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!

Reader's Block, Part 2

Okay, so I got curious as to whether others experienced reader's block, and found this lovely and still-relevant thread of discussion about it at LibraryThing, and another at the Guardian.

It seems that that statement the Jack character made in Shadowlands--"we read to know we are not alone"--applies to reading online threads about reader's block as well. I do feel thankful that this is not an isolated condition.

The only problem with these threads is that they refer to "reading" as spare time reading, which means that much of the advice revolves around telling people to wait out the reader's block or switch to reading something else. These are not options for me, since what I'm blocked toward is assigned reading with an imminent deadline. Although several people in the first thread said they really got blocked during grad school, they didn't say how they got around the problem.

Urgh.

By the way, the block is a little bit better, but still distressingly there, at least in part. I don't think the fall allergies are helping it much. Note to self: next year, wait until later in October, when the allergies ease up, to choose to make any class presentations. Except, well, I won't be in classes next fall (what a glorious thought!). I'll be studying for my big nasty exams instead, which task is big and nasty, but blessedly is more flexible in how one studies for it.

Oh, one more thing--there probably won't be any new posts until Wednesday-ish, as that's when my academic load lightens just a bit.

The Mysterious Case of Reader's Block

Here's the thing...so I'm expected to produce a ton of written and oral output of the academic type in the next week. The problem is that in order to do that, I have to shovel a large load of new material into my head, but after 3 years of grad school, it feels like I've reached capacity for new ingestion of written material.

That is to say, I have reader's block.

Anyone have suggestions for practices to get around this weird problem? And quickly? I really need to dig into this stuff tomorrow in a serious way...