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.
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