carefully considering the circumstances, nene and i decided to head south to spend a few days at mom's home in santa cruz. nene likes mom's place because she can climb up to the shelving unit high above the refrigerator and safely scheme and sleep all day and all night.
i like the place because it's two blocks away from the mighty pacific ocean, which always reminds me of home.
this summer most of my academic attention is focused on my tenure packet which is due in september. for the last week and throughout my stay in santa cruz, i have focused on my research narrative, tracing my ideas and writings and projects from an undergraduate majoring in english at UCLA to an assistant professor of media studies at USF, with a few stops in between.
my writing process has been as follows: i walk and think for hours and days and then suddenly - splat! - an outline hurls itself out of me. once the outline exists, the sentences are self-evident and my pen records them on paper. then i place my paper journal next to my plastic laptop and tip tap type the words into a document. finally, i save it to a folder on my desktop labeled "tenure."
9 comments:
Sounds much like my own writing regiment. I am in Anaheim as well, and really looking forward to going home and getting out of this commercial place! I hope Sarah had a good time.
I work this way too. Am doing so as we speak. Yesterday I realized how much I get down while walking, pacing the floor, hiking, etc. It's as if the mind just stores it all and then, as you so brilliant put it, splat! It's messy isn't it? How can we teach this? Is is transferable? Hmm. Anyway I must go splat.
Down is not a Freudian slip. Done. Done. Sometimes a typo is just a cigar. OK no more commenting b4 the 2nd cuppa.
Srcsmgrl - i hope you have made it safely out of anaheim by now! i look forward to hearing sarah's ala report when she returns today.
andrew - we have lots to walk and talk about tomorrow evening. i can't wait to hear more about your led zeppelin book. and i want to share with you my recent discoveries of automatic writing (or what kerouac and ginsberg called, after the zen buddhists, the "artless art" of writing).
let's talk. and walk.
I look forward to reading that narrative. As for the Search for the Wild Splat: the older I get the more writing and thinking are a grind, sad and sweaty, mo' work, less inspiration. Well, no pain, no gain, huh? Got to work on that intellectual sixpack.
Wait a minute; is Sarah a librarian???????
Penny, a librarian from USF:)
hey penny, greetings from leadville, colorado!
sarah is as close to being a librarian without actually being one.
she works for techsoup, and heads a project called MaintainIT, which collects and shares stories from public librarians about how they maintain their public computers. she's also the co-director of the september project, which encourages all libraries in all countries to host events about issues that matter during the month of september. and before all that, she worked for the gates foundation, on their US libraries project.
she's the biggest fan of libraries i know. =)
You mean besides you??? :)
Penny
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