Offline

I'm on vacation as of later today. Granted, it will be a vacation in which I haul a large chunk of my books and binders for studying for my Big Nasty Tests with me, but still a vacation. I may post sometime early next week, but then I'll be offline for a week and a half.

It will probably be quite productive for my studying, though I would still prefer to have a laptop to take with me to type things in. Ah well, I'll survive, and likely thrive outside of those times when I have the deep urge to retrieve or create a new studying document.

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.)

Dormant with the Bears...

So in case you were wondering, these past few weeks weren't only time off for me from school and from blogging, but they were also time off from creative writing as well. Actually, they were pretty much time off from all types of writing.

And most of the time, I wasn't even in that mode where I felt like I was collecting writing material. When I did think about my creative writing projects, I felt rather "eh" about them, like all my creative energy and confidence had leaked out my little toe or something, and I wasn't even sure where it had leaked to. I mean, you'd 'a thought there'd have been a puddle of creativity somewhere on the floor, but not so much.

It wasn't pretty. But I think it was necessary. I've been dealing with a lot of stresses of various kinds lately, and I think I needed time off, even from creativity. I'm pretty sure what I was going through was what Virginia Hampton Wright calls a "period of dormancy":

In just about every cycle there's a period of dormancy, when it seems that nothing much is happening. Sometimes this is when you think your well has dried up. You can't imagine ever having another good idea ever again. You're not interested in your work. Creativity doesn't mean as much, or if it means anything, you can't really connect with it. (The Soul Tells a Story p. 206)

Ironically, during my time of dormancy I was in a warm place, and now that I'm back in the cold, I'm feeling energized again. Naturally, now that I'm feeling better, it's back into the swing of a busy semester, which means less time to spend on the creative writing parts. But c'est la vie, eh?

Anyone want to swap dormancy stories?

Post-NaWriMo Day 1: Off for Awhile...

So my Christmas plans got shifted around a bit--it looks like I'm leaving tomorrow for a long winter's break down south and will be back after the first week of January. I might post from time to time, but don't expect too much...

In the meantime, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May it be filled with the collection of writing material (those family Christmases really are quite good that way, you know ;).

Off Again...and the Unfortunate Effects of Transcription

In the spirit of the goals I mentioned yesterday, I'm off to take a real vacation, complete with relational time, for the next 10 days before school starts. I'm taking a little bit of fiction editing and my journal with me, but I'm leaving most of my writing life behind. I'm not going to stop myself from doodling out ideas for new or current creative projects, but the place I'm going is unrelated to any current project, which is a good thing.

One thing I'm hoping this vacation will do for me is to re-set my editorial eye. See, I've been transcribing and/or analyzing transcripts for a good chunk of the summer. This job has taught me that if one wants to keep one's editorial and proofreading senses carefully in check, one must not spend much time transcribing and analyzing literal transcripts of audio files.

I discovered this effect when noticing, a week after I'd handed it in, that the paper I turned in for my summer independent study was rife with editorial errors my proofreading eye would have caught much sooner before said transcription work. I didn't have a huge amount of time to do a final proofread of that paper, but before this summer, I never would have left this many errors in it. When I went back to it a few days later, the English MA self within me recoiled in agony.

It makes sense, when I think about it--the act of transcription forces your eye to check for accuracy, not sentence structure and grammar, and the act of non-conversational-analytic transcription analysis further trains your eye to actually skim past the grammatical errors. So it's a good thing I'm taking a 10-day break from transcripts.

Anyway, I scheduled posts while I'm gone so I wouldn't feel too tempted to post--working ahead isn't usually a bad thing, especially when it contributes to the guilt-free-ness of time off. ;) The posts should pop up approximately every other day. I'm sure I'll be checking for comments occasionally, and filling in the blank days with extra posts if I really get inspired.