On the Brink of the Plunge...

Okay, so it's coming down to it. Starting this Thursday, I'm embarking on the Last Month of the Semester. That means I'll be writing roughly 60-80 pages of academic papers (not including a wealth of preparatory notes for said final papers) in the month starting on Thursday and stretching until May 9, when I'll (hopefully) finish off my semester by very quickly grading the exams I'm giving that day.

For the record, that's about 20,000 new words plus notes, revisions, etc. Not to mention the stacks of grading to go with it.

The thing is, I know I can do this--the count on my sidebar from NaWriMo last November and December tells me I've lived through something such as this (29,000 new words in just over a month and a half) just a few months ago. The thing is, though, I wasn't entirely happy with the quality of all of those final papers, so I'd like to do a bit better this time.

Completing these papers in a quality fashion will take focus, dedication, and likely quite a bit of household-work avoidance.

To that end, I'm catching up my life errands (paying bills, etc.) as much as I can today so that once I plunge in, I have to deal with that as little as possible.

Go team make-it-through-the-semester. Hm, maybe I should make this into a NaWriMo 2 in order to push myself through. Keep track of word count again and so on. If I'm going to go for it, I've got to think through the rules, though. I like counting for revisions, but I'm wondering whether analysis pages/notes written to prepare for the papers ought not to count too. Since there are bound to be a lot of these this semester, and the more there are, the better the paper will be, I need some way to include those in the count.

Perhaps, like revisions, they can be given a lower word count--perhaps 25-50 words added to the word count per page of notes? Last time it was 100 words per page of revisions... Any thoughts here?

ICA Kumquats Aplenty: 2 Out of 3 Ain't Bad...

So I heard back on the International Communication Association (ICA) submissions today that I worked so hard on back at the beginning of my NaWriMo experiment. I had submitted 2 full papers for the conference itself and an abstract for one of the pre-conferences, and had already heard good news on the pre-conference abstract.

So today I heard on the 2 full-length papers to be given during the conference itself. One accepted, one declined. Which is a good track record, especially since we had already submitted something marginally similar to the one that was declined as a book chapter proposal (and the proposal was accepted, which means that our writing of the paper was not at all in vain).

Even better, the full-length paper that was accepted for ICA was actually an early one laying the ground for my dissertation, which is very encouraging to me. Someone outside of my mom and my advisor thinks what I'm studying and writing about is timely and at least somewhat worthwhile. Woohoo!

Now just to figure out how to get these kinds of percentages on my creative writing submissions...but that's likely a job for the summer.

In other news, a full week of classes are done. I think it's going to be a good semester, though busy, what with teaching and research and coursework. Especially since just one of my courses has 150 pages' worth of reading for next week. Hm, I should buy that book tomorrow and dig right in...

Day 44: Successful Finale to NaWriMo

Ahem, ahem. [Aside, in a whisper.] Where's that darned drumroll?

[From offstage.] Coming, coming. [Drumroll sounds loudly.]

That's better. Welcome, folks. I'm pleased to announce that as of a few moments ago both my third semester of PhD coursework and my NaWriMo experiment (known to others as PseudoNaNoWriMo) were both successfully completed, in that I handed in my last paper, reaching quite a bit past the word count I (re)set for myself to complete between November 1 and today.

As a reminder, the goals (once I adjusted them to realism) were to write 35,000 words between Nov. 1 and Dec. 19, with revised pages as counting for 100 words of word count per page of revision. I was also aiming for submission counts as well. Both academic and creative words were counted, though not (on the whole) blog posts. The totals (which will stay up on the sidebar for awhile as encouragement) are as follows:

NaWriMo final total: 42,663 words (Between Oct. 31 and 5:55 p.m. Dec. 19, 2008)

NaWriMo new word count: 29,963

NaWriMo page revision count: 127 (equivalent of 12,700 new wds w/in Deborah's scoring system)

NaWriMo submission count: 13 (1 conference paper abstract, 2 conference papers, 4 term papers, 6 creative non-fic essays)

I've enjoyed this experiment, on the whole. And I'm pleased with the results. Yeah! A successful NaWriMo and a completed semester! That even deserves an exclamation point or two!

Day 40: Whew! Time for a Hard-Earned Rest...

Wow, I can't believe I did so much today. First, I wrote 6 new pages on my first of three final term papers, then revised the whole thing and turned 'er in, completing the first of my three classes for the semester an hour before my (extended) deadline. Woohoo!

Second, I came back and whipped out the first five pages of 15-page Term Paper #2, due at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, in an hour and a half flat, in just enough time to spend a few hours at a holiday gathering before...

Third, writing the catapult magazine article for Friday's issue--it was due before tomorrow morning.

I love it when imminent deadlines coalesce with properly researched and simmered ideas to create more than 4000 new words in a single day. Now, if I can just keep up the pace tomorrow and finish at least the rough text of Term Paper #2 after working for a few hours at my assistantship, I might be on track for handing in that final paper at least a day early.

We'll see.

By the way, the archival workshop went well on Saturday. Oh, and I didn't win agent Nathan Bransford's first paragraph contest, but as Eliot says, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." Tomorrow, back to my assistantship work, to finishing these papers, and to a bit of preparation for the course I'm teaching in the spring--those are the tasks at hand.

First, though, I get to sleep 6 glorious hours...

Day 37: Archival Events and First Paragraph Contests

Despite all my good intentions to the contrary, I'm frantically running around trying to get my writing done on time. The urgency right now is to write the last 6 pages of this Saturday's paper, and to finish getting ready for this public event on Saturday, in which my archival theory and practice class will present our work for the semester then give public workshops, including an archival road show (like Antiques Road Show, but with historical value). You are of course all invited.

Anyway, before I go do all that (plus work 10 hours between today and tomorrow and attend my last 3-hour grad class for the semester tonight), I wanted to send you on your way with a really cool contest agent Nathan Bransford is putting on over at his blog. Even if you don't enter yourself you can learn from the entries that are up there.

What he did was to tell people on Monday that they could post the first paragraph of their novels-in-progress in the comments on his blog. The deadline is the end of the day today, and at last check he had 1127 comments on that post. Anyway, even if you don't submit, go over there and check them out. There's nothing like looking over hundreds of first paragraphs of people's works-in-progress to make you: 1.) feel sorry for agents; 2.) Learn a little something about what makes a good (or bad) first paragraph of a novel; and 3.) realize just how much YA fantasy stuff is being written in people's home offices just now (attempting to ride the tails of Harry Potter and Twilight, of course).

Day 34: Word Counts Move Slow with Big Words

Thought of the Day, brought on by a conversation the other night with some friends: Word counts add up much slower than pages do when you use big words. I'm noticing this a lot. I have 10 pages written total out of the 45 I have due for this week and next (that's three 15-page papers that are due), and I've been averaging barely over 250 words per page.

That's compared with an average of 350 words per page when I write fiction or creative non-fiction.

Ah, yes...different genres of writing do demand different sets of vocabulary. It does make me realize that my word output of the last month and a half is heftier in page count than I'd been thinking it was. Interesting.

Anyway, I need to plow out approximately another 10 pages today (i.e., 2500 words, it seems), so I'd better get to it soon, but before I go, I just wanted to mention that despite the common cold I've picked up, I'm actually enjoying this part better than I did the last couple of weeks.

The angsty part of the writing process for me is always that chaotic time when you've got these disparate ideas bouncing around in your head but have no idea how they'll come together to form a paper. That time for me is always filled with fears that there will never be a finished product.

Those fears lessen their grip on me, usually, once I actually get a good start on the writing, though. So despite the continuing knots in my back (which will relax once I hand in that final 15-pager), I'm enjoying the process much more now than I did a few weeks ago. Plus, I'm an accumulative learner, so I usually don't truly grasp the entirety of what I've learned in my courses for the semester until just about now, which is part of the enjoyment. I like watching the bits and pieces coalesce into a more unified whole, both in my head and on the paper.

Day 31: I'm Tired of "Fruits"--Let's Call Them Kumquats

So I've got a new article up in the catapult magazine Advent issue, yet another kumquat of NaWriMo that's developed to the point of consumption. The article's about anticipation and (im)patience, which seems in many ways to have been the theme of my life lately. It's also a bit about narrative theory.

Ya know, it's been very helpful for me to count all the things I write for public consumption this NaWriMo. It helps keep me accountable for getting stuff out there. And it reminds me that I do write a lot. This is helpful information to pile up in me for those times when people ask me whether that novel of mine's done yet. I certainly get impatient about getting that novel done myself, so it's helpful for me to remember that my writing muscles are growing strong in the meantime.

Then again, sitting down and writing these end-of-term essays--which I'm finally ready to do, and about time (there's the (im)patience popping up again)--involves more diligence than patience at this point.

The goal for the day: write (the first) three or four pages of each of the three papers. I'll feel much much better when I have a decent start on all of them, and they seem to have percolated (sorry for the swift change of metaphors from fruit to coffee) to the point where I can plow out that much , at least (ooh, another farming metaphor--or is it snow plowing?).

Anyway, I'm off to it. I hope you have a good day.

Day 28: More Fruits of NaWriMo

Arghhh! (envision Charlie Brown with those little quivery lines around his open mouth).

Okay, I feel better now. That was a short moment to express how much I have to do very quickly now that I'm back from Thanksgiving break and have only 17 days to finish all those term papers that are mostly still simmering in my head, sad to say (which is not to say that I didn't do research for them over the weekend). But before I get to it, I wanted to share that moment with you, as well as to tell you briefly that the writing lifecycle does indeed seem to go on--that is, writing projects seem to beget more writing projects.

Which is all a roundabout way of announcing that two of my academic submissions from the early days of my NaWriMo experiment have already bourne fruit. An abstract I wrote for a conference paper was accepted (meaning that I get to write another paper by May), and another project I was co-authoring was accepted as a book chapter through a proposal, which means we get to mess with our quite rough draft and try to make it good by February.

First, though, I have to write these papers, and finish another report, and work on a poster, and finish up some plans for a final workshop for one of the classes. So, a quick celebration of the birth of these writing tasks, a quick urgh on the amount of care and feeding they're likely to need. But for now, I must drop them off at mental daycare because I've been called in to attend to the millions of other tasks that need birthing, care and feeding right now.

Day 22: Taking Stock (Not Making It for Thanksgiving)

So this weekend I didn't get many actual words written on my papers, but I was able to get a few things off my plate:

1. I wrote and submitted the short travel article one of my friends asked me to write for the new alternative newspaper they're putting out in Toronto soon. The newspaper is called Voice on the Street, and it's a good project. The Facebook group is called "A New Street News" if you want to learn more about it. (I love that I know people who come up with these fabulous things and follow through on them.)
   
   
2. Revised and submitted the Thanksgiving meditation I was asked to write for the church service I won't be attending Thursday morning because I'll be attending one at home.
   
   
3. Finished revising and submitted the creative non-fic essay that was solicited this summer for a new book on faith and food. Sounds like a good collection (even with some big names in it), so I'm hoping that project comes to fruition.
   
   
4. Finally got through the rest of the Victorian mystery novel I needed to read.

Lots to do now, though--work at my research assistantship today, attend class for an hour, write a 3-5 page paper due by tomorrow, and finish up some more stuff for that service-learning archival project at the public library, since I have a meeting tomorrow afternoon with the librarians on that, and a bunch of other meetings and events tomorrow. Thankfully I'm in high "get 'er done" mode...

I probably won't have time to update my word counts on the sidebar until tomorrow, but they're slowly inching up (ah, the slowness when most of what you're writing is chunks of a page or less). The big chunks will come once all these 15-page term papers bouncing around in my head finally get churned out.

Day 17: The Usual Panic Sets In

So, after all the lovely determination I had going on Monday, the usual panic for this time of the semester set in yesterday. That is, I slipped straight past sane, let's-take-this-one-step-at-a-time into ARGHH! How will it all get done in three weeks????

Yup, 'tis edging up on mid-December, folks. Welcome to the end-of-term mood swings leading to a slight insanity (pairs nicely with a glass of merlot). I'm mostly wishing right now that the publishing world of the day hadn't forced poor Wilkie Collins to make his mystery story three-volume-novel length--I'm only about 40% through the 513-page book. Love the story, but there are moments...

At this point, all I'm promising is that by December 19 (which happens to be when the last paper's due), I will have at least another 17,500 new words written and a bunch of revised pages, because that's what's going to have to happen to finish these papers I have due plus all the other assignments I have coming up.

I'm in fact thinking that to preserve the small nicely formed bits of my sanity still lying around (preserve it like pickled herring, but different), I should shift my goal to be 35,000 total words in the period stretching from Nov. 1 to that date, rather than trying to pressure myself to reach the 25,000 by Dec. 1.

The thing is, it's better for me to panic now than to leave the stuff any later. The problem is, a resistant part of me KNOWS that I'm trying to move my panic earlier to get better results, and is seeking to subvert that move by decreasing the urgency... That side must be beaten down.

Day 15: The Deadlines are Coming, the Deadlines are Coming!

I remembered a few things on Saturday:

1. I have 3 major research papers due in a bit over a month. That's only 4 weekends.
2. I'm planning to make a 513-page 19th-century novel the centerpiece of one of those papers. In order to do that, I'm going to have to re-read it at least twice, if not three times before I write the paper.
3. I have some fascinating papers I'm writing this semester, and one of them is nearly ready to write. But I've got a lot of other reading, researching, and writing to do too, both for the others and for other smaller assignments.
   
4. Thankfully, I have fewer classes this week and next, but I need to get serious about these upcoming deadlines along with the other writing projects I have due outside of school. Not only so that I can meet my deadlines and produce good work, but also so that I can squeeze some of these paper word counts into my November NaWriMo word count, and make sure I can reach my November goal.
   
5. If I can just plow through my word count this November and include a lot of final term paper words in that count, my December is bound to be a lot less scrambly and much more filled with creative writing and revising.

Whew, glad it will be a quiet week and weekend, what with much of the department going to the National Communication Association conference in California. Now if I can just avoid a repeat of last year's performance, in which my neck seized up the morning before NCA and took weeks to recover properly, I should be able to buckle down and get myself on the right track to a proper word count.

Note to self: Don't forget to do those neck stretches.

Day almost-12 (And All Seems Well)

So I gave up on trying to fulfill the word requirement entirely with new words--too much revising to be done just now for that to work. I am pleased to report, however, that in combining both new words and revised pages as my scoring system had originally envisioned, I am more than half-way toward my goal when I'm not quite halfway through my allotted time.

Furthermore, as I explained over at TextFIGHT, my academic work has successfully cleared the way for back-burner creative projects to fester and emerge from my subconscious, a process that delights me tremendously. During the semester, any use of spare mental real estate for anything not paper-related or rest from paper-related thoughts is a strong victory. I'm mostly enjoying the academic papers I've been writing, but it's incredibly refreshing to have creative projects shake that head space up from time to time.

9 a.m.
Just noticed I keep forgetting to put the totals somewhere other than the sidebar. Here 'tis:

NaWriMo total thus far: 13,208 words (as of 8:19 p.m. Nov. 12, 2008)

NaWriMo new word count: 7608

NaWriMo page revision count: 56 (equivalent of 5600 new wds w/in Deborah's scoring system)

NaWriMo submission count: 4 (1 conference paper abstract, 2 conference papers, 1 creative non-fic essay)

Day 7: First Fruits of My NaWriMo Labor (Publication Variety)

When I heard that this week's catapult magazine article was called "Color Positive," about figuring out how to break through racism and prejudice, I knew I had to write something for it, seeing as how my recent history has taught me a lot about this topic.

And so, even though the deadline for the article was Monday night (the same night the ICA conference paper deadline fell, which consumed so much writing energy for me), I figured it was just as important to stay up and write that as it was for me to stay up on Saturday night working on my ICA submissions and on Wednesday night to finish my rhetoric of conspiracy paper. So I did.

And here's what I came up with. If you go on over, take a read of other parts of the issue while you're there--it's a more timely topic than ever, what with the milestone of this week's election, and it's an interesting mix of thoughtful people's thoughts on this subject that's taken so many newspaper and blog inches this week particularly. There are means to comment on the articles and more generally on the issue's topic if you want to contribute to the discussion.

On the NaWriMo significance of this article, it makes me more excited than ever on my focus not only of creating words, but of creating words that are designed to be pushed out into the world. And the fact that I'm allowing my project to be composed of smaller pieces as well as long ones means that I can see bits of the fruits of my 3 a.m. labors as I'm going. I love that.

By the way, I've been working on another post for this blog (it's coming soon, Ril), but since last night I've been working hard on this "regaining my sanity through more sleep" project that started after I handed in my last projects of this crazy week. The new post will probably show up tomorrow, since I'll likely be less sleep-deprived by then.

Day 5: Exhilaration and Exhaustion

Many many big sweeping moments in the last 30 or so hours here in the US, and I've been so exhilarated that I've found it really really hard to get back to focusing on this here 1000 words I have to write.

The thing is, as far as my NaWriMo thing, I'm ahead, especially after that written assignment I handed in this afternoon, but this other one, this 3-5 page paper, he already gave us an extension because everyone had been up late with the election coverage (one of the advantages of being in a department that studies a lot of speeches and such). The extension was until 2 p.m. tomorrow, but I have to work tomorrow morning, so I'll be up tonight until it's done.

So despite my exhaustion from a weekend of insane paper-writing to hit my Monday deadlines followed by a day of epochal election excitement and two amazing candidate speeches followed by some unfocused academic reading until 4 a.m., I'm off to write 3 to 5 pages. Hoping to keep it to 3, as I really really can't keep this pace and level of energy going much longer. I'm already on the verge of descending into the deepest pit of crankitude I can imagine...

I'm definitely planning to sleep most of the weekend. And I should be able to, as I'll be far enough ahead between the new words, not to mention the revision pages that also add to my word count, that I can relax a bit, catch up on a few things I've been ignoring dreadfully. Maybe even leave the house to see people in non-coursework and assistantship-related capacities, and to exercise...hoping the beautiful weather holds out a few more days.

Then, next week, I can plunge back into the writing game, and maybe even get some of that creative essay revised that I've been meaning to do for that editor, get some of that novel manuscript of mine edited and properly queried, get the MA thesis finally into the mail as a monograph submission... All those things that have been on my checklist since the summer or longer. Most of them aren't that hard but have consistently fallen in the priority list. Thanks to my NaWriMo project, I hope to have the oomph to actually plow through them.

Day 3: Just Imagine Little Schem-y Tent-y Fingers...

Okay, so I have to admit it feels a bit like cheating, this being able to ride the wave of the NaNoWriMo energy AND also have deadlines to add fuel to the fire. But the thing is, I think I needed both to finish the Herculean task of the weekend. And the thing is, the sort of speed-writing they do at NaNoWriMo is the sort I'm going to have to do academically next fall during my preliminary exams, so it's a really good thing for me that I'm combining the two right now in my NaWriMo experiment.

At any rate, my weekend was rather sleep-shorted and my Sunday wasn't QUITE as restful as my Sundays usually are, but I did get at least a bit of rest on Sunday, and the ICA conference paper submission deadlines somehow got met--the first abstract sent out on Saturday, which was the deadline for that one, and then the other two papers tonight by 11 p.m. Eastern time (the last one literally slipped in under the wire with seconds to spare).

It's good for me, this re-development of a willingness to do the best I can in the space I have to allot to a project before its deadline, then to fling it into (virtual) space to see what the response is. I was thinking about this the other day, that I used to do this all the time with writing in the business world and was mostly fine with the process, though I wished I had more time to polish.

Although it's good to have more time to polish things and take more time for revision, there's also a merit in the kinds of speed-writing and speed-submitting exercises such an environment provides you with, and so I'm thankful that my academic life is teaching me to take on that challenge, and that my NaWriMo challenge is helping me to also mix in other more creative genres into that goal. Hopefully, once I've gotten in the habit of speed-writing and speedishly-revising and speedishly-submitting in a variety of genres, I'll learn to be more skillful at varying my speeds in a variety of forms whenever needed.

Oh, and what I'm REALLY hoping is that my NaWriMo exercise is reasonable enough that, unlike so many people's experiences of NaNoWriMo, it's sustainable--if this works as well as I hope it does, I'm hoping to make every month a NaWriMo month.

Anyway, I do have this week's catapult magazine article yet to revise one more time and send out for good measure before I sleep, so I'd better get back to it.

Before I go, though, here are the numbers for future reference, after what's been officially day 3 of NaWriMo:

NaWriMo new word count: 4759 (as of 11:00 p.m. EST Nov. 3)

NaWriMo page revision count: 49 (equivalent of 4900 new wds w/in Deborah's scoring system)

NaWriMo submission count: 3 (1 conference paper abstract, 2 conference papers)

Once this catapult article gets out, those counts will go up even a bit more...ah, this NaWriMo thing is going beautifully so far. I love it when a plan comes together.

Days 1& 2: Treading that Boundary between Good and Wimpy Self-Excuse

Huge...task...set for myself...this weekend, involving these Monday night deadlines. Which means yes, I'm significantly ahead as far as personal word count goes, but I have the great desire to manufacture several more days' worth of time between now and tomorrow night.

Anyway, let's focus on the positive here. As of the twittering-birds'-time when I went to bed this morning, I had written 3646 new words on 3 different projects, revised 3 pages and submitted one conference paper abstract. That means that as far as these personal goals for this contest I'm ahead by about 2000 words, which puts me on par with NaNoWriMo word counts after 2 days. But...lots to do yet for those pesky external Monday deadlines.

This having a word count and a goal is a fabulous way of pulling out and evaluating the success of my writing practices, as well as becoming intensely aware of all the things inside me that try to resist getting stuff out there on the page.

On Friday night I tried the "reading my notes right before I went to sleep thing" and that seemed to work well, as did the "keeping my notes in mind before jumping in the shower" thing. Caffeine also seemed to work well, and finally later in the evening, pulling out my classic paper-writing movie--Lord of the Rings--as a backdrop really kicked me back into gear.

But listening to music? Not so helpful yesterday. Neither was the 50% off Halloween candy (sugar high only followed by crash and guilt--not so pleasant). Playing piano helped quite a bit, but wasn't the thing yesterday that had me running back to the screen and back to plowing out more pages again. However much I hate it, I think I just needed a break in the middle of the day yesterday for my mind to think things over.

Sometimes I wish I could overcome such simmering times. I'd get so much more done more quickly. Sadly, sometimes they're needed, both for academic and creative projects. One can jump among the projects when one gets stuck, and therefore pick up some productivity that way, but at some point I tend to hit a wall on all projects so my mind can get one figured out. Thus it always has been.

Hm, I think it's good that I'm trying to push myself. It's helping me differentiate between what's a real barrier to getting work done and what's the kind of wimpy excuse I tend to buy from myself because that other part of myself's such an excellent rhetor. :) There's still a lot of gushy ground, though, maddeningly, between the two...

Declaration: 25,000 (New) Words by November 30

So for those of you that don't know, it's National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) beginning today. In past posts I've been feeling left out of these creative speedwriting events, but yesterday I made a command decision--I'm going to ride the wave of enthusiasm and slight insanity of NaNoWriMo, but in my own way.

No, I'm not going to plow out 50,000 words of novel draft by the end of the month, as NaNoWriMo participants will. My goal is more in keeping with the spirit of this blog, whose purpose is to knock down the partitions between the parts of my writing selves.

And so (drum roll please) I'm going to write 25,000 new words of significant writing (for the most part, blog entries don't count) by November 30. This averages out to, excluding Sundays and starting last night, an average of 1000 new words per day. This writing may be academic or creative in nature. It can be in any combination of projects. In fact, the work can involve revision--10 pages of revised text will substitute per 1000 words of my total.

The rule is only that it must not primarily be for my own use, but something that's intended to be sent out into the world for evaluation--either to be graded by my professors or for publication of some kind.

See, I'm a grad student, and I have lots of other writing responsibilities I would feel terrible about abdicating if I tried to spend a month doing NaNoWriMo with only creative work. This way I should make tons of progress on my academic writing (and yes, journals that I have to hand in for my archives class count) and, because of that, get some work done in the creative realm as well.

Oh, and query letters and cover letters count as well--I'll be counting up the number of items I actually submit places as well. I'm excited about using this month not only to produce, but also to focus on revising as many items as possible and getting 'em out there...

So hey, those of you out there doing NaNoWriMo, I'm with you guys. And those of you who don't feel you have a novel in you but want to ride the writing excitement with me, please feel free to join me in NaWriMo, using whatever rules you feel you can adhere to reasonably.

Of course, this said, my first night was unproductive. Today, however, I'm planning to write a good portion of a conference paper due on Monday, and revise another for the same deadline, and write a creative non-fic essay also due on Monday, so that will get me significantly ahead in word count.

So off into the intrepid adventure of plowing out the pages of text...I'm quite excited about it, actually...check out this blog's side bar for my word count and submission stats.