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<h1 id="on-not-writing">On Not Writing</h1>
<ul class="post-metadata">
<li><time datetime="2003-06-30">30 June 2003</time></li>
<li><a href="/tags/blogging/" class="post-tag">blogging</a>, </li>
<li><a href="/tags/writing/" class="post-tag">writing</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Ive intended for the last couple of weeks to begin writing in here about my new project, or about my intent toward that project, in any event. Or, for that matter, about things Im reading, things Im watching, and so on. Its one of my goals over the course of this summer, in preparation for next year, to find ways to take this site seriously, both as a locus of research and as an avenue for new kinds of writing. I havent done so yet, obviously. Im having trouble getting started, and Im trying to figure out why.</p>
<p>There are a couple of reasons that I came up with during my weekend ponderings. The first is a pair of unspoken, unexamined guidelines I seem to have set for myself (pretty much unawares) when I started this blog:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Dont write about work.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Dont write about your personal life.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>There are extremely sensible reasons for these guidelines: writing about work, for instance, as other bloggers have discovered, is a risky proposition. The good news about life in the academy, though, is that there are very few proprietary secrets that one risks giving away; in fact, a substantive enough percentage of my work is sufficiently personal that, in writing about it, Id be writing about no one but me. The risk, then, resides in sending ideas out into the world before theyre fully formed, in inviting disagreement with whatever half-baked nonsense I produce. But then: isnt that the point of an academic blog?</p>
<p>Not writing about my personal life, on the other hand, seems pretty sensible to me, if I intend to take this space seriously as a professional venture. So that guideline will likely stand.</p>
<p>The other major reason for my lack of writerly focus is bound up in the pragmatics of scholarly production: I completed my first book manuscript near the end of last summer, and spent the intervening academic year shopping for a publisher. Its been a deeply demoralizing process, and I have a nice sheaf now of letters that tell me how smart and interesting my project sounds, but (a) our humanities list has been slashed, and so we cant take your project on, or (b) the all-purpose your project doesnt quite fit our list. Im happy to report that one brave press did offer to read the manuscript, and has sent it out to outside reviewers — which is the good news. The bad news is that Ive been playing the waiting game since March, wondering whether the press will ultimately take the book, and if so, what revisions theyll want from me, and thus as a consequence resisting getting started on a new project before the old one is safely in press.</p>
<p>So heres the question: how do you get started? How do you start writing about ideas youre not yet sure about? How do you start allowing pieces of a new project to be seen publicly when you know theyre unfinished? And how do you start that new project when the previous ones still lingering in the background?</p>
<ul class="links-nextprev"><li class="links-nextprev-prev">← Previous<br> <a href="/hey-ive-got-an-rss-feed/">Hey, Ive Got an RSS Feed!</a></li><li class="links-nextprev-next">Next →<br><a href="/academic-superstardom-and-its-costs/">Academic Superstardom (and Its Costs)</a></li>
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