Potential Cage Match!: Teaching-Prep Time Vs. Novel-Prep Time

After celebrating the holidays with family, I've been able to settle back in to some spring teaching prep during the last couple of days. Yesterday, specifically, enabled by a quiet household and lovely family members that made food readily accessible, I was able to achieve one spate of work in which I was able to work from around 9:30 a.m. (which was when I woke up) until roughly 5:30 p.m., and then again from 10:45 p.m. to 1:45 a.m.

During these 11 hours I revised a single syllabus, prepped PowerPoints for the first two weeks of that class, and then close-read 65 pages of the somewhat-dense textbook for my other (new) class in the spring in hopes of selecting the best chapters to add to that syllabus. Thanks to staying up late doing the reading, I only have 40 pages left to go in that textbook, which means I'm close to determining a reading schedule for the other class as well.

This all reminds me that teaching (well) is a lot of work. Which, to be honest, scares me a bit, as creative writing also involves a lot of work. I'm not worried, really, that I won't get both sets of work done this spring. What I suspect/hope will happen, rather, is that the change of rhythms between the two types of creative work will become routine, each giving me a break from the other while the promise of a break from each will encourage me to work harder as to give the other some room in my headspace.

That's what I hope, at least. But there could potentially be a Cage Match a-brewing.

Here's the difference between the two, as I currently see it: early-stage Teaching-Prep Time is the one who would systematically make sandwiches, leaning back out of the reach of Novel-Prep Time's airily-waved dagger in a potentially successful attempt to avoid any blows. While it can threaten to take over and always takes more time than you expect, early-stage Teaching-Prep Time is delightfully discrete in many ways. One can easily list things one must do:

Structure the syllabus. Re-read the policy wording to remove redundancies and include any changes one wanted to make based on the particular class or recent semester experiences. Read or re-read the textbook and lay out the schedule of readings and assignments appropriately, working across syllabi to double-check one's grading load along with student workloads. (Re-)Envision how to frame the class and the material for the students and plan any supplementary readings. Begin to create or revise lesson plans and PowerPoints for each day accordingly.

One begins to sense the enormity of the task of filling approximately sixty 75-minute segments of class with meaningful discussions and activities along with planning useful out-of-class work, but--especially when one of the classes has already been taught once--it seems like a possible enormity. And when one finishes 11 hours of work in a day, one feels accomplished.

Early-stage Novel-Prep Time, perhaps because it's still a less-familiar activity for me (having only completed one Novel in a Drawer previously), but also because of its nature, seems more amorphous and even more time-intensive:

Read background works on the era and space and writing in the genre. Try to figure out how much poetic license one wants to take with one's era, location, and genre. Attempt to deal with the emotions raised by realizing one will have to deal with difficult emotions during the novel-writing activity. Re-read portions of helpful writing books that help one deal with such emotions. Re-start one's blog as a form of public accountability along with a way to process one's thoughts about process. Read through more background works looking for potential inspirations for characters and plot twists along with period and location-specific language and details to insert. Try to imagine one's way into one's characters' heads and envision some of their backstory and potential actions. Jot down ideas as they pop up, referring back to previous notes to try to come up with some sort of useful brainstorming treasure trove, if not an actual outline. Read more novels in your genre, typing in whole passages to get muscle memory for the style and to enforce close reading of the text....

Take break to try to get emotional space and claim more space for future Novel-Prep Time by completing delightfully discrete Teaching-Prep tasks. Back to sandwich-making for awhile.

I'm beginning to understand why Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Gilead, once said she gave back the money a year and a half into a paid 5-year period of full-time creative writing. I may feel differently once I get into it, but right now, I'm glad to have some more structured work to fall back on during breaks.

Yes, this could work nicely, at least during this holiday break when both activities will be occasionally broken by the other delightful activities known by labels such as Sleeping, Exercise, and Talking to Non-Work-Related People. The balance is bound to change once the semester starts and Students, Colleagues, and Creative Writing Classmates enter the picture. Hopefully I'll have gotten enough done during the break that I'll be able to handle it somewhat gracefully, but only time will tell...

I have a feeling that once the semester starts, it will be Sleep that may suffer the most injuries as a bystander to this battle between these two would-be time conquerors that are already threatening to rumble.... Stay tuned to find out.

On Era-Shock and Other Potential for Overwhelm-ment

I was realizing today that my last month of research before plowing into writing this NaNoWriSpr manuscript might be pretty intense at times. Good thing it's the holidays so I'll have breaks, and in the spring I'll have teaching and occasional academic writing to balance it out, because I can tell already that this will be intense at times.

It's not the writing that bothers me. I'm pretty sure I can do the writing. It won't be perfect all the time, but past experience has shown me I can produce large chunks of text.

Here's what worries me:

• Era-shock: This novel's set in a different place and time. I've lived in other cultures for months at a time before, and it can be exhausting to process all that difference. While I'll have respites from this other culture and time, I'm trying to think my way into this different world, and that's going to be overwhelming at times.
• Emotional Contagion from Main Characters: As often happens in fiction, things will go wrong for my characters. Regularly. That often happens in Story. I'm going to have to work through their emotions with them. That's going to dredge some stuff up. They'll probably drag me down with their bad moods some days.
• Dealing with Ongoing Conflict: Story is made of conflict, and I am required to think my way into what my characters will think and feel about it. This means there will be emotional labor associated with it. Must. Mentally. Prepare.
• Characters Will Likely Die: Let's face it--beyond at-times-unlovely lives, some of my characters might not make it to the end of the story. As someone who bawls every time Beth died in Little Women, I can tell this is yet another source of emotional labor.

To my characters: You better be thankful I'm willing to sacrifice to make you live, dangit! This process will be rough at times! Rewarding? Absolutely! But yeah.

Some extra support over the next few months would be great, folks! Cheer from the sidelines if you can!

On Successful Style-Switching

By some miracle I wrote 300 pages in a spring semester two years ago--but it was a dissertation, not a novel. And I fear my subconscious will have trouble making the switch from the diss to this NaNoWriSpr novel-manuscripting project and not recognize that this one, too, is a novel, rather than a dissertation. It simply must recognize that.

One of my biggest concerns for this new novel project of mine, for which the actual writing starts in less than a month, is that my recent requirements to write highly academic prose occasionally broken by creative non-fiction essays are unfortunately likely infect my novel's tone. That despite my best efforts to the contrary, 5 syllable words will worm their way into passages that are meant to be highly emotional or suspenseful. That my subconscious will add topic sentences to paragraphs. Etc. 

I've been a bit concerned about this process ever since I heard Camilla Gibb give an excellent talk a few years back at the University of Saskatchewan about her own long process of transitioning from writing a dissertation in anthropology to writing fiction, and writing it well. I really want to avoid a long transitional process if it is remotely humanly possible.

I have a few tips and tricks up my sleeve to try to hasten the transition. On a recent Way with Words podcast (love this linguistics podcast--it's been helping me re-focus on the joy of words this fall), Martha suggested a technique for switching among styles which simply involves copying the works of a master in whatever genre you're shifting into. I'm planning to try this over my holiday break--and probably still in the spring whenever I'm switching from teaching tasks and/or academic writing into the DNiP* project.

I've also bought a couple of useful reference books for writers to help me de-academicize my prose as well. Perhaps the most useful is called The Emotion Thesaurus, which arrived in the mail a few days ago. It will help me make my language about my characters' emotional states more concrete by giving me external and internal descriptions of things regularly associated with each of 75 emotions. With that and other writing reference books at the ready along with some time spent literally copying classic novels in my genre, I should be able to keep my prose both better honed and more novel-esque.

Here's hoping it works!

*Dear Novel in Progress

On the Beginning of NaNoWriSpr

I've wanted to do NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel-Writing Month, in which people try to write a 50,000 word novel during the course of November) for a long time, but at the same time I always thought it was a little crazy. A novel in one month? How could one imagine enough depth of character, enough plot twists, enough atmosphere and symbolism for a whole book in such a short period of time? After all, my dear Novel In A Drawer took 18 months of painstaking midnight labor sessions to be birthed, and that only after 6 visits to the location and lots and lots of research. A month always seemed a little ridiculous.

Here's the exciting news: I'm writing a new novel manuscript this spring--likely not in one month, but hopefully in 3-4. I meant to announce this earlier, but I got sidelined by my gratitude as I summed up the gradual rebirth of my writing life and associated writing stamina. I feel profoundly privileged to have the opportunity to do this, and I'm ridiculously excited about it at any point that I'm not overwhelmed by it. It's a manuscript I've been researching towards for almost as long as I did for my earlier project, and I feel this one might have actual market potential, which is an exciting thought.

Since it's not the right time for the social support that comes with the official NaNoWriMo, I'm thankful to be able to take part in an upper-level fiction-writing seminar class at my university this spring that will serve the same purposes. Keeping me on track. Holding me to the deadlines I would be creating for myself anyway. And in addition, helping me with craft and giving me feedback on whether at least parts of the thing are, well, any good.

I probably won't tell you much about the specifics of the genre or plot of Dear Novel in Progress--which I think from now on may occasionally be acronymed DNiP (or on days I don't like it as much, as SNiP=Stupid Novel in Progress)--but I hope to share process and progress notes in this blog along the way as another form of public accountability. I'd love it if any who read this blog would also provide cheers from the sidelines, as it were. Thanks in advance for your support.

It's a big project, this NaNoWriSpr of mine. But one I'm thrilled to have the time, energy, and resources to undertake. So incredibly thankful.

On the Writing Life and Seedlings (Re)Born

So I've posted about it briefly on Facebook, but I truly haven't mentioned here why I've restarted this blog. Here it is: I've finally entered a season of my academic life, for the next few months at least, when it will be possible to actually balance my writing life, both of the academic and the creative varieties, with my teaching life.

It could have been possible over the summer, but I had to move and was pretty burnt out (still recovering from a very full load of teaching so soon after finishing the diss, so regeneration was needed before this semester, which involved a new school and new classes and all the adjustments that come with that.

Despite all that, though, over this summer and into this past semester I was able to crack slowly back into my writing side, like one of those seeds from childhood school projects beginning to germinate and push back up through the dirt surrounded by the inevitable styrofoam cup.

It started small, as it should: a couple of more articles written for the ever-delightful catapult magazine; finally cleaning up a chunk out of my MA thesis from years ago and sharing it at a conference this fall for some great feedback; and then finally revising a couple of chunks of my dissertation intro and extending out the ideas in semi-new directions. I'm grateful to note that both conference papers have been accepted for spring academic conferences. And in the midst of the semester I jotted down some ideas for a diss-related journal article and for turning my diss theory into a book down the road.

Without even talking about my projects for this break, next semester, and the spring (I'll save those for later posts), now that I look at the list of "small" starts, that it's pretty miraculous that I think of this list as small, because my pre-PhD self would have thought of it as a huge list. I won't lie--the PhD process and the dissertation were painful, and I protested much in the midst of them and afterwards. But as I've mentioned here before, my writing muscles have become strong, and my writing stamina grew tremendously from those challenges. I'm delighted by this, and am delighted to be back, firmly planted and with my writing life's metaphorical seedling head again above the soil to the point where it seemed obvious that I would restart this blog.

Sometimes that whole instant gratification thing is overrated, and as my students and I discussed the other way, the work itself--regardless of what happens with it--is valuable. I'm so thankful I was given the strength to stick it out, or I wouldn't be ready for new challenges!

Narrative, Newtown, CT, and Compassion in Particular

And...I'm back. Hopefully to post here again more often. Lots of contradictory emotions today: giddy from being done with a semester of teaching and on to a month of writing before another begins, while at the same time U2's Psalm 40 keeps going through my head. Have been thinking a lot about all the suffering that's always going on throughout the world, some of which doesn't get reported in the news as much as the recent Newtown, CT tragedy--perhaps involving people in more urban areas with different kinds of people where maybe violence isn't as surprising. Or in other countries that seem more distant where it's harder for us to understand the situation.

And yet I'm remembering John Durham Peters' reminder (in his book Speaking into the Air) that we are called to have compassion universally but that ultimately our humanness involves a need to love only in particular. And juxtaposing that next to Jerome Bruner's words (in Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life) about how the narratives a culture repeats and worries at interpreting and retelling often tell us so much about the dialectic between precedent and what we believe to be the unexpected. And of course, because that brings it back to my area of study, all connecting it to our societal need to detect the answers to criminal acts involving mortality as a way to deal with our own mortality in a society that doesn't like to admit we die. While coming back from abstraction into grief and grief. A day, then, of wrestling with paradoxes and with a large variety of world and individual griefs and what they entail, mixed, strangely enough, with giddiness and more opportunity to write soon, all of which draws us to the big mysteries: birth and death and pain and tragedy and compassion and beginnings and endings. Light and darkness indeed. The Advent waiting continues.

New Article and Other Updates

So despite my great hopes of posting more in the blogosphere post-dissertation, this full-time faculty thing tends to keep me pretty busy.

However, I managed to find time to write and publish a non-academic feature article for catapult magazine recently, so I thought I'd mention it.

In other news, I've been having a ton of fun talking with my students in bits and pieces about writing and writing processes, language, and other related things in the midst of my teaching this semester of speech communication, communication theory, and interpersonal communication. I love having opportunities to have these discussions with my lovely students.

In all I don't mind so much that it's a season of teaching and grading and grading and grading and busyness. Other seasons will come again for more heavy writing activity. In the meantime I get to read a lot of what my students have to say, and I enjoy that much of the time.

Finishing a PhD; or "The Return of the King"

I remember sitting in the theater at the season that millions new people were being exposed to J.R.R. Tolkien's final chapter in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. I remember hearing those around me murmuring that the ending never seemed to end--that it was a series of false endings over and over and over again.

I remember feeling like these people didn't understand the way Tolkien's story worked. After all, his trilogy was continuously page numbered all the way through. This was not simply the resolution for this particular movie, but for the entire 10 hours.

Big things take a long time to resolve, and they do so in fits and starts.

As I look back over my recent posts on my blog as well as my experiences this summer, it occurs to me that The Return of the King, whether or not it is good fictional narrative strategy, is awfully real life, at least when it comes to things like finishing a PhD.

One finishes one's first full draft and hands it to one's advisor. One's friends congratulate one. [Sam picks up Frodo and brings him up Mount Doom in what feels like one final push of strength.]

One gets it back, makes lots of changes, and hands it in again. One's friends congratulate one. [Sam and Frodo make it to their destination. Unfortunately, it's Mount Doom.]

Eventually, one is congratulated by one's advisor that it is nearly ready to hand off to one's committee for review. One makes the changes, hands it off, and one's friends congratulate one. [The ring falls into the fire at Mount Doom and hovers on the surface of the fire, then we see Frodo and Sam surrounded by flowing lava. The quest feels completed, and yet it still feels like it may yet fail.]

One prepares for and attends the defense, which contrary to nightmares is successful. One's friends, along with one's advisor and committee, congratulate one and call one "doctor," a term which sounds foreign. [The ring is seen to dissolve, and Sam and Frodo are seen to be taken away by eagles and eventually reunited with their friends. Happy, but with a sense of melancholy and uncertainty. The hobbits are still far from home, and are going to be parted from their friends.]

One tells oneself it will feel more real after the dissertation is accepted for deposit. Despite wanting to go home to sleep for a long time, one metaphorically girds up one's loins for the final(?!?) few paragraphs requested by the committee, runs them past one's advisor, eventually has them accepted, then proofreads the whole thing and goes through the nightmare of final formatting. After a few more final final changes, last minute running around to get forms signed, one has a successful dissertation deposit appointment, with only one last change done during the appointment. One's friends congratulate one, and it feels a bit more real, but like the defense, a bit anticlimactic. [The crowning of Aragorn, and the public honoring of the hobbits, fade to black, then another scene starts...]

One, after expending energy one does not currently fully have in a move to one's new place of post-PhD employment, returns to walk the stage. One's friends and family congratulate one, along with the university president and one's lovely advisor. It finally feels real, except for the note in the fake diploma in one's hand, which states that the information is still being compiled, the transcripts will reflect graduation, but not until a certain day, and the diploma will arrive within 4 weeks. [The hobbits, after a long journey, return to the shire at long last. But all is not perfect.]

One checks the online transcript site a few days past the promised date, and one still sees that one is listed as a continuing student. One is sad and a trifle panicked--after all this, is it not really done? It is not until a conversation with a friend the next day that the words "degree awarded" are deciphered on the online transcript and one rests easy again. One feels that the ending has come. [The friends go to the elf ships and Frodo says goodbye to Sam. One can't get more final than the hero leaving, one thinks.]

That is, once one's new employer gets the ordered transcript and agrees that yes, a degree has been conferred. Then one's new employer will congratulate one. [Sam begins his new life with his family. Roll credits.]

*Sigh*. I still like The Return of the King, but I'm beginning to think the genre was wrong--not fantasy drama, but farce...definitely farce. Or some weird (post)modern play about life never really having true endings...

Ph.Did

I can't believe it's been 10 days since I crossed that stage, was hooded by my advisor, and shook the Purdue president's hand. And today, finally, it said in the online transcript system that it was official--that a degree had been awarded.

It's real. I'm done. So they tell me.

I still probably won't believe it until I hold the real diploma in my hands, which should be in the next couple of weeks.

But I'm done. The dissertation was deposited and officially accepted by the university. I'm free to move on to push its research deeper, to seek publication in the academic realms for articles related to it, to move eventually to other related and unrelated research questions.

I'm free, now that the dissertation has been approved, to also immerse myself in other non-academic projects as well, when teaching permits.

And now that I've slept a bit more, have begun to come down from an incredibly stressful year, am beginning to see the fog clear around me, I'm excited to move into a new school year with new syllabi and lesson plans. And I'm beginning to get excited about some of these writing projects as well.

But I need to read some poetry first. It's been a long year with lots of words having been plowed out on demand--I need to remind myself that word play is possible.

But the Grass! It Really IS Greener!

As of this past Monday, the dissertation is off to my committee. The defense is in less than 2 weeks. I've gotten more sleep. I've noticed that there's a world outside my doors. And I've already started one of the large-scale writing projects that was waiting behind the dissertation.

The beautiful thing is that having researched and written a large project on the scale of my dissertation (approved by at least my advisor so far) has given me confidence to embark on other similarly large-scale projects that I've been dreaming about for years. People may at times take the three little letters that will hopefully soon adorn my name somewhat lightly.  And at times I'll be among them.

But in reality, the pain I have nearly won through in getting this degree to this point is worth its weight in gold--or should I say writing confidence. It's not just that the credentials will give me more credibility, both in and out of the academic arena. 

That's key, of course. But even more important to me is the fact that I've won through a major battle with that part of myself that insists that I can't finish large projects quickly. That I don't have the words to describe things adequately. That I have to wait to start writing things until I've done years of research I don't feel qualified to undertake.

With the (near-)completion of this dissertation project (which, incidentally, I liked, and still like a lot), I've done more than get to the (near-)end of a project that has taken a lot of time, and induced blood, sweat, and tears (along with a few hives, which is a story for another time). And I've even done more than jump enough hurdles to get to the time I've been craving for these other projects.

I've also been given the grace to beat my way through a lot of barriers to writing motivation and found a land of no excuses on the other side.

And I must say, the grass really is greener over here.

The Diss Handoff, Part Deux: On Strength Training

So I've been thinking a lot lately about page counts. Page counts have always been my nemesis. This story is perhaps best told in numbers:

1. Undergrad: 6-8 pages in about 10 hours. Much angst. Best push ever in undergrad: 21 pages in three different papers in 10 days. Thought I was Superwoman.
   
2. MA in English papers (yrs. later): 12 page paper in about 12 hours, though still only 1 or two days of that a week max. Feeling proud, though--not only coming back, but getting faster.
3. MA thesis: still about 1 page per hour, but simmering and analysis, so 100 pages for a single large writing project produced in roughly 4 months while working 12 hours per week. Doing well and happy with the results.
4. PhD papers: getting closer to 2 pages per hour when under the gun. During final month of the semester produced 70-80 pages for 3 different final papers. Best day: 18 pages of a single paper.
   
5. PhD preliminary exams: Many were in-house in 2-hour chunks, so I pushed the amounts up to 3.5 pages per hour. 70-80 pages produced during about 30 hours spread out over the course of a month while teaching 20 hours per week. Feeling good and strong.
6. PhD dissertation (while teaching 3/4 time, roughly equivalent to 30 hours per week):
   

• As of December 2010, 90 pages of prospectus (half, approx., to stay in the dissertation, as it turned out) had been approved.
• In a two-week period in March/April, I wrote 65 new pages in 2 weeks and 1 day. Personal record.
• As of last week, I deleted 55 extraneous pages I knew didn't fit but had been saving up and edited the other 230 remaining pages of text. Then I finished writing the final 30 or so pages, finished adding 140-some references for my primary data, and handed in 302 fully edited pages (including references and appendices) this past Monday.
• Best dissertation day: wrote 16 new pages and edited 120 pages to final form in one day.

If you were to have told me 4 years ago I'd be able to produce 370 pages and edit it down to 302 in such a short period of time, I'd have looked at you like I feared you'd had--or were about to have--one too many books dropped on your head.

But it's true. While my physical muscles have grown rather sad and pre-spinach-Popeye-like from sitting in front of this screen this past year (a condition I hope to fix this summer), my writing muscles have grown strong. I've gotten much faster, not only in pages per hour but in pages per day and pages per week. And for that, I'm thankful. One of these years I might actually be ready for NaNoWriMo.

Reflections on the Diss Handoff (Pt. 1)

So the reason I've been absent from the Internets for so long is pretty predictable: I've been too busy writing and editing to write. The dissertation project was huge and nasty, and it's not entirely done until it's successfully defended, formatted, and deposited.

But yesterday I passed a huge milestone in this pursuit: I turned in a full dissertation draft to my doctoral advisor, a full 4 days ahead of the end of the window we'd talked about.

I've worked tremendously hard in the last couple of months, especially in the last week, to get ahead of schedule so that I could shoo away this little dark cloud that's been following me everywhere for the last year like some sort of cartoon menace. I've given up days off. I've stayed up repeatedly until 5 a.m., giving myself only a few hours of sleep.

But it was worth it, all the pain. The cloud isn't gone, but it's moved over a few feet, allowing for the sun to peek through. And the draft feels good. I won't know whether I truly successfully communicated until my advisor tells me I have (followed by my committee), but this feeling, the feeling that I've discovered new insights and was able to put them on paper in the right sorts of ways--this is my "crack" that keeps me coming back again and again to writing, no matter what kind.

It's interesting, because of course there were huge chunks of time during this process when I absolutely hated it, when I despaired of ever moving the black cloud even an inch, when only having one of my dissertation support group (brilliant invention, by the way--thanks Pamela for starting it!) come over and make me write worked to keep me going. But the payoff is worth it.

Anyway, more thoughts on this soon--there are many churning around in my head about the dissertation writing process that I need to, well, process. For now I'll say farewell, and promise that this blog will become more active again this summer, because now that I'm done with the bulk of my writing I have time to write again.