Luckily for Emerson, that is not to be -- I did manage to finish my paper intro last night (around 1 a.m.?), but now have several more pages to write, in theory, in the next 2.5 hrs. Heh. We'll see what happens -- I'm not going to stress too much if I run over time; I may just show up late to class.
But whether or not the paper is completed, something else is -- I just sent off the final manuscript of Wet, revised, proofed, and with only one author bio missing. There *is* one story that we may work on a bit further...but we might not, and if not, then it just goes directly to the copyeditor now, so that galleys may be produced. Ah, galleys. How I do love thee...
How long ago did I start this project? I can't quite believe that it's done; it's out of my hands and in someone else's -- there's be no more major changes. It's just fine-tuning at this point. I'm exhausted; I don't know how people write a book a year, because just editing one has pretty much done me in. I think I'm going to have to limit my editing to no more than every other year, and possibly less frequently than that...I hardly did any writing this summer, and in theory, I could have done lots. Although heartbreak may have intervened in any case, editing or no.
We're more than halfway through the semester, and I'm starting to look forward to the end of it. A month and a half to go -- and then it'll be break, and then it'll be spring, and spring semester should be very nice this year. I *think* I only have to take two classes, a workshop and a lit. class. No teaching, due to my fellowship. Which means in theory, lots of time to write -- that was why they gave me the fellowship, after all. Am I being overly ambitious, to think that I'll have my book drafted by the end of the summer. Maybe...but one needs goals, right? I'm all about goals, these days. When did I become so amazingly achievement-oriented? I remember all those high school credit cards: Does Not Live Up to Her Full Potential. Over and over and over again. I wonder if those teachers would think I was doing so now, or if they would think I still had a ways to go.
Heh. If they could see me procrastinating like this, they would mock me severely. Off to my paper I go!
8:15. 2.5 pages down, 2 to go. Not bad. This is a very straightforward little paper, to the point that I admit a bit of resentment for needing to bother. I've written papers for this professor already; he knows that I can competently trace out the course of such a simple question as he's asked us. On the other hand, it's not bad practice, and really, not so much effort that I should bother being annoyed. It's even kind of fun -- my biggest difficulty is restraining myself from falling into the kind of archaic phrasing that the text uses; I did that with my Franklin paper, and he called me on it. It's very hard to resist, though. How can you not love language like this: "I cannot suppose any thing but attachment to the daughter could carry you such imprudent lengths for the father..." Isn't that charming? It makes me want to write in calm convolutions. "I cannot suppose any thing" -- oh, that's good.
There was a bit in the Emerson I was reading last night where he stuck another word in the midst of 'whatsoever' -- i.e., "what difficulty soever" or "what pleasure soever" -- I didn't know you could do that! I miss words like whatsoever. And thus. I use thus, but not so much as I would like to. And what about thusly? It's a poor, impoverished language we are left to fumble with, is what it is...
4:15. The good news is that Fictionwise now has the September issue of SH up! Go get it! Collect the whole set!
I did also finish my paper and all the reading I needed to do for today, as well as class prep -- I ended up teaching them a rather eclectic mix: flashbacks and other non-sequential narratives, framing devices / voiceovers, unreliable narrators, metafiction. Probably enough to hold them for a bit.
The bad news is that I'm utterly exhausted, coughed my way through my last class, and just cannot face going back to school tonight. I'm going to skip workshop, curl up in my rocking chair with my afghan, eat soup, and watch tv. So there.