the 14,000 projects I'm working on

Now that I'm back from vacation and ready to get down to business back into my routines, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the 14,000 projects I'm working on. Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.

1. The Violence of Class, a collection of personal essays by graduate students on the rhetorical and symbolic violence that the very categorization of people into classes effects.
2. Pluralizing Plagiarism--formerly known as Sites of Plagiarism, Sites of Pedagogy--but luckily I've got a three-week (at least) break from that.
3. The Affective Economics of Plagiarism, my solo-authored book on, well, the affective economics of plagiarism. I'm eager to begin this, but it seems that I'm treating it as a dessert of sorts--gotta get all the other loose ends tied up before I'm able to sink my teeth into this one. Number 1, that's a loose end. Dang.
4. An article with Julie Wonka on the absurdity of the ways we construct audience when we talk with new teachers about teaching writing. And with students. And what these ways of talking about audience allow us as teachers to do--or, to be more blunt about it, what these ways of talking allow us to pretend.

I remember very clearly the telephone freak-out sessions I'd have with Becky as I was writing my dissertation. I'd spill out something like what I just wrote for number 4, and she'd spit it back to me in such intelligent language that I felt as though I actually had a workable argument. Now, when my graduate students and I are discussing one of the essays for Violence and we get to something meaty and good--which we unfailingly do--I tell them, "Write that down." It's become something of a little joke about the way I work. But you know what? It works. And as much as it seems sometimes that this Violence project is taking FOREVER, it's been one of the most intellectually satisfying things I've worked on yet.

So soldier on. I shall.

But first, I gotta get that girl her morning walk.