Hello from the skies. I paid $8 for internet on this flight — I had a whole plan about taking a red-eye back and sleeping eight hours with the help of an Ambien, but I just wasn’t tired at 6:05 when the flight took off, so I’ve been working instead. I was working offline for a while, but hit a point where I wanted to do some class prep that required reading through student discussion boards, so oh well, $8. At least I get to say hi to y’all too.
I also did some revision work on the food essay, but it’s honestly driving me crazy a little. See, I wrote a memoir a while back, about love and nationalism, and despite taking it through multiple drafts, it never really gelled. So I thought fine, let’s see if I can at least pull some decent essays out of it.
And I tried. But this one, “Uppuma Chicken,” is almost 5000 words long, which is pretty long, I think, for this kind of essay. And I think there’s too much stuff in there that is probably pulling focus from the main point, and also too much repetition of the main point, and yet when I stare at it, I can’t seem to figure out what to cut / change. I trimmed 300 words, but I think it needs more. It needs an editor, dammit.
Well, we’ll see if I can lean on my friends to critique it for me. It’s already been through one pass with a critique group, but I’ve implemented those changes, and have now sent it to a completely new set of people. We’ll see if any of them have time to look at it and fix it for me. Maybe they can make it brilliant, or at least satisfying.
Not sure what I’m doing next. Maybe napping, maybe watching TV, maybe writing some more. I think I’m too tired now to trust myself grading; that will have to wait until after I sleep some.
