what to do when you're sick of yourself
Be happy that you're teaching a summer course because it will get you out of your own head for a little while.
Tell everyone who will listen how sick you are of chapter 3. It's all so obvious and, at this point, pretty much old news. Really, how much more gift economy explanation can you take? Duh.
Duh. Duh. Duh.
I've officially hit that point in my writing process. Where everything is well, duh. Even crackheads know this.
This point always happens. Which makes me wonder, why don't we have that as part of the "official" writing process in comp? Prewrite. Write. Realize how damn obvious it all is. Despair a little while. Drive your friends nuts. Revise.
How is it that I can teach the same concepts every semester and yet when it comes to explaining in writing something that is just so damn obvious to me, I want to just go, duh? Maybe because with new students each semester it's never really the same teaching, but with writing, it's the same damn concepts waiting for me. There's no immediate audience feedback.
Will I ever finish chapter 3? Duh.
Labels: writing
posted by aerobil @ 8:05 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
That is soooo the trouble with writing: we all know its ultimately social and intertextual and all that, but in the short term, there you are, by yourself. You need me there so you can explain stuff and I can say, "Write that down!!"
this is when it's really good to have a friend in another somewhat-related field who'd be willing to read what you were writing so that you had someone to write for who wasn't yourself and for whom it wasn't all duh already.
or, if that fails, a friend outside the field you can pretend to write for. that's how i got through most of my first draft of this dissertation--i was having this duh conversation (with lots of verbal flailing) with an engineer friend of mine from college with whom i swap poetry (yes, he's weird for an engineer), and he said "write it for me," and i did. it made an immense difference to have someone to be talking "to," even if it was only really in my head.
or just send all your drafts to susan, b/c i think she just volunteered. :)
OMG! My Chapter 3 is giving me fits, too. Of course, mine is just part of the diss and not a book but I feel like I am where you are in the writing process. Like I don't want to talk to anyone because I know I will regale them with my insanity.
we should include that moment in the writing into the process. I had that moment a few months back before a big scary talk I had to give. Turns out, it was only *duh* to me. And I realized I was sitting on an academic gold mine. And, fwiw, aerobil... you talking about the gift economy to me this past year totally changed the way I talk about my own research agenda. You rock.
If it helps, ask yourself, how often do I read something and think, "duh"? Probably not very often. Sometimes you appreciate those seemingly duh-ing explanations to remind yourself of something you know, yes, but that it's helpful to be reminded of again.
So don't worry too much. Just get the duhs down--and I doubt very much it means that you're
duh(m)ing down your work in any way!
Paul
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