Updates for April

While Kate has been away on her three-week journey to the Southwest, I have been getting quite a bit done on the academia front.  I worked every day this week on my current project (this is the one I will be presenting on at the end of the month in Belgium!).  The paper is very close to finished.  I am now going through the 100+ songs that are the subject of the paper to catch any additional helpful examples before finishing up.


I started reading this nifty little book called Publish & Flourish by Tara Gray.  It is intended for academics who want to be more prolific writers, but I think it could be helpful to anyone who writes for a living or for fun.  One of her basic premises is that you need to write (or revise) for 15–30 minutes every day.  (And this time is spent only on writing or revision, not reading, gathering data, non-writing research tasks, etc.)  If you do this, you will already be more prolific than others who wait for those prized blocks of time that never come (I definitely used to be one of those people!).  So this is my new strategy. In addition to the research hours I have allocated on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I am taking at least 15 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays to write, and I am also making sure that at least 15 minutes of my allocated hours on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is spent writing or revising.  My plan is to start posting my progress (time spent, number of pages written/revised) regularly to hold myself accountable.  


To this end, here is a recap of what I did for the week:

• Monday: worked 8–9 am mostly on listening and gathering some additional examples, made a few minor revisions to existing prose
• Tuesday: worked for several hours in the morning, continuation of what I started Monday
• Wednesday: worked 8–9 am, continuation of previous work
• Thursday: 9:29–9:36 freewriting in my research journal; 9:36–10:00 revised the first six pages of my essay
• Friday, today: 8:13 (late start!)–8:45 continued work (listening and gathering examples); 8:45–9:00 revised the next six pages of prose

The next step for me is getting a sponsor.  Like a twelve-step program, Gray recommends you find an individual who you are responsible to for reporting your progress.  Anybody want to volunteer for this?  I plan to post my progress on my blog so it would just require checking in to make sure I am writing/revising every day.  


I am still trying to decide if I want to write on the weekends, too.  I usually try to keep as much of the weekend free of work (but that only works for maybe one week out of the term!).  


In other news . . . I've stopped doing the Artist's Way, for now, because I found it counterproductive.  I kept thinking as I would do all these tasks and exercises that I could be using that time to actually create something.  So I put the book and its tasks aside and just started playing more music and even writing a new song!  The song is still in progress, but I have two verses and a chorus and a basic guitar pattern to accompany myself with.