I have discovered the single best way to have an extraordinarily productive day: have a section of the world's driest, dullest, dreariest report that you are supposed to be writing for the Boulder Faculty Assembly Administrator Appraisal Committee. To avoid writing this, I wrote not one but TWO chapters of my book - oh, I am cooking with gas now on this one. I met with a graduate student and gave him good guidance on his dissertation prospectus. I met with the second mentee of the week and gave her good guidance on her middle-grade novel. I wrote a poem. I wrote another poem.
Anything rather than write my share of the report for the Administrator Appraisal Committee.
Now, the sad thing is that I still do have to write that horrid, hideous, hateful thing. I wish I could email my fellow committee members and ask them if I could trade TWO book chapters and TWO great guidance sessions and TWO poems for just ONE little section of the report. But I can't. So I will get up very early tomorrow morning, and I'll do what I have to do. Unless - I really could START it now, and then I'd be so grateful tomorrow morning when I roll out of bed and find this Loathsome Task already begun.
Or I could type up those two chapters. And write maybe one more poem.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Claudia, you often mention "mentees" and philosophy graduate students in this blog. It seems that the mentees are writing fiction rather than philosophy. How do you hook-up with these mentees? Are they also university students from a different department?
ReplyDeleteThe mentees are children's book writers who work with me through a wonderful program created by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the premiere organization for those who write and illustrate children's books. Through this program I worked with five mentees last year; this year I decided to limit it to two. The mentees submit a full-length manuscript to be considered for the program; we then work together for six months to revise the manuscript to see if we can get it into publishable form.
ReplyDelete