Further Up and Further In

Okay, the paper (including Monday's efforts) is now at 4159 words (14 pages). A few more pages to write today along with the revision, plus that never-started final-except-for-the-final stack of grading to do. Both to do today.

Stupid sinus infection. (Diagnosed Tuesday, which turned out to be a sick day, along with most of yesterday.)

Yesterday I had a case of severe writer's block, or, rather, a case of my brain going on strike until I shifted the latest 2 pages I'd written to somewhere near the end of the paper. I hate it when that happens, though I'm now thinking those 2 pages may have very little place in the paper altogether once it's done (except in a severely modified form), so I guess I'm thankful for the heads up. Inconvenient, though, since I was already further behind than I wanted to be, what with the sickness and all.

Oh well, last night I was able to catch up by writing 6ish pages between 10:30 and 1. Woohoo!

Okay, off to grading before finishing and revising the paper.

Good Enough

So if it were an ideal day, I had wanted to write 10 pages of rough draft of that last paper, so I could write 5 pages tomorrow and 5 on Wednesday and then revise the whole thing on Thursday before the Friday due date.

So 10 pages today didn't quite happen, but as of midnight, I'm halfway down page 6 (1715 words), which is good enough for me. It's enough that I can still only slightly up my daily page output in the next 2 days and still have a rough draft by Wednesday night, which is delightful.

Especially since I, having hit the exhausted-and-somewhat-sick stage, need more sleep this week and am determined to work no later than midnight each night.

This should be manageable. 1715 words down, roughly 3500-4000 to go, plus some revising. And then, provided I also get through the stack of grading I've promised to do by Friday's final, I'll only have the final to grade before I'm free of the semester's work! ! !

(This is all, of course, assuming that this exhausted-and-somewhat-sick doesn't turn into something full-blown by the week's end, which I'm trying not to think about, considering I don't remotely have time to be that sick. Then again, even if I do get sicker, the amounts are reasonable enough to plow through, I hope.)

Okay, to bed so that doesn't happen.

One More Down, Down to One to Go

Okay, so last night I was up late again, but I was able to finish revising Monday's paper and get it off to my research partner to finish it up. I revised 17 pages and expanded it to 22. That's 1700 new words for the revision plus the--what, 1500 new words?--for the 5 new pages. I'll figure out the exact amount of new words later, when I create the final tally for this NaWriMo 2 project, which is now going to May 20.

One more paper to write this week by Friday, plus one more round of grading before Friday and then one on Friday after I give my final. Plus 10 hours of assistantship. I'd say this sounds pretty manageable, but I don't want to get cocky. Plus I'm pretty tired, even with the day of rest I'm getting today.

To Sleep, Perchance to...Well, Sleep, Hopefully

Okay, 5:30 a.m. and all is well. Conference paper done and sent off. Total new words for the paper (including last night's 1800-something): 4252. I ended up deleting 5 pages of the original 10 entirely and replacing them with new words, so on top of that I get to add 1000 new words to the total for the revision of the other 10 pages I'd written. Total page length for the paper: 19 pages plus 2 pages of references.

Sleep now--hopefully I'll be able to, since the caffeine kicked in quite well from the 11 p.m. pot of tea. I don't have to be anywhere until a social outing in 9ish hours, and my Monday paper revisions (knock on wood) shouldn't be quite as extensive, so I can work on those starting at 6 p.m. when I get home, finishing, one hopes, by midnight or earlier.

Then: Sunday: rest! And, next week, only one 20-page paper to write all week. I'm actually looking forward to writing that one--I've already got a page or two of abstract and lots of thoughts and research to go off (another dissertation-related paper--woohoo!).

For Those of You Keeping Count...

1810 new words last night on the paper due by the end of the day today. The paper's now at 15 pages and still quite discombobulated, so I'm assuming there will be some severe revisions, plus at least 3-5 total new pages added before midnight-ish tonight. But first I get to go to my assistantship for five hours, then fact-check some stuff at the library before heading to write new words on the paper.

Oh, and if you've been wondering where the word count has been in the last few days, it had been absent only because I hadn't figured out whether to add in words for grading or not (apparently not). I graded a whole stack of papers (only one stack more now to go--and it's a less complicated one--plus the final to give and grade at the end of next week). I wrote and edited two PowerPoints and an abstract by which I informed my classmates in all 3 of my classes of the excellent projects I'll be writing and editing next week, and prepared to teach my review class yesterday.

Then, after attending the last seminar of the last semester of full coursework (only one left in the fall) last night, I sat down and wrote those 1810 new words (after resting and caffeinating a bit). I've lowered my expectations for this paper I'm turning in by midnight, by the way--hoping for relative coherency at this point rather than brilliance. I think it's starting to hang together better in my head and in the first five pages, but once I get home about 5 I'll have a lot left to do.

Woohoo! Tomorrow should be a bit more laid-back, thank goodness--the paper due Monday is just revisions, really, so tomorrow a bit of revision, at least half of that other stack of grading, perhaps start myself on actually writing that 20-page paper due a week from today, and--get this--I may actually leave the house to go to a social event for a few hours in the afternoon. Woohoo! A quieter day... But for now, I must make myself a strong pot of black tea.

Confession is Good for the Soul (2)

Doing substantially better since my morning's confession of Saturday's unproductivity. I've written out my part of paper #2 (which is a co-written paper) in rough draft form in the last few hours. That's 8 pages of new words, or, to be precise, 2448 words. Perfect timing, as I have a meeting with my research partner in half an hour.

I'm pleased to have this properly rough-drafted. Not only is it something off my stack o' things to do, but, while the paper isn't due till a week from today, we have to present it together in class in only a few days. It will be much, much easier to do that with my part of the paper properly written out first.

Woohoo! Now, after I get back from the meeting, I can focus on starting that stack of grading that's glaring at me from across the room. Then, tomorrow, time to finish up writing up that conference paper due on Friday, perhaps, so then I'll have time to finish up my grading, polishing up my lesson plans for Thursday, and the other two final-paper presentations I have to give this week? (My life busy right now? Why do you ask?)

Confession is Good for the Soul

Okay, so on Saturday, after my big breakthrough on my papers, I seemed to be barred from proceeding much of anywhere on them by, well, disinclination. Or something. So until 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night, I was rather less productive than I wanted to be.

I hate that--sheesh, if I had known that ahead of time, I could have driven somewhere with a forest and taken a 6-hour hike or something. Which would have been supremely productive on such a beautiful day in the lower 80s F.

Oh well. I did pull myself together well enough at 11 p.m. to write up a close-to-1000 word outline of my ideas for paper #2 before writing up a review sheet for my students and crashing at 2 a.m.

What all this means is that I have a lot to do this week, and must not have more of such lapses. I hope and pray that I don't have them, and that everything gets done.

Speaking of Olympic Feats (2): NaWriMo 2 Word Count Update

ANNOUNCER (FROM OLYMPIC SPEED-WRITING CONTEST): And now for an interview with our sponsor, PhD student Deborah Leiter, who is caught in an end-of-semester graduate student speed-writing event that's sure to prepare her for the types of Olympic contests you see on our coverage here at Scribe Stadium. How's your contest--er, semester--going, Deborah?

DEBORAH: Yes. Mostly well, thank you. At least I turned in the first of three final semester papers just a few minutes ago. As it turns out, today in about 6 hours I not only revised 22 pages, which as you'll remember in the NaWriMo 2 scoring system counts for the equivalent of 2200 new words, but in the editing process the paper swelled to 29 pages for a total of 8816 new words, which is an addition of another 2000 or so entirely new words to the paper that will be exactly calculated at a later date.

ANNOUNCER: Wow, that's quite the new word count for a relatively short revise-and-polish period. So does this excess of new words bring you any closer to your word count total?

DEBORAH: Sadly, since it was all used up in one paper, the excess gets me no closer to my academic goals of finishing the semester. However, I am quite excited that I've gotten to the point in my academic career where I'm no longer grasping for words to say--seems I've got plenty of them to pour out. Now I'm just hoping I can only keep this up for 1 conference paper, 2 more course papers, and--these two are new tasks added just in the last couple of days--the revision of one book chapter by May 15 and the writing and revision of another one by May 20.

ANNOUNCER: Were there any deleterious effects from the quick outpour of words you've seen lately?

DEBORAH: Not, so far, from today's outpour. After Saturday's contest in which I poured out 20 new pages, though, my back was a mess of knots--and I was exhausted--from Sunday morning straight up until last night. Other speedwriting academic athletes, take heed when attempting such huge feats at home. I'll say one thing, though--all of this is certainly preparing me for the large amounts of quickly-written texts I'll have to pour out during my Big Nasty Tests in late August/early September. If all goes well there, maybe I'll actually be trained up enough to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge for real this coming November. We'll see how it goes.

ANNOUNCER: That's wonderful. And now, back to the Olympic event we've been covering...

The Difficulty with Having Been a Slave...

I've been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia in the car on CD lately, and recently, in The Horse and His Boy, I heard a quote that struck with me. The gist of it was something along the lines of "The problem is, of course, that once you've been a slave, and then you're free, it's difficult to make yourself do quite as much as you can do. Because of course, what you can do and what you think you can do aren't the same thing."

This stuck in my head because I've been thinking lately about self-management a lot lately, what with the switch a few years ago from being a full-time employee when my tasks were in part demanded by others, shifting down to a graduate program where somewhat less was required of me, then back up into a more demanding program.

The annoying part is that, immediately after I started my first program where less was demanded externally, I was able to self-manage quite well to produce a lot outside of what was externally demanded of me. Then, frustratingly, came a period of lesser production as I shifted disciplinary perspectives within a program where more was required of me.

The thing is, now that I'm used to both the more demanding program and the new disciplinary perspective (I'm an accumulative learner), I finally feel as though I'm back up to--and in fact, have surpassed, thanks to the extra external expectations--my initial grad student productivity, a fact that bodes well for the less-structured time ahead.

I just hope that, now that I've made it into the zone (in a more balanced way, no less), I'm able to port this motivation and productivity into keeping up the creative output as well as into playing hard in the breaks I can get from keeping up the self-management. I think it might be possible, but I'm certainly not expecting it to go perfectly...

Ah, the efforts we make to temper hope with realism and vice-versa, hoping that the realism won't keep you from doing your best and that the hope won't raise your expectations to the point where you can't adjust if and when it becomes necessary.

A Successful Tsunami Surfing Operation

So I now have a total of 6716 words in my paper (which works out to 22 pages). 917 of those words existed before I started (3 pages), but I cut at least half of those out and heavily revised the rest, so I'm counting this as 6516 new words.

I didn't actually start writing the paper until 1:30 p.m. (after writing 507 more words as an outline and thinking it through before I started). And I took a couple hours' of breaks after that for dinner and such as rewards for my productivity.

Ultimately, that means that I wrote an average of 2 1/2-3 pages, or 746 new words, per hour. That's darn good paper-writing speed to be sustained over that amount of time. I'm thankful I was able to get through it without losing steam.

I finished everything but polishing, the addition of a few quotations and a bunch of citations, and the addition of a 1-3 page conclusion. But I can easily do that on Monday, since it's my at-home day and the paper's not due till Wednesday.

[evil tent-y fingers] I love it when a plan comes together. [face becomes more serious] Especially when one discovers oneself able to break through the brick wall formed by the 12 rough-draft-academic-pages-a-day limitation experienced in one's previous graduate career.

It's fun to get better at surfing that tsunami. Apparently one DOES get better at this with lots of practice, it seems. And now I get to have a whole day off schoolwork before revision strikes on Monday, along with those other stacks of grading...

About to (Finally) Write

Okay, so I finally finished my analysis and I'm ready to plunge into the first of three 20-page papers. (This one's due first.) Actually, I already have 3 pages of it done, from an earlier proposal that was due. I'm going to see if I can just plow through and write most of the rest of it today, leaving Monday open for grading and such.

At any rate, here's my tally on the note-taking for this paper: 18,513 words, which, in my new scheme for word-counting, is the equivalent of 4628 new words.

I'm looking forward to really challenging myself to plow through quickly now. Writing all those notes and doing a thorough analysis really did help me come up with some good examples and bits of analysis I can then translate into actual new words. So here's hoping the energy and focus holds for the day.

Okay, and with that, I'm off to the races.

Plowing Through

Haven't officially started writing the (academic) paper due soon, but I've taken, to date, more than 17,424 words' worth of notes on it. The analysis is almost done--only a few more hours' worth of it. Of course, I have to do that today, along with a bunch of reading and grading and so on and so on and so on.

I'm pretty sure this is NaWriMo 2, but that I don't have the time to keep too much of a running tally on the sidebar. When I can, I'll include my results here and tally them up at the end.

I'm pretty sure notes will count in the final word tally as 1 "new word" for every 4 note words. So, in this case, I've garnered the equivalent of 4,500 new words already. That's reassuring, since that's the equivalent of approximately 15 pages of a paper and the paper has to be 20-25 pages.

Then again, I was never worried about having enough material for this paper. It was having enough time to do a thorough enough analysis before starting, and being able to fit in the most important things I wanted to say. Especially since this is one of the two papers this semester which should form the basis not only for conference papers, but also, hopefully, dissertation chapter-ish material (which may, in turn, provide me material for a book).

Thankfully, the analysis/note-taking part is almost done, and some manner of outline has begun to form in my head in the process. I should be able to plow out the paper this weekend, provided all goes well.

See, this is why I'm rewarding myself for the note-taking part--not only does it take a ton of time, it really helps move toward the paper-writing and make that process so much more smoother. (Or so I need to believe. ;)

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?