Trauma

A poisoned rat from some gross neighbor's backyard cleaning project showed up on my driveway tonight spasming and staggering, and running aggressively at the Things. I freaked. I tried to run it over with the car, but lacked fortitude. Tried again, and just couldn't do it. I called animal control, who responded that they really deal more with "domesticated animals." (Shoulda told them it was my pet rat.) Got transferred to Division of Wildlife, who said that rats were a little small for their notice. Hysterical. Screamed at the rat to get the hell out from behind my growboxes. Kicked the growboxes, kicked the house, screamed unintelligibly at the rat. Screamed at the kids to stay inside, away from the crazy rabid rat. Stalked it with a flashlight, throwing down trashtalk I couldn't possibly have made good. Called my dad, who drove 20 minutes to chop it up with a shovel. I'm a weak, weak, nonselfsufficient homeowner and a shame to the title of mountain girl.

My self-imposed deadline for finishing the bookdraft was August 31. I went on a long camping trip, I got the Things back to school, I had other professional responsibilities, I lost my freaking camera, I got sick and can't shake it. I didn't make the deadline. I don't even care. I'm going to bed.

Pizzazz!

Is that the goal? I mean, of academic book titles? I'm within a couple of days of finishing the intro, and I'm starting to look down the line, past the fall of revisions, to the sending out of the proposals. And I'm wondering: do I choose a title that accurately reflects the main argument of the book? Or do I go for a title that reflects the larger implications of the book, which get covered mostly in the concluding chapter, and though they are set up and gestured toward in the body chapters are not, really, the main argument of the book? Specific and potentially too-narrow-sounding? Or broad-flailingly aspirational?

I guess I'm wondering how much of a gap there is, in the proposal stage, between selling THE PROJECT and SELLING the project.

Huh.

I just wrote to my Nemesis to see whether he'd be willing to read the intro when it's done (10 pages left!). I suddenly feel strangely like an adult.

What I'm doing for the last week or so, and time to come:

Hanging in the American Tropics with Neruda and the Things. Poolside, or on the beach. Reading, slowly, a Swedish mystery. When I'm not swimming. Brought 4 books and my chapter to work. Haven't even opened that bag.

Six of one, half-dozen of the....WAIT!

The other night, a friend who is not an academic asked me what I was so busy with this summer. Instead of my usual response, which is some colloquial version of I'm struggling to write this book, and I'm only about half-finished with a difficult chapter, without even thinking I said, "Well, I'm about twenty pages from finishing a book."

I was thunderstruck to hear it that way, to hear someone--myself!--say those words. Before that moment, I really hadn't considered this project in total at all. But understanding it in those terms has lifted any lingering sense of terror from me.

I still have lots of work before me, and am going to be buried in revision all fall. But I don't have to be terrified about writing a book. Know why?

Because I already have.

Keebler up, buttercup.

Yesterday, and for some days running beforehand, the book had me bothered, bewildered, discouraged, demoralized, exhausted, ulcerating, nauseated, insomniac, depressed, not-suicidal-but-I-can-see-it-from-here, resigned, up-giving.

I went for a long, long run last night and resolved to cut it the hell out.

This morning, I found the next movement. Only wrote about half a paragraph, but I found it. Time to stop wallowing in self-doubt and finish the damned thing. Bring it. I'm ready to get fancy on this shit. I've got my crackers on.

It totally counts.

Yesterday: all day until dusk in a windowless room poring over very old texts in very old languages.

Today: typing in the quotes I found, to the displeasure of Word. (Microsoft, that is. The quotes themselves would be, I imagine, quite pleasurable to The Word.)

Not writing, technically. But it does increase the word-count.

The bends

The hard thing about the summer schedule, as I've suggested before, is the on-again-off-again division of writing time. Three or four days in a row when the Things are with their dad, and I start to get a bit of momentum going. And then I have them for three or four days, during which I write nothing, and forget my mental place. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be with them than productive. But the transition back to writing shows how much those muscles atrophy in just a few days.

I think I finished the first argumentative "movement" of the intro chapter today, though. The long historical sweep. I've left a lot of quotes approximated for now (because I have to go hang out with the Patrologiae Graecae and Latinae series before I can stand firm on their language), but that's all part of my new drafty mentality. I'm chill like that.

"I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookie win."

(Yes, I know my title reveals the scope and breadth of my geekiness.)

Okay. I'm trying something new. I have, in my life, never written a draft. That is, I've never sat down and said, "I'm just going to write and get stuff down, and then I'll revise it into shape later." And though things I have written have undergone revision, I haven't tended to write for the intermediate stage. I write for the end-stage. That's why it takes me eight or twelve or 24 or 120 months to write a poem. I like to think of it as the coal-nugget method of composition: focus, pressure, patience, and eventually something shiny comes out.

But that's not working for this intro, because I'm too skittery in my head. I am just not very good at big-picture thinking and broad theoretical synthesis. (I sympathize with Flavia here.) I have my strengths as a writer--I'm a crack philologist, frinstance--but this is not one of them. And I'm freaking myself the hell out.

So I'm going to surrender to the thing and allow myself not to conquer it on the first outing. I'm just going to get my ideas down, and try to get them in comprehensible form. And then, I may email my Nemesis to see if he'd be willing to respond to the intro.

Beat up

Some days I feel like I've gone 10 rounds with the book. And lost.

By the way, I recognize that this blog has become my own personal debrief/ decompress after writing. A valve. Not good company, but necessary for me to step back into the world.