Today’s post is brought to you by Maxwell House instant coffee and liberal use of my Daylight Savings debit card. I will be, in effect, writing a temporal check that Bill Wandless circa 5:00pm cannot cash. That guy should have budgeted better.
The past week was a peculiar one, as it seems the opening stretch of every month is unevenly be-meetinged. The system shock of becoming chair and going from about 20 meetings per semester to 200 has largely worn off, but a week in which Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday could all conceivably be spent at home (answering plenty of e-mail, of course, but still) is a heady, giddy thing. I accordingly logged a half day on Tuesday finishing up a pile of preparatory paperwork (a response to the response to our departmental bylaws, a write-up of our position on academic prioritization, and a series of similarly expansive administrative tasks), but then I resumed work on a story I started at the tail end of October. Thursday was devoted to the same, and I carved out a considerable chunk of my weekend to finish it off. Chipping away at the story was gratifying in the way that chipping away at stories always is, and it was with some regret that I put it to bed, consigning it to the folder I keep for cooling. I’ve mailed it off to a single reader, but the document will linger in the folder for a week or three, after which I’ll revisit it with fresh eyes.
If I staggered into Sunday, it was largely because I confronted a new episode of my Partitioning Problem, the wiggedy vivisection that characterizes my professional days and ways. (The halves and halve-nots are approximate, but most weeks will find me cut up pretty cleanly on the floor of my two offices.) About half of my time is devoted to administrative business (theoretically, at least), while the rest is ostensibly devoted to the work of professoring. The administrative business is divided more or less cleanly between the reconciliation of past activities and preparation for future ones (happily, my practice has never depended on the present tense), and I also spend a goodly portion of my day balancing departmental ambitions with institutional initiatives. The professoring gets split into teaching and academic production, which itself involves elaborate acts of slap-choppery. Teaching is both prospective and retrospective, trying to remain mindful of what we’ve done while anticipating what we’ve got to do; it’s also divided between the execution and evaluation of student-generated and self-directed content. (I’ve got a really excellent class this semester, so I’ve been oddly if merrily positioned: I often overprepare, with notes and commentary that might reflect on any number of historical, technical, or thematic threads, but then our classroom conversations set off in some fascinating new direction, which I am equally happy to follow.) My teaching this semester is also subdivided into the present and future tense, with some work unfolding (an independent study with student working on an essay she’s committed to a collection, a Master’s thesis or three) and some work just now coalescing (one or two independent studies in the spring and a few more theses).
The writing life? That gets just a bit bloodier. For my own mental health I need to balance scholarly and creative work (and doing so probably makes me a more imaginative administrator and more versatile teacher), but the equipoise is not as even as I might like it to be as a result of similarly self-dividing inclinations. My scholarly work always centers on the 18th century, but the gestation time for period projects is necessarily longer: I know more about the ins and outs of ongoing debates, so the work of wrinkling and refining ideas is much more deliberate and elaborate. While I’m building those bridges, however, prospects near at hand often appear in my field of vision. Half of my scholarship is therefore devoted to the long range, and half is preoccupied by the short term. Because my teaching informs my research to an exceedingly meaningful degree, I would also characterize my scholarship as half-scripted and half-serendipitous. I’ve been fishing for a white whale these past few years, but I’ve pulled up some nibblesome fish in the interim. Venturing out of area has also made some novel connections suggestive, so I routinely find myself conducting clinical trials on odd subjects at hand while my primary patient is still being prepped for surgery. ( This metaphor could go to a gruesome place; let’s move on.) In essence, I find myself writing in and out of area by halves, with half of those projects purposely plotted and half improvised on the spot. It’s a heckuva way to do business, but so long as business gets done I’ll keep my mouth shut.
The creative work does the last and the finest of the slicing and dicing. Like my scholarship, it involves both some proactive planning (sizable projects are gradually coming together) and some impulse management: when I find the notion for a poem or a story ripe, I either have to pick it straight away or let it drop. About half the work turns into fiction, the other half verse; what will happen to me if I venture into creative nonfiction is anyone’s guess. Half of the fiction belongs to the genres, while half is harder to categorize. The poetry tends to fall into two categories as well: either I envision new work as part of an existing whole (I have two collections in mind, my progress on them governed entirely by my readiness to tackle the topics), or else I see it as occasional, meeting some more immediate imperative. Again, work gets done, but I would be hard pressed to tell you exactly how.
It looks like I’ve got another half and half day in front of me, with the morning committed to administrative maneuvers and the afternoon devoted to teaching tasks (A Study in Scarlet indeed!). Since I’m only half-ready for it, I’d better get moving.
