuff, I would write student paper columns and zines and stuff and that was writing and then in class I was a thinker,, intellectually serious but not doing writing. None of that served me well, other than the extracurricular writing I did, which did serve me well. I wanted to master craft (still do) yet was (still am) impatient with the work and quick to give up on it thinking I’m too busy or incapable.OK ten min. I read Boice’s generative writing III, which = use prior generative writing to create ideas, like ID those ideas and start outlining basically. This is totally how I work though I’ve called it free writing for big ideas vs structuring. I like his suggestion to regularly alternate - write to think, then summarize the findings of that thinking and try to structure the piece as a whole or the section/next section, that kind of alternating makes sense and I de facto do this a lot because of my habitual free writing (I like that term better than generative writing). I think adding deliberately an ending bit to free writes that is this summative and structure-making/outlining step at the end could be good. I’m pleased to find/feel that I’m doing some parts of the writing process well. The bits on 67-68 sound good to me. He says this process teaches patience and that is true in my case. I remain impatient in affect sometimes but I do things like stop and free write, re-outline, etc. So I experience somee impatient-derived discomfort but I do act against the impatience in significant ways. That’s progress - hard work makes the brain grow. Sunday. I read Boice’s chapter 6. he starts this part of the book with refernce to the prospect of moving “beyond a grudging otput of useful writing to writing that is also self-controlled and capable.” (p74) That’s where I’m at now and is my goal. Chapter 7 focuses on that. Six was good to reread though. First off some successes: I have done a lot of what he recommends, in terms of daily writing and so on. That’s been hard won and I’ m proud of it. I coud - will - be more comfortable but I got here to a good plcae (finished a draft of my book quickly!) through a lot of hard work. Proud of that work and what I’ve chieved. One other thing: it would be good to do another review of chapter 6 while at the mac, to highlight some of the best practices, especially some of teh ones I haven’t done as much of before like planning out fuller projects -- all the steps from present status to finished, and estimating how many writing sessions those steps get, plus planning to work on more than one project. Also: more charting (on paper maybe?) of time and output and whatnot, and of habit - writing before other work. I think the alphasmart would help w/ that as I could type on here on the bus and not do email. Charting that pratice would be good. Okay just two chapters of the book left, about 36 pages. Pleased about that. I realize that the journaling to change mental habits will take longer than those pages, but I’m pleased to be really beginning soon. Other thoughts on planning this process: reread Sword on mental habits and Jensen as well, and the first bit of Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article book, about writing discomfort. Might also google around about how to shift from fixed to growth mindset. Later, go thru Boice’s citations and write up a list of ones I want to read. that’s not for this mental habit project, it’s for FWG and faculty development programmatic stuff at work, which is of secondary priority to this right now. I finished the Boice. I marked the places I want to go back over and make more concrete plans around. Mostly around self-talk. I think I say things like ‘this will take too long’ and ‘this is boring’ and ‘I suck at this’ and ‘this is no good’ and then sometimes things like ‘this is good enough don’t bother’ and ‘I bet this will go fast, especially if Im good at it.’ I should go over the projects I have, write them out on blank pages, just so I can see them/name them. Then sketch the steps. For each there’s prewriting to find ideas, or an ongoing commitment to freewriting, then outlining. and a bit of back and forth on each, then prose generation and reverse outlining, that’s the basic elements. I should map out how long I think each of those elements needs, with a rough sense of my output pace and my schedule - these are deadline projects so I have to meet those. I will, I just have to figure out how. I do have some self talk like what if I miss my deadline but much more like what if no on cares, what if they hate it, what if I embarass myself, what if I’m wrong, etc. I’m going to review the Boice bits I marked and do the specifics he talks about in terms of tracking self talk and planning to interrupt it.I may see if there’s another book on this and check his footnotes too. Going to review the Sword now. One thing: I’m going to be tempted to skimp on this. I would benefit from going slow and taking a while on positive self affirmations to supplant negative self talk. Here’s some: I have achieved an impressive degree of skill at making writing happen, and at writing itself - the product is good; people I respect are interested in what I’m doing (self talk: they’re faking it, they’re lying, they’re wrong and actually I’m no good, I’m charming so Ive fooled them into thinking I’m good at this, they are just being nice because they like me but really they don’t mean it.) That’s silly. They like my work, they genuinely do. That’s why they like me, above all. These are busy college professors who don’t have time or incentives to fake it. Stuff to work on. I have worked hard to learn the skills I’ve learned. I’m good at woring hard. I don’t need to know everything right away, that’s what learning means. I’ve learned enough to serve as a basis for what else I need to learn. Okay, Sword now. Sword, p166. Previous bits in this setion on emotional habits have mentioned few times trying to bring positivity to writing. Im excited to write. I’m excited abot people reading my book. I like learning new things, finding new ideas,making new ideas and thoughts. I feel satisfied and proud at having made something - this thing didnt exist, now it does, and I did it, I worked hard, I exerted myself virtuously -- I am a winner, I am champion, I am strong. So, page 166. A time I felt productive: when I made my zines in college. I binge wrote, but I loved the focus and I created a lot of words, that joy of making. I also have many times enjoyedthe flow state of writing. Its lovely to have my selc consciousness shout off for a while and just be in the moment making words nand sentences, finding new thoughts, envisioning new possibilities. Sometimes I can get into the rhythm of the langauge, like with my impulse to three item lists, and I like some of the prose I’ve made, like the bit Scott complimented me on at the ABF thing, the opening re: Marguerite Murray, and Evan re: my points on Thomas Crowder. Frustration as surmountable obstacle: this is a low numbered wall climb, I’ve climbed this many times, it’s exertion but surmountable exertion, just keep making the moves, and even if I slip I have a belay and can climb again. Frustration as friend: when I get frustated it’s because I care, I am excited about the project and subject, it is my energy urging to go onward. It may be a bit rough around the edge but it is on my side, i J ust have to corral it, lead it effectively. Reading about writing craft and well-crafted prose, good call. More EB White essays, and the how-to books by Sword and that Elements of Academic Style book. OK done with sword. Went faster than I thought. Ah wait, going to review her quiz again. After that I’m going to go over Boice with a legal pad and brainstorm and note take on the bits I marked, moving into operationalizing. I think this may be less involved than I had thought, less of a full time job so to speak and more compatible than I had previously supposed with continuing to get new writing done. Very cool. I’m excited about this and feel a sense of real possibility. On the bus. Mood and self talk around writin: pressed for time I’m gonna run out of time and not get tenure I have too much to do other than witing and that gets in the way, I have to get to that stuff I dont have time to write writing means such a sacrifice, I have to make the writing really good because my time is so scarce and I resent the burden of the writing time requirement. what if no one like my writing, doesnt care or else hates it? what if I made some egregious mistake and look stupid, what if I AM actually stupid? Deep breath. two more. None of that is accurate. I do have a lot to keep track of, and I am successfully managing it. My work is good as attested to by the feedback of multipe readers I respect. Yes, my book will make at most a small splash, but some people I care about will read it and care about it and I can teach it and my students will engage with it. They rise to occasions in a cool way and will do so with my book and that will be very rewarding. OK self-talk noted and responded to. Now what? Am on bus on AlphaSmart, feels a bit funny but it’s good and also wow do I want to get on the laptop and get on the internet! I should keep a resistance journal too. I wonder whats on twitter what has Trump said and done lately is there an email in my inbox maybe I’ll listen to some music, read about some music, read about weightlifting and cooking. Today’s plan: work on article a while. then return lib book, then reimbursements and my spring class then gym then home early. Going to look @ paper copy of article and notes for a moment, then probly open laptop and look @ it on there. On way to coffee shop now, willl work on writing theer and nothgn else, other stuff can go to campus. Entry 173, Monday I’ve been writing a bit more on the AlphaSmart, moving back to laptop occasionally. self talk check I dont want to write, I am bored by the project, I am bored by the act of writing, I am scared of rejection, I deserve the rejection, the work is a reflection of my value as a person, no one will care and also everyone will hate it talking back: I will feel better once I start to write, I feel good having written, I feel good once I am in the writing doing the writing, I am excited about the ideas in my work, and the detail work of line edits and so on does matter, rejections are normal and not a reflection on my value as a person lots of great work gets rejected, sometimes the gatekeepers are wrong, and sometimes good work does get accepted including my own work which is good, and my friends will like and care about what I’m doing, that’s what matters, I have networks I’ve built for myself and what I’m doing matters within those networks.
0 Comments
|