b l o g o s

write-athon

According to the OED, -athon is "a combining form, barbarously extracted f. MAR)ATHON, used occas. in the U.S. (talkathon, walkathon), rarely in Britain, to form words denoting something carried on for an abnormal length of time."

The most awesome part of this entry is the part that reads "rarely in Britian." The subtext mutters, "those Americans are really the only ones who 'carry on.'"

I have taken part in only one 'official' -athon--this when I was 10 or 11. It was called a "rockathon," and it involved rocking in a rocking chair until I could rock no more. (Yes, in other parts of the country a rockathon might mean something way more exciting, but hey.) It turns out that a rockathon is a brilliant stroke for those who want the things to end already, because the rockers all rock themselves to sleep with remarkable speed. I didn't last more than a few hours myself.

Penn State is famous for its dance-a-thon, a.k.a. THON, where students dance themselves into a frenzy for a whole weekend and are only allowed a minimal number of timed bathroom breaks and food breaks.

For the last couple days, though, I have conducted my own little write-athon. I came up to Chicago with my laptop and five Burke articles that are forming the center of my chapter, bought some food, and basically stayed in the apartment to write all day yesterday and the entire morning today. With the exception of a bike ride along the lake during which I was arguably still writing (I hit on a couple of useful categories), and of course excepting sleep, oh, and a beer- and scotch-tasting break with M from UIC, I've pretty much just been writing and writing. My chapter draft is ten single-spaced pages and 5,000 words longer than it was when I arrived, and more importantly, it's finish-ready, which is to say I have extensive notes about the parts I need to finish to fill this thing out. The writing has finally--finally--reached the point where it has taken over.

Burke himself writes about this moment in writing--the moment when, as he puts it, a "work reaches the fatal point at which it 'begins to write itself,' spinning from what has gone before, and perhaps actually forcing the writer to change [her] original plans." He also notes that the writer must "constantly be goaded anew," or "the project would lapse." I think I pretty much agree with his theory of "the goad." How else would we keep writing if we aren't goaded by something--some line of inquiry, some external requirement, a deadline? (Though I'm pretty sure Burke is not talking about deadlines--oh, and the piece is from 1954 and is called "The Language of Poetry, 'Dramatistically' Considered.")

Even when, on my dinner break last night, I wandered into Borders looking for some good trashy magazine to clear my head, I found myself instead leafing through this volume, a beautifully-designed coffee table book wherein writers talk about how they write, mostly their quirky associated objects and activities (Jonathan Franzen describes his squeaky desk chair; Jane Smiley talks about hot showers). It's quite the compendium of habits. I've ordered it up and may write more about it soon.

For the record, though, no one in the collection talks about carrying on writing for an "abnormal length of time."   I think it's just assumed.

misrecognition

One constant of the new school year is those awkward sussing conversations that contain a "so are you..." and end with a nice surprise that often reveals as much about the person doing the guessing as it does the person being guessed about.

For example, yesterday at the english grad student potluck, I went up to one of our new graduate students to introduce myself and to express my delight that the grad student chose our program over the other formidable ones in the running, and then after a little discussion about what courses the new grad student is taking, the new grad student said, "So, are you done with coursework?" This grad student is not alone--at the speech comm get-to-know-new-students lunch, a new grad asked me if I was in the PhD program (implying that the other choice was the MA program).

Honestly, though, the most surprising was the one who got it right.  At the chancellor's reception for new faculty JM (who is new on the faculty) and I were eating at a table with a few empty chairs, and a new hire in ag economics joined us. He talked with JM for a bit and then turned to me and said "so are you an associate professor?"

Believe me, I much prefer to be mistaken for someone who is ABD.

But JM's recent encounter with a campus gym rat wins the prize. Here it is:

CGR to JM: So, how tall are you, like 6'6"?
JM: yeah.
CGR: Dude, can you fit under the showers in the dorms?
JM: I don't live in the dorms.
CGR: So you're like a junior?

off, the new on.

This fall I'm on leave from teaching, but I still have quite the full plate, and my plate is rather large given that I'm a voting member of two pretty big departments, do a lot of advising and national service, and am trying to finish a book. The other day my dad, who is recently retired, remarked that he can't understand how I could be off and still be so busy. This is another version of the conversation where it's not clear to those in other industries what we do with our time. But my dad is sweet about it, because all I had to do is explain how in this profession one is only "off" when one is retired, and sometimes not even then. And he got that.

Though in the spring? During my sabbatical? I hope to find the outer limits of off.

luckily the train appears to be on time.

Yowza, it's only 10 am and I have already had what sometimes constitutes a full day for me, including:

1. an intense 1.5 hour writing session (I am following some excellent advice from an excellent mentor to be sure and tend to my own stuff first thing--the mentor's precise phrase was 'treat yourself.' nice.)
2. a dogwalk
3. a speed-row at the gym during which the shuffle mode offered up white stripes, the hold steady, modest mouse, and a mini-string of flaming lips.
4. a vacuum session upstairs and prep of the guest bedroom for our out-of-town guest
5. multiple back-and-forth emails with two different grad students, one about an exam list, and another about a journal submission
6. a long, awesome phone conversation with my sister while getting myself to the train station, including some interview prep! (good luck, d!!)
7. a blog session on the train station's free wireless

and then there was gunn

I was happy with the title of my QJS review essay--"Somatography"--I thought it was perhaps my 'sexiest' title yet. It's bold! It's one word! It's not even a word really!

And yet upon retrieving my copy of the journal from my mailbox today here's how I imagined myself looking when I noticed that my 'sexy' title butts up against Josh Gunn's short essay about recovering the concept of speech.

His title? "Gimme Some Tongue."

this a.m's difficulty waking

the dream was this:

the dentist and dental assistant are right outside my face talking about the four wisdom teeth they just extracted.

'no.' i strain. 'i already had two taken out in my twenties. these must be others.' but nothing. because i said nothing. these people are morons. i wonder who certified them.

a shrugging conversation about how the anesthesia should be wearing off but doesn't seem to be. 'debbie? you can get up now.' i can't though. i think i hear john protesting on my behalf.

my eyes aren't even open and gauze is crammed wrong under every inch of lip. the dental assistant needs to get something to wake me up but has too much to hold and so puts a syringe between my slack thumb and fingers and then turns away. my arm falls toward the floor, leaving a trailing scrape on my leg. it fades like a pen mark when you fall asleep in class. there's yelling. i'm taken back under, alarm and all.

a hurricane is heading for the caymans.

end of summer

(and also a 15-mile hike)

vacation--or, a work fast

On yesterday's dogwalk, JM and I confessed to each other that we had each contemplated smuggling work with us on our vacation to northern Wisconsin. What a terrible impulse. Just sick. We may need a bag check: only books that can be read without a pen, and quickly. I've gotten special permission to bring my laptop, though, for photo storage purposes. And the XL review essay I'm dying to edit that I've stored on the keychain thumbdrive?  If anyone catches me with that thing stuck in my laptop, they have my permission to throw it in the lake. The thumbdrive, not the laptop.

Instead I  will feast on these:

Leaving tomorrow.

the necessary myth of process

I'm in the thick of my book's last chapter. This chapter hasn't quite taken form yet, though I may have hit on an organizational strategy that will work very well. Working on this chapter and reflecting back on the other chapters (except that one I left to languish), it occurs to me that the whole notion that I have 'a writing process' is just silly. But the need to think I do can be quite sobering. So I hesitate to even call out this myth out of some hyperawareness of the possible consequences (isn't this what they call superstition?) Couldn't I just think back on a time when I wrote a chapter/article with ease and speed, recreate those conditions, and boom, have a chapter and hence a book? Well, no.

The idea that I have a writing process reminds me of another futility that I labored under in the past, this one as an athlete: that there must be some formula that, with a little tinkering, would produce success each time. That formula, interestingly, focused on pre-game habits and practices: what I ate, what I did, what music I listened to. I once had a teammate who had a phenomenal game after breaking pre-game eating rules and wolfing down a whopper less than an hour before tipoff. In an attempt to recreate the same physical conditions, that teammate (a point guard no less) spent the entire season sneaking off to burger king on the road, smuggling whoppers into the locker room. We all knew what she was up to--we could smell the mustard and flimsy pickles--but we guarded her secret because we believed in the myth of pregame rituals. And damn, she did have a good game on that first whopper.

But the whopper eater didn't do a whole lot more that season besides put on a couple extra lbs.  This is because conditions of the agon--the opponents, the game plans, the fans, the air--are so particular, so momentary, that it's folly to think we can streamline them. So we focused on what we could control (our rest, our food, our stretching routines).

And the same goes for writing (though it's admittedly a lot less glamorous). The scholars and arguments I'm wrestling with are completely different from the ones in that chapter that went smoothly. That other one I wrote when the ground outside was frozen, and before I heard about tenure. That one had an obvious organizational structure, whereas the current one keeps oozing out of whatever form I set up, like hot mud, and I keep having to stop to do other tasks I take on now that I'm tenured. And yet I keep at it, brewing coffee and forcing myself to my keyboard each morning, talking to other people about their 'processes,' refusing the futility of habits. Why do I do this? Because that's all I can do.

But I feel like it's important to remember that writing is so much more than whoppers.

   

another one writes the dust

Sorry, I couldn't help it, given the title of Queen guitarist Brian May's phd thesis handed in this week: "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud." I must say I think the news is, like, beyond cool. Do all astrophysics dissertation titles sound like the name of a rocking album? What, oh what, is the thesis's last word? And will his defense look like this?