A Writing Day

Sometimes I really appreciate my university. Xavier has a policy whereby each semester one of our Psych department faculty members gets a lighter load so that they can work on a scholarly project. The lighter load typically means teaching 3 rather than 4 classes, but for me it means teaching only 2 because I already have 1 course reduced load due to being chair of the Xavier IRB research committee.

We rotate the light semester among our departmental members and this semester is my turn. I love it so. I have my classes scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I already have meetings scheduled on Thursday and often we have meetings on Tuesday, but every couple of weeks I will have a completely free Tuesday and I stay home that day and write. Yesterday was such a day. And I got so much accomplished.

I'm working on the nonfiction Darwin book that I've mentioned here before. I was able to get about a dozen pages written, which is actually tremendous progress considering that, with nonfiction, you're often spending half of your time or more checking and double checking facts and information.

On a standard day, I try to do some writing at home in the evening after dinner, but it's not always easy when you've already put in a full day of work. But yesterday I was rolling so well and so "immersed" in the work I was doing that I took only about an hour break for dinner and then was back at the computer writing until well after 11:00.

I think that is a key thing when one is able to essentially write full-time. The work develops momentum. You enter a productive zone where the ideas and the words to express them flow. And you don't want to stop. I knew I had to get up at 6:00 this morning but the sentences kept coming, the connections kept being made. And my fingers got a workout.

Finally, at 11:20, I purposefully shut off my computer because I knew I had to get some sleep. Only then did I realize that I'd ignored several minor tasks all day that needed to be done. I managed to get those finished and slid into bed by 11:45, but I couldn't shut my brain off. My mind kept coming back to the writing I'd been doing and more ideas gathered to demand my attention. I believe it was about 1:00 when I finally drifted off.

Although I only got 5 hours sleep, I'm still feeling pretty energized at this moment from yesterday's work session. I know by afternoon I'll be dragging, but right now I'm not worried about that. Unfortunately, I give a test in my comparative class today and that means grading instead of writing this evening. I'll be jonesing for the keyboard soon, and already looking forward to the next day when I can immerse myself in the flow of words and ideas. It really is a high.
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Orbs

My classes are fairly small this year, which is nice for a change, allowing me to do more in-class discussion. The reason behind the small classes is that in the school year after Hurricane Katrina we had one of our smallest enrollments in 30 years, and that is the class getting ready to graduate now. Since I teach mostly upper-level classes, that's why I'm seeing the small sizes this year.

I don't have much else to post about since I've barely had time to think this past week, but I thought I'd leave you with a couple of intersting photos that Lana took when we were at our local Flatwoods nature preserve this weekend. Did we brush against something mysterious? You be the judge! (You will probably have to click on the pictures to enlarge them to see what I'm talking about.)

In the first picture, on the left, what looks like a full moon toward the top of the photo...isn't. If you look down to the area between the trees you'll clearly see the crescent moon. So what is the other thing? A "fool" moon perhaps?

In the second photo there's something similar. The crescent moon is brightly visible, but look to the left and just a bit lower, to where a faint orb is caught within the branches of the pine. It looks very much like a full moon, even showing, to my eyes, a hint of the Man in the Moon's face.

Are you hearing Twilight Zone music? Or are you a buzz kill who will say: "Oh it's just a camera glitch!"

Personally, I'd really like it to be something weird!




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All Work and No Play

Work has been kicking my butt this week, and that'll probably continue through next week. Then we'll have a little break for Mardi Gras. I don't really plan to do any parading. Been there, done that. I'll be home relaxing and reading. About all I've been able to get read is a couple of items I'll briefly review below. I also haven't been able to visit blogs as regularly but will try to get caught up today. My blog list is so big by now, though, that it's become pretty tough to make it through every post. I'm typically seeing about 80 posts a day.

Books Read:

I So Don't Do Mysteries by our own Barrie Summy. I am very much not the audience for this book. I think its target audience is 9 to 12 year old girls. There was still a lot of humor in it that I caught, and the writing was perfect for both the characters and the audience. I believe a lot of young girls will enjoy it very much. There were certainly many twists and turns, and most chapters ended with neat cliffhangers.


The Nightmare Collection by Bruce Boston. I very much am the audience for this book, which is a collection of Boston's speculative poetry. It's chock full of poems as well, weighing in at 95 pages, which is a tome compared to the typical poetry chapbook of 25 pages or so. And everything here is very good. Boston is quite possible the best speculative poet working today. His works have received numerous awards, but the proof is in the reading. Consider, "A small woman wearing a sheathe of dark feathers," or "I build engines from ivory and scrimshaw and the jaw-bones of apes."

Let me end with a quote from one of Boston's prose poems.

"When capital severed the tongues of science, when
politiicans sat in boardrooms, when the great religions of
the world would not stem the rising tide of mouths and
hands and the Earth began to wobble under the weight of
our species, you may remember that our family would often
gather for a sumptuous Christmas feast."

Nuff said!
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What's Work Got to Do With It?

It’s amazing how much work one can get done when one doesn’t go to work. I only had one class today but had to miss it because I had car trouble and had to take my Scion to the shop. This is the first class I’ve missed since I broke my collarbone and three ribs back in the spring of 2006. I really don’t like cancelling class, but since I wasn’t able to make it to school I stayed home and got so much more done than if I’d gone in. I got tests graded, which I can seldom do at school because of constant interruptions, and made tremendous progress on the final revision to our Writing in Psychology text, which we’ll be using in the spring. I probably completed over a third of that project today alone. And I still had time to get in a walk around the neighborhood, have a shower and quick nap, and grill pork chops for dinner. Work is really cutting down on my productivity.

As for the car, that’s another story. Turns out they have to order parts, which won’t be in until tomorrow, and the total cost is going to be around 1200 bucks. Means I’ve essentially worked the last 10 days for free. Oh well, Lana is off tomorrow so I’ll take her car to school. In the meantime, here’s a few more pics from the Flatwoods preserve. Doesn’t that first one look like an “Alien” egg? Anyone recognize what it really is? The flower and butterfly is self explanatory, but how about that animal track in water? I know the answer to questions 1 and 2. Do you?

Let Me Wake From This Nightmare

Tomorrow! Work! I return to...work!!!!! How can such evil be allowed to stalk this great land of the free? Why can't our government declare a "War on Work?" How could such a sensitive, poetic soul as myself be required to...labor for my bread? What part of lazy don't my employers understand?

Just to point out, returning to work may mean I won't be posting comments as frequently as I've been doing. I'll still keep up my posting here but may not be able to visit and comment as frequently on all the great blogs that I've found over the past few weeks. (Some folks are saying, "Thank...a deity of some sort.")

And now, since this is supposed to be a writing/reading related blog, let's see: My highest recommended novels for 2006 (although not necessarily written in 06) were: The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and Drive by James Sallis. The best book on writing that I read in 2006 was Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint, although Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller earns an honorable mention. My favorite non-fiction book was Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, but I also greatly enjoyed Carl Zimmer’s Parasite Rex and Jonathan Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch. That’s a lot of good reading for 06. I guess it was a pretty good year after all.