As She Heaves a Sigh of Relief...

So the last week has been busier than a first week of "vacation" (i.e., a few month period of slightly less academic work per week) ought to be, perhaps. The day after my semester was completed, I went north for a short 2-day visit. After that, I worked my 11 hours at my assistantship and finished my revise and resubmit for the book chapter due May 15 (that's 1600 new words for 16 pages of revisions).

And then I abstracted (150 new words) one of the papers I'd written for the end of the semester and sent it off as a conference proposal for a fall academic conference. Finishing this up as my parents (who had arrived that evening) slept.

The next day, I went with them to Chicago for a short 2-day visit. We spent one day at a professional sporting event, where I enjoyed being outside and cheering instead of staring at a computer screen, and then seeing relatives, where I was overwhelmed by seeing a large clump of people after my hermit-like grad school existence.

The next day, I got to go to the Newberry Library and do archival research toward my dissertation. I'll just say I could live there. I love that place.

Anyway, I got home and tried to wrap my brain around the paper that I was sure was due this Wednesday while trying to logistically prepare for the conference I have to go to on Wednesday through Friday. After two days, I had a place to stay and a way to get there, but I'd only gotten as far on the paper as a written outline. And so, this morning, I was immeasurably glad when I got an email changing the deadline for the paper to June 15.

Collective sigh of relief, please.


Thanks. Now there's time to actually get academically ready for this week's conference. (I've written the long versions of the conference papers, but must figure out what of that I can say in only a few minutes and read other people's papers on my panel.)

The Microfilm Is Mocking Me

Okay, so only five months after my archival trip last fall, my university library was able to check out to me a microfilm of the manuscript I'd delightedly schlepped out to California to look at last fall (see posts here, here, and here for a history).

Tantalizingly, the little ball of celluloid-ish stuff also promises me one of the author's other manuscripts for comparison's sake that I wasn't able to look at last fall. My inner nerd was salivating prolifically as I took the small box in my hands--I nearly trembled as I carried it out of the library and brought it home.

Sadly, although I can't wait to dig into a good sound analysis of its contents, other duties press this week. The little box is sitting on my table just mocking me with its nearness yet inaccessibility without the machine necessary for its viewing.

I can't tell if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I don't have a microfilm reader handy at home (I can't say I know anyone that does, actually). Oh well, I really shouldn't be working on it in the next few days when I have other things to do anyway.

Soon, though, my little microfilm, once I've finished a few more tasks, I will bring you to the library's machines and we will have a good chat, you and I...

Memoir and the Art of Remembering Oneself

Okay, so I've been feeling this more and more over the last six months or so, and I think I'm going to put a concerted effort toward it in my spare time: life writing. As in, writing in which I remember different parts of my life. I think I'm going to try it out as one of my writing goals for the year.

Why am I feeling this just now? Several reasons, really:

• The historical/archival classes I took last fall got me in the mood to remember things for future generations.
• My life has been filled with interesting stories and experiences, and I need to remember that. Hard to remember somedays that I'm an interesting person when I sit in front of the computer and/or deep theoretical tome for most of the day.
• Because of the nature of said deep theoretical reading, I find myself a dull conversational companion sometimes. Remembering those various facets of myself discovered through aforesaid interesting stories and experiences will keep me more interesting.
• Thanks to Facebook, people from various stages of my past are reviving memories of my life then and making me aware of what has happened in-between. Might as well take advantage of the memory-jogging to jot some of it down.
• I did come up with a memoir idea, title and all, last fall. Might as well lay some groundwork for it from time to time.
• It's something I can easily shift to from academic tasks (and back).
• I don't have much time or money to observe many real-world activities in a vacation-esque "see interesting things in other parts of the world" sense just now. This would give me regular vacations to parts of my past for no charge.
  
• It would likely help me dig through some of the questions of identity I deal with on a daily basis, making me a more integrated person.
• It would serve as a good introduction for my significant other to some of the portions of my life I don't always think to talk about on a daily basis.
  

Anyway, I think I'm going to take a stab at it sometimes this semester betwixt and between the homework and lesson plans. Not necessarily trying to do it by chapters, as such (though I might). I'm thinking about starting with more sketching out some scenes and themes and writing some material that might be useful to drop into whatever chapters I'm thinking through later on. More experimentation than anything at this point. Play, really. I think it will be fun.

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.

The Thrill of the (Paper) Chase: A Documentary Romance

Take One: Bodleian Library, Oxford, England, 1997. Deborah, on a jaunt during her Semester in England, stands chafing at the polite barricades keeping her from the stacks of the Bodleian library in Oxford. Later, when I heard that there were 16th century books stacked up in corners within the library's depths, I felt my heart beat a bit more quickly, and I was jealous of those who had permissions to go in.

Take Two: Morgan library, New York, 2006. Deborah, on a pre-thesis-on-Thoreau-and-Eliot jaunt to New York with slightly-impatient friends, stands and copies down the information she can glean from the behind-glass pages of one of Thoreau's journals while steaming up the glass in front of them with her breath. Earlier, having had the usual visitor's look-but-don't-touch access to the amazing three-story library room, she wondered whether any of those enticing books were getting read, but by no means felt qualified to figure out whether she could do so.

Take Three: Huntington Library, San Marino, 2008. (This coming Saturday, to be exact.) Armed with the knowledge I've learned in my Archival Theory and Practice class, I know much more, and therefore, having filled out all the necessary paperwork and been granted limited access, I will walk in, show my ID, receive my reader's permit and the three documents I've been given access to, and be able to actually page through them for hours. Sweet victory!

Still, if this is a romance, it will be more like a conjugal visit in prison than anything else--I'm not allowed to take any bags or pens into the reading room, only paper, pencils, and a laptop. I had to tell them exact days that I would be there so I could get access to these materials. If I want photocopies I will need to fill out a form at the end of the visit. All of these specifications...

From the midst of my archival theory and practice class, I understand the need for such precautions--after all, it's important to keep these things in good condition for their preservation. All the same, I find it fascinating that the metaphor I keep coming up against is visiting these documents in prison. I suppose, though, another metaphor would be that of going through all the checks to become a day-long visitor to the White House, to see some of the parts people rarely see on tour. That's probably a more apt metaphor, really, because it is quite a privilege.

And I am looking forward to looking at these documents, making friends with them and seeing whether this pen pal relationship of ours will blossom into something more, maybe even a dissertation chapter. No matter whether this particular documentary flame sparks or fizzles, I'm thankful that takes 4, 5, and 6 are likely to be even happier scenarios. That's important, as I'll likely need to do this down the road again, in both my academic and non-academic writing (historical fiction or non-fiction alike).

As GI Joe used to say in the cartoon of my youth, "knowing is half the battle."

In Which Her Internal Nerd Begins to Salivate...

For those of you keeping track, I handed in my rhetoric of conspiracy paper yesterday on time. In fact, I dropped it in the box a whole 5 minutes early, I think.

****

So before I forget, Terry Whalin pointed out a great article about blogging at The Atlantic . Many great lines and insights (though I disagree with a few of the statements--for instance, the first blogs were primarily used as a navigational tool to supplement search directories, so I've been told, rather than as a personal diary-ish log).

But it's a good article. The best line, for my purposes as a media scholar and as a writer, is this, from near the bottom of the last page: "The message dictates the medium. And each medium has its place—as long as one is not mistaken for the other."

He's talking about writing for different media--for the magazine, for the book reader, and for the screen--and I think it's just fabulously well-put. Delightfully non-media-determinist.

****

In other news, I got word yesterday that, while I will not get a general reader's pass for the Huntington Library in California for my visit this weekend, they have kindly granted me access to view the three documents that will help me, hopefully, write a paper leading toward my dissertation work. I'm very excited about this, as I was a bit worried, seeing as how I could probably work from photocopies, but who knows, what with the potential smudging and such.

For those of you who fail to find your internal reading nerd salivating big-time at the prospect of going to cool libraries and burying yourselves in the marginalia of nearly-forgotten Kingsley Amis mystery novel manuscripts written in the 1970s, the grounds of the library are supposed to be amazing. If you've seen the chick flick The Wedding Planner with Matthew McConneaghey (awful movie but that's not his fault), there's a garden scene with nude statues that's I'm told was filmed on the grounds of this library. So I'm hoping to also hang out on the grounds a bit if I can (though I have no need of meeting a guy there--got one already, thanks).

I also have a couple other activities planned while I'm out there. There should be writing material gathering a-plenty, for creative stuff as well as the academic.

And I'm excited about getting a change of scene. The mid-semester doldrums within me have been crying out, and I haven't been to California since I was 9. Woohoo, I say! Woohoo!

On Journals and Journaling, Part 1

"Journal is from Old French jurnal, or 'belonging to a day.' At first, it was a sort of reference book that contained the times of daily prayers. In the 1600s, it acquired the meaning of 'diary' and later became associated with newspaper titles and lent its root to journalism." From Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac

This quotation came through to my inbox the other day, and it struck me as being chock-full of interesting tidbits:

1. That the first journal recorded the times of daily prayers. As a Protestant Christian who, (like Kathleen Norris, whose book The Cloister Walk encouraged me in the practice), loves visiting monasteries, my "monastery geek" side comes out full force for this one. Particularly since my "diary-style" journal entries so often turn into prayers by their ends--I find talking to God so much more interesting than talking to myself.
   
   
2. That the first journals were also reference works. I still find my journals to retain a touch of this character--I try to capture thoughts, observations, emotions, etc., partly so I can refer to them immediately and figure out what's going on in me, but also for reference later on to remember snippets of what my life was like at an earlier time. And my journals specifically used to capture writing inspirations are even more reference works.
   
   
3. The reporting, or journalism, aspect is interesting, particularly as I don't often think of other people reading my journal. However, last week I had to do a finding aid for some of my papers for my archival theory and practice class, acting as though future researchers would be using my papers for research, and this gave me new insights into this journaling aspect (and made me feel quite vulnerable). But more on that in a day or so (hm, there really is an ancient connection between journals and what many blogs have turned into).
   

A Bad News/Good News Scenario

Bad news: I'm quite tired, having stayed up until 4:30 a.m. finishing the load of homework due today, which I was finishing up after the load of homework due yesterday. And tonight I have to annotate the notes I put together for tomorrow night's presentation, so the wave's still washing over me, although the biggest part of it has past.

Good news: It turned out that an hour spent in near-pounding out tunes on my incredibly out-of-tune piano siphoned off enough psychic blockage to let me finish everything I was supposed to finish. On time, if not with a lot of time in there for sleeping. And now that the first wave of the semester has passed, I have time to scan the horizon (er, syllabi) for future waves, so as to see where I can plan for them. I also have time to actually get the piano tuned so that I can do less violence to my ear drums next time I hit reader's or writer's block.

Bad news: I got a negative response to my novel manuscript query in the mail today.

Good news: It was the nicest rejection I've ever gotten. Not only was it very timely (just over 2 weeks since I sent the original by mail) and handwritten, but it began with the word "Alas" (in the sense that "alas, he couldn't take it"). See, some agents can be nice. And now it's time to get back on that horse and get a few more back in the mail quickly, as national events have conspired to give me a window when the topic of my novel is more pertinent than ever.

Bad news: Because I have not yet passed my big nasty exams for my PhD, I may not be able to get a reader's permit to view manuscripts and letters (pertinent to my dissertation topic and my history-ish/archives classes this fall) I've been salivating over that are held at the prestigious Huntington Library in California, when I go there next month.

Good news: I've spoken to the archivist for the collection, and she told me the procedure for asking if I can get in despite not having passed my exams. And even if I don't get a permit, she's willing to meet with me the Monday I'm in the area and get me photocopies of the items I identify as important. This means that, provided the items actually have the exciting information I think is there, I'll be able to write a potentially important paper toward my dissertation this fall. Plus, I'm getting important experience with archives that will help me with future forays into them. Yeah! Good things to temper the bad-news elements of my week!

The Power of Choice

Over at the Good Letters blog, Santiago Ramos has posted about this How Fiction Works book (by James Wood) that I've been reading, blogging about, and enjoying. One comment he made is one that a lot of my classes have also been focusing on lately--the power of the author to both choose and exclude certain items from the story.

Both Ramos and Wood speak of this option in terms of the novel and speak of it as a potentially beautiful, artistic act, and I love that. The reason I love this is that the world of critical theorist academics so often speaks of all choice as negative, and arising from malign motives.

Often they are right, and have valid points--and social justice is a truly beautiful thing, highlighting the downtrodden and the oppressed. And I think that it's very important for us, when looking at something like a historical archive in the library, to be aware that how the items were chosen and what might have been excluded were important choices to analyzing the collection and towards building our view of history.

But I don't think that such exclusions are always made out of malign motives. I think that those who were building the literary canon, for instance, were simply trying to come up with a good list of literary works. And I think they did a good job of that. Sure, other things are worthy of study, and we ought not become snobby about sticking with the canon all the time, or assume those who made the choices or those included within it are unimpeachable. But I think we need not knock down these authors simply because they've been considered great. In fact, I think we should take some time to revel in the excellent choices these great authors made within their works when it came to language.

And we ought not think that choice is always a negative thing. Sure, as deconstructionist literary theorists such as Derrida famously pointed out, choice always involves both the chosen and the unchosen, but we couldn't live without making choices in our written and spoken words: in the things we choose to do each day, in the writing projects we choose, and in the details we choose to include within each line of poetry and sentence of prose.

I appreciate the attention the critical theorists have brought to the ethical significance of these choices and their potential exclusionary power, and I try to think more about these choices on a daily basis as a result, but as Ramos and Wood remind us, it's worth also remembering that these choices, on the aesthetic level, can create great beauty, and on a deeper level, can provide great meaning and dignity, helping us to appreciate how much we share in the human condition through beautifully chosen words.

So Much Material: A Rejoicing

Okay, after my lamentations of the last couple of days, it's fair that I say that I went to my first couple of classes yesterday, and they were amazing. They're going to be incredibly helpful both in my academic and my creative lives.

My "Rhetoric of Conspiracy" class--with Dr. Charles Stewart, a master in the field of rhetoric who's retiring in the spring, is going to have me thinking of interesting connections between conspiracy theories and mystery-detective narratives (which is the focus of my dissertation). And as a bonus, it's also going to have me thinking of lots of great plots for thrillers.

And then there's my interdisciplinary Archival Theory and Methods class. Beyond learning about archives and archival theory (which will be fun for me with all the library work I've got in my background), we're going to be actually helping local organizations--including the local West Lafayette library--to dig through some of their less organized collections of documents and paraphernalia and helping them with them. In the process, I should be able to:

• figure out whether an archival analysis could yield what I was hoping for my dissertation;
  
• build relationships with people who could advise me of important material that might be available, both for my dissertation and for other creative writing projects I'm working on;
• help out with something that will potentially help those that use the collections in the future;
• dig through archives of material that's bound to help me with current creative writing projects and inspire me with others.

Since some of my fiction ideas tend in the historical direction, I can see this course will be a treasure trove that will give me a better idea of how to move forward in those projects, if not actually giving me the information I need itself.

My third and final class--on historical-critical approaches to rhetorical study--is tonight. I expect that will pair well with the others, particularly with the archives class, to help me see one way I might be able to apply archival work in the comm. discipline. That will be helpful as well.

Yeah! It's going to be a good semester, bearing all sorts of interesting fruit, both foreseen and unforeseen.

Before I go, one more exciting bit of news: not that any set of rankings are that important, but it seems that Purdue's Communication dept. has been ranked as tied for #1 in the area of narrative. Since that's so central to what I'm doing here, it's nice to have an affirmation that I'm in the right place.