I’ve spent the last three days madly working on the article from which my talk at BlogTalk will be drawn.  And late last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, it hit me:  I’m leaving for Europe on Thursday.

That, needless to say, was about the end of me falling asleep.  There’s much to do, and I’m all in a bit of a panic about it.  I’ll hope, however, to find myself with much to report shortly.

The article draft nears completion:  I’m at 32 pages, with about two pages to go.  And then a whole heckuva lot of editing and revision.  So lots of work to go, but oh, the bliss of knowing that there will shortly be an object with which I’m working…

I’m now 28 pages into an article that I wanted to be around 25 pages long, and I’ve got at least another 5 pages of analysis and conclusion to write before the thing is complete.  Annoyingly, the first 20-ish pages of the article hold together pretty darn well—ideas move from one section to the next in what seems to be a fairly logical progression—and then in the last six pages (of what I’ve written, that is) it begins to crumble a bit.

I just want to be done with this article.  I’ve got two more things that I really have to get written before the end of August, and I can’t get going on them until this is done already.

End whinge.  Back to work.

I realized over the weekend that I’ve been struggling for so long with the article I’m writing—or, to be honest, not writing—that it’s (a) now pretty heavily overdue, and (b) threatening to take on the albatross-like status that only things I feel hugely guilty about can take on, a situation that compounds daily, as my guilt prevents me from being able to fully confont the object of my guilt.  Etc.  So clearly steps must be taken.

I’m now in the second day of a very strict regime, in which I sit down at the computer immediately after performing the necessary morning ablutions and having a little breakfast and caffeine.  I am not allowed to fire up the email client.  I am not allowed to open a browser window.  There are no forms of interactivity available to my computer, for one half hour.  For one half hour, I open only the article draft and my notes, and that is all I look at.  For one half hour.  And I write, something, even if it’s totally placeholder prose that I know won’t make it into the final version, even if it’s just bullet point notes about what comes next.

What I have, after two days of this, is a lot of mangled bullet points and notes for things I’ve got to read and/or recover from old research.  It’s not pretty, but there’s a lot of it, and it’s starting to take on a kind of shape.  I’m beginning to get interested.

And today was a bit easier than yesterday, I think.

I seem to recall having mentioned something like this a while back, about the relationship between ease and frequency in writing, something about needing to practice daily.  It’s probably bad when the need to reread applies to your own ideas, too.

There’s an article that I need to write, one that, in theory at least, I’ve been at work on for some weeks.  In reality, however, I never made it beyond the first day of drafting.

I’ve allowed dozens of things to intervene between me and the writing process—packing and moving, of course, as well as other unavoidables, but also a slew of perfectly-well-avoidables, like that book that I really needed to finish reading right away, even though it was unrelated and frankly not all that pressing, or those fall syllabi that I need to begin pondering, even though those ponderings are at best loose and unfocused.

I’ve hit the point of stalling at which I’ve begun to feel guilty, and guilt is itself a profound disincentive for me; rather than face up to and eliminate the cause of my guilt, I tend instead to avoid it, thereby deepening the guilt, thereby increasing the need to avoid its source.  A vicious circle, indeed.

So I’ve spent the last day or so trying to figure out why I’m avoiding the article, what it is about the argument I’m hoping to make that has me resisting the painful process of shaping it into sentences.  And I’ve come up with a couple of possibly related things.

The article is for a planned casebook on Curtis White’s Memories of My Father Watching TV, and I’ve been charged with focusing on the novel’s representations of television, which is, of course, something I’ve written a little bit about before.  So theoretically, at least, it should be easy—but there’s something I dread in returning to the scene of an old argument, having to find a way to rearticulate ideas that I’ve already harped on about at great length.  This is complicated by the fact that I’m not quite sure I’ve got that much new to say about the White itself; the more I think about the book, the more pedestrian my thoughts seem to become.

But of course, this is in no small part because I’m doing this thinking without writing; it’s only in writing that my thoughts ever become remotely interesting or complex, and the longer I resist writing the worse my sense of those thoughts becomes, as I’m not making any progress, and instead seem only mired in the shallows.

In no small part this post is meant to kickstart me into writing something at least, something that will suck at first but then might have a chance of developing into something I’m interested in.  But it’s also meant to prod you guys for ideas and advice.  How do you get started writing something you dread?  How do you overcome your dread long enough to get started?

I’m in the initial stages today of drafting an article that I’ve promised for a volume.  And I’m having no fun whatsoever.

The first day of drafting is always painful: I cobble together what few thoughts I have about the article’s structure into the beginnings of some kind of outline; I attempt to flesh out the outline where I can; I stare at the enormous gaps—particularly the big white space at the end of what I’ve got, where I just run out of steam and can’t figure out what comes next.

I check email.  I read blogs.

I look back at the outline, depressed to find that nothing has changed since I turned away from it ten minutes ago.  I force myself to produce another bullet point.  Then delete it.  Then put it back, as I’m not sure what else to put in its place.

I check various stats.  See if there’s new email.  Get another diet Coke.

The first day is always like this—I spend less time working than stalling, trying to avoid having to bash my forehead into that brick wall one more time.  The first day’s work is nearly always nonsense.

Sometimes the second day’s work is, too.

But often on the second day, and usually by the third, something breaks loose, and I actually begin to feel the shape of whatever it is I’m writing, producing actual sentences with real logical connections to one another, sensing that those logical connections are gradually building into something that will someday resemble an argument.

Usually.  Unless it turns out that what I produced on the first day really was nonsense, and that I just don’t have enough to work with to propel me through.

I try to remind myself that that’s a pretty rare outcome.  But I still keep hoping that beginning to draft something new will get easier, someday.

I finally get it—why researchers develop archive fever.  I spent part of yesterday afternoon in the special collections of the LSU Libraries, and am completely entranced.  Not only was the staff immediately and overwhelmingly helpful (making phone calls on my behalf when part of what I wanted to see wasn’t, in fact, available, and granting me immediate access to their collections without the personal background check required in order to obtain borrowing privileges at the main university library), but I was able to sit down and start paging through some absolutely fascinating manuscript material.  And I’ve already stumbled upon something I wasn’t really looking for, or that I didn’t know that I was looking for, but that’s absolutely perfect for what I need.

Yes, cryptic.  The new project, incorporating some of this archival material, will with any luck be coming to a screen near you early in March.  Assuming the rest of the research goes as swimmingly, and that I don’t get totally lost in the archive.

Sabbaticals are good.  But, like, really no-kidding good.  I spent the early part of yesterday in my pajamas, in front of the computer, working on the new project.  And then I pulled myself together that afternoon and went grocery shopping, laying in all of the basic supplies such that I don’t have to leave the house if I don’t want to.  Cooked a simple but good dinner last night.  Hung out and chatted with R.  Did some reading, and went to sleep.

And I get to do it again today.  Without the grocery shopping.

My library access here is still in process, but once it’s available, I’m going to go spend a couple of days digging through various special collections.  And then there will be more days in my pajamas, in front of the computer.

I’m writing.  I’m eating well.  I’m exercising.

This, I think, is what balance feels like.  It’s only a shame that it takes a sabbatical in order to find it.

R. and I were talking yesterday just before lunch about the strange anxieties and difficulties that I’m having with writing right now.  Some of it’s been about jetlag, of course; some of it’s about a more general unfocusedness.  Some of it’s about the need to find my way into a new project, something that’s always hard.

But in the midst of this conversation, as I was talking about the narrative project that I’ve got in the works, a project that’s of novel-like size, if not of novel-like form, I heard myself saying “I’ve never written anything this big before.” And having said it, I had to stop and think:  is that true?  After all, I wrote a 250+ page dissertation, which has turned into a 320+ page book.  Of course I’ve written something this big, if not bigger…

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A sabbatical is a good thing.  As is the change of scenery that comes with a trip abroad.  R. and I are definitely on vacation, but these two weeks are very much a working vacation for the both of us; he’s got a long-term project that he’s hard at work on, and I’m attempting to transition myself into this leave, as well as transitioning into several new projects.  So we’re spending most “mornings” writing, and then “afternoons” wandering the streets and “evenings” enjoying the bars.

Times of day go in quotes because they’re most loosely used here; “morning” has in the last few days encompassed the span from 9 am to 2 pm one day, but 3 am to 9 am another.  Honestly, at any given moment I haven’t a clue what time it is.

But, again honestly, only those “evening” segments of the day are coming easily.  Sitting in a pub with a beer is ideally effortless, producing no strain on the jet-lagged post-holiday self.  The “afternoons” of touristy exploration have been made somewhat less appealing than usual by the fact that it continues to grow colder here, which, coupled with my weather wimpdom, has resulted in a kind of huddling indoors, with a pretty steep energy investment required to get me over the threshold and outside.  (This is exacerbated by the fact that I’ve done Amsterdam before, under less frigid conditions.)

And the writing “mornings” have been pleasant, but not terribly productive as yet.  It’s hard to get the brain to find a way into a big new project, particularly when said brain thinks it’s 1 am but is pretty sure it just finished eating breakfast.  I have several new projects I’m hoping to work on during this sabbatical—two articles that I want to finish, a new narrative project that I’d like to get well underway, a volume I’m co-editing that I need to get jumpstarted, and of course ElectraPress, which I’d like to see off the ground.  With that much in front of me, and with no clear point of entry—no place I’d left off, for instance—getting started has been daunting.  Once I’m settled into the sabbatical proper, after the vacation, I’m hoping to find ways to divide my time amongst these projects, to keep them all moving forward.  But this morning, my energies just feel as though they’re dissipating into the cold.

Writing, including here, is not coming easily.  I need to find my way back into my regular practice.