My school sponsors a writing fellowship at the end of spring semester for faculty who want to work on a piece of scholarship and write at least 3,750 words during the course of the week. They put you in a room that’s not your office, and offer to take away your cell phone, or shut off the internet on your computer. Then you write from 9:15-12:30 and from 2-4:30. I applied for it this year so I could get some supported writing done.
It is kind of fun, and I realize how productive I could be if I just wrote all the time, but after the first day my eyes were kind of bloodshot, and I had to lay under the desk for a little while to give them a break. However, there other other things are not happening this week. I need to go to the post office and mail something. Not going to happen with a 9-5 job. However, 9 is plenty late enough in the day for me to get a good solid 2.5 hours in with the boys before I go to work. I’ve been reading a lot of Franklin the Turtle.
So far this week I’ve written a terrible first draft of my book proposal. This is going to be hard. I’ve done a decent draft of a conference paper for a conference in September. The essay is on Passing and the embodiment of close reading. And finally, I’ve split Chapter Four of my dissertation into two pieces and begun completely reworking it. This piece is almost ready to submit. I could not be happier with this work.
But, not to do a humble/annoying brag…I’ve already written my quota of words for the week. Exceeded it even. I guess I could jump start some more work. Ahh, the luxury of writing time.
Academic Leigh Speaking 