Friday, September 23, 2011

Another Damned Notorious Writing Group Week 2: Haha!

I am going to declare my week's goal met ---- fix all the bolded parts of sections 1 and 2 ---- even though I am still missing a subhead title for the section. Titles don't really come to me when I think about them but appear on their own time instead, so I don't want to hold things up while waiting. I have a list of nouns; maybe I could thumbtack them up over my bed and the perfect witty phrase will drift into my mind while I am sleeping.

So last week I was complaining about time to write, and just the overall exhaustion of teaching four classes when you are making them do piddly homework and quiz crap every day. And I just got essays, oh god! Wait, don't let me distract myself. Anyway, I tried putting in a short writing period immediately after my yoga practices and it sorta works but it is a far from ideal situation. Monday I skipped yoga but got in 30 minutes of revising; Wed I did a short yoga and did 30 min of revising; and today I skipped yoga and spent all day except for when I was actually collecting my essays revising. Hmm. And yes, this blog really is going to get this boring for the next few weeks. Maybe if you are lucky I will take pictures of my cats and pretend they are in yoga poses. That's as exciting as it's gonna get.

Part of the problem there is I slipped and fell and banged up my knee, which still has a massive scab like I am five. It made doing any sort of yoga that involved kneeling impossible. And then I went straight into cramps for my period and that just adds to the amount of self-discipline I need to make me get up at 6 am and actually do exercise. Dammit. I don't want to fall off the exercise habit, not when I spent so long building it up this summer! I will do a make-up session tomorrow morning and see if that helps get be back on track.

Writing between exercising and teaching isn't the best spot either, since I want to do it undisturbed at home yet feel very worried and antsy until I actually make it on campus and know that nothing is going to prevent me from getting there ---- I know, I'm such a worrier, what the hell can I do about it? ---- but at least I kept my mind semi-involved in the article and on track and polished up a few bits. I would never be able to do this at the writing stage, so I am soooo glad I got it pretty much drafted before school hit. No, wait, I am pissed that I only got it mostly drafted! I wanted to send that completely polished fucker out and not have to deal with it during the school year! Ah well. Make the best of whatever stupid situation you find yourself in, I guess.

Ok, now I know I promised to say how I found stuff and finally read the "scoop" article which is not actually on my argument or even particularly interesting, and I will, some day, but those will go in my "lit review" section and other than that the lit review is pretty much done. So it is not next on my to-do list. Nope, the center subsection is next and it is a mess --- there are two pages that basically need writing (as in they are a bulleted to-do list) and the rest are very rough and drafty. I must get this section polished next. So that is my goal for next week for the ADNWG! Actually, I think, given the roughness of the section, that I will need two weeks on it, so: I will have it half done on Fri, Sept 30, and completely polished up on Fri, Oct 7. If I then take two weeks on the final section and one week on the intro/lit review stuff, I could be done with it by the end of Oct and then just go proofy-proofy and fix up the bibliography. I do think that schedule will slide a bit though as I hit even more grading and do some damn job apps. Argh. In fact, I want to work on this all day tomorrow, but think I will have to do job app stuff instead. Double argh.

Anyway, if I wasn't always tired and overwhelmed and trying to get out from under one pile of something or another, I'd be able to tell you something interesting. Stay tuned. But don't hold your breath, because these days, when it comes down to a choice between blogging and taking a nap, blogging is coming in a distant second.