tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10559322574649759022012-02-14T12:08:53.247-08:00Scholarly writing and how to get it done.Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comBlogger8871100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-50656835759952702022012-02-14T11:57:00.001-08:002012-02-14T11:59:58.555-08:00

Feel free to refuse this offer. I won't put a mutilated horse in your bed. Read this blog and try to use some the tips for your own writing. If you have an experience to relate, I will let you do a guest post here.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-47388132533985119172012-02-13T19:00:00.001-08:002012-02-13T19:02:30.508-08:00

Sometimes you just have to push through your writing through sheer will and strength. Today was such a day for me, when I decided just to force myself to write in otherwise unpropitious circumstances.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-83633893848078834272012-02-12T08:02:00.000-08:002012-02-12T08:09:21.446-08:00

Today was the 15th day of my Seinfeld chain. I barely made it yesterday, which was a horrible day in more than one way. I still did it though. Today was easy. Tomorrow looks nearly impossible. Since the power is in the continuity, not in the efficacy of any one day's writing, I try to do something on the project every day, even when exhausted and spent like today. The writing got done, that is

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-49586356102187940782012-02-10T10:54:00.000-08:002012-02-10T11:11:38.291-08:00

Increasingly, I've used begun to listen to music while doing nothing else. I concentrate on the music itself rather than using it as background. When I meditate, and dismiss other thoughts that come up. When I am teaching, I am doing that. Nothing outside the classroom discussion exists for me. When I'm talking to a friend, that person gets my full attention. When I write, I shut out other

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-56510460181801682482012-02-09T11:36:00.000-08:002012-02-09T11:43:32.223-08:00

If I write an produce 100 new words on a document, that just means I showed up for work and did something. If I produce 500 words, that means I showed up and stayed around for at least an hour or so. There has to something valuable in those words, some new idea, or the articulation or fleshing out of an idea or two. If I produce 1,000 words or more then I really kicked it into high gear. That

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-5068278577291426562012-02-08T11:45:00.001-08:002012-02-08T11:46:22.938-08:00

Yes, I did write more than you did today and I'm happy.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-19200826484700313732012-02-08T11:23:00.000-08:002012-02-08T11:32:37.242-08:00

[Details changed to protect anonymity] I reviewed an article a few years ago that was almost all summary. It spoke with a firm voice of authority, giving a very good and readable summary of a non-fiction book by a Peruvian novelist. The article, however, was rejected because it didn't have a critical argument apart from the summary. The quotes from the novelist were lengthy, but the author of the

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-49052103132746065942012-02-08T08:28:00.000-08:002012-02-08T08:31:27.529-08:00

Here is the record I kept of my writing on the introduction to a book I am writing. I started with 411 words, then it snowballed from there. Mirth and Henry's are cafés in Lawrence. (Before: 411.) Nov. 7, 2011: 1336. (3 pomodoro sessions)Nov. 8: 1627 (1 pomodoro session)Nov 9: 1926 (1 pomodoro session)Nov. 10: 2292 (1 pomodoro session)Dec. 3: 2957 (2 pomodoro sessions) Dec. 4: 4140 (1 pomodoro

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-19284884759190831452012-02-07T08:01:00.000-08:002012-02-07T08:10:48.261-08:00

I have decided to put myself up for distinguished professor. There, I said it. The secret is out. Someone else nominates you, but you have to do a substantial amount of of the work yourself. I don't feel very distinguished from the inside, most of the time. I don't think most people think of themselves that way, even semi-arrogant people such as me. I always expect people to say, "Ha, so you

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-13332503515210032132012-02-07T05:43:00.001-08:002012-02-07T05:52:00.010-08:00

Great insight here from Clarissa. She is one of the success stories of SMT. She has read the blog for a while now and and has been able to implement the suggestions in her working life, with satisfying results. Recently, she has had three articles accepted for publication. That is a a lot of articles to be accepted, since a half-dozen makes for a good basis for a tenure case. It is hard to

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-68497219497208667382012-02-05T08:40:00.000-08:002012-02-05T08:55:23.151-08:00

As a college professor, I have never missed class to illness in 16 years of teaching at KU. I have missed for professional travel and once for weather. An excuse to miss class for me, then, would be an illness truly incapacitating or violently contagious, or crashing my car on the morning of class and not arriving. Being too tired, burn-out of this particular class, having a headache, etc...

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-26387276528023749542012-02-05T08:02:00.000-08:002012-02-05T08:15:19.381-08:00

On day 8 of my Seinfeld Chain I am seeing my project much more clearly. I can envision a completion date, even. I realize that if I continue to work more or less randomly on the seven chapters for the rest of the month of Feb. (and pretty much every day), then I will have a good base for each chapter to be completed in about month or a month and a half each. In March - December of 2012 I could

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-84314906331448326212012-02-02T07:06:00.000-08:002012-02-02T07:22:27.704-08:00

As of today, I have maintained a continuous chain of working on a project for 5 consecutive days. That might seem short, but I am already feeling the power of it. I proctored the PhD exam yesterday, so I had to sit there and write for three straight hours in a room with no internet connection. I added over a 1,000 words to this project and generated many new ideas. That might not had happened if

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-88019473326734716802012-01-31T12:05:00.000-08:002012-01-31T12:12:21.453-08:00

The bad news about time management in the academic setting is that it is very fragmented, broken up by interruptions of classes and meetings, emails and grading. Many people don't have four or five straight hours each day in which there is nothing else scheduled. The good news is that you only need 1-3 hours a day for your writing. You can schedule writing the same way as anything else. Instead

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-28633455447121995492012-01-31T08:44:00.000-08:002012-01-31T08:50:46.116-08:00

By ruthlessness I do not mean an attitude of cruelty or hostility to the world or toward other people. You need only be ruthless toward your typical excuses, or the typical non-productive habits that you let yourself fall into. Be unsparing with your self-justifications. Call bullshit on yourself. *I can't write today because I'm tired / sick / burnt out. *because it's a teaching day.*because I

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-17024429033071232772012-01-31T08:13:00.001-08:002012-01-31T08:27:00.314-08:00

This article talks about the two styles of writing, one the steady plugging away of the ant, and the other the last minute before the deadline cramming of the grasshopper.The author of the article is almost apologetic about being the ant. I have a bit of different perspective on this, as you might imagine. I don't see these as two personal styles, suited to two classes of individuals. I am going

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-86688024264096546482012-01-31T07:54:00.001-08:002012-01-31T08:03:14.147-08:00

The other day I was writing in the morning, as is my custom. I had a cold and wasn't concentrating very well and I am sure I was only a shadow of my usually brilliant self. Yet this "bad" writing session was still a good one. My manuscript grew by three or four hundred words. I generated some ideas I could develop later. Moreover, I maintained my continuity in working on the project. One of the

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-37451347224486697532012-01-30T10:37:00.000-08:002012-01-30T10:40:33.872-08:00

I've decided to go back to one of my best and most ruthless techniques, the Seinfeld Chain, in which I write on the calendar every day the number of consecutive days I have been writing. I am just going to write every day, with no more excuses. Already, on the second day, I had an extraordinarily productive session.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-65398069615067375712012-01-28T07:21:00.000-08:002012-01-28T07:35:10.436-08:00

Tanya has some keen remarks about creative energy. Scholarship is a creative enterprise, it calls into existence ideas that never existed before, or at least new configurations of ideas. (I don't mean, here, scholarship that tries too hard to be "creative." Or that thinks of creativity in terms of over-clever gimmicks. That rarely works.) So then I asked myself, where do I draw my creativity from

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-83992439852152094882012-01-27T09:02:00.001-08:002012-01-27T09:05:03.750-08:00

Today we have 8 people in the writing group here at the aptly named Mirth café. I added more than 1,000 words to my project ADLB. (Another damned Lorca book), also known as Lorca: modelo para armar, in 2 1/2 hours. The place is loud and the chairs uncomfortable. We hardly speak to one another. Yet it is a great way to write.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-60375387797988131212012-01-25T07:52:00.001-08:002012-01-26T06:08:09.105-08:00

I'm here at Mirth Café in Lawrence, KS, writing along with four other people, including Tanya of Get a Life PhD. The idea is to do your solitary writing in company. We'll be meeting Wed and Fri in the a.m.[N.B.: The group was Tanya's idea, not my own.]

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-70127712504858192562012-01-19T07:44:00.000-08:002012-01-19T07:47:03.923-08:00

There is a certain satisfaction in checking off items on a list of things to do. I often begin doing things even before I make a list, but then write down and check off things I have already done. I even put things like "drink coffee" on my to-do list.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-42608821851091366242012-01-19T06:51:00.000-08:002012-01-19T06:52:27.797-08:00

Here is a well-written post about the question of what audience to address, and how.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-43928545724304444452012-01-17T09:06:00.000-08:002012-01-17T09:06:00.900-08:00

Hamlet wonders why he has not taken action yet, since he has all the necessary elements in place: "Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do it." He is a very analytical person, who loves to break things down like this, and he lists these elements in a logical order. Cause: you need an ultimate reason for what you are doing, a deep motivation. That is the first one he

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-13632869236041561972012-01-17T07:14:00.000-08:002012-01-17T07:30:35.129-08:00

So my core belief is that literature is transformative. It "kicks you in the ass with its transformative power," to quote a phrase that I've used before. Yet my literary pedagogy is fairly conventional in a lot of ways. A student of mine might not suspect that this is what I believe. What I need to do is to let my enthusiasm shine through in a way that it often doesn't. Of course, teaching

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-23070351759325206922012-01-16T08:55:00.000-08:002012-01-16T09:06:00.313-08:00

What I was trying to get at in the last post was my effort to get my work to reflect, in a much stronger way, my values and my vision, to eliminate the dissonance between the two. In other words, if you asked me why I am in the profession that I am in, what motivates me most deeply, I might have a certain set of answers. Then, if you asked me what I did in my research and teaching, I might have

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-33667217072669002872012-01-14T11:35:00.001-08:002012-01-14T11:52:21.379-08:00

My interest has been shifting from the problem of productivity (scholarly writing and how to get it done) to a more holistic view. I realized that my profession is valuable to me because it allows me to pursue my interests. My scholarship and teaching might be of value to others for other reasons, but for me they serve me as a way of allowing me to pursue subjects of deep interest to me. It's all

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-70112923479162620202011-12-24T07:59:00.000-08:002011-12-24T09:07:52.801-08:00

What I mean by this question is that the same sort of profoundly antihumanistic thinking that makes research seem pointless, that counts up citations or the lack of citations, would also make teaching *as we know it* largely obsolete. For lecturing, you could just mass distribute the work of brilliant lecturers. Why have countless people involved in giving physics lectures in numerous

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-33216807047441874972011-12-20T14:43:00.000-08:002011-12-20T14:43:00.463-08:00

My weaknesses include proofreading and archival research. I find it hard to maintain teaching energy from August to December or January to May. I often make minor mistakes on my syllabus, leaving out a day or scheduling class when there isn't supposed to be any. I am bad at event planning. Sometimes I jump ahead of myself and develop my ideas intuitively, before I do my research, so my

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-42165009307523755732011-12-20T01:21:00.000-08:002012-01-16T13:55:58.968-08:00

I'm probably just oldfashioned but this vision of the university horrifies me. I was struck in particular by the collage of half-baked ideas gleaned (too quickly, I think) from studies of academic life. Citing that study by Mark Bauerlein about the alleged overproduction of uncited writing, which we've discussed already, Schumpeter argues thatThe time wasted writing articles that will never be

Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-63870407984371792392011-12-19T21:51:00.000-08:002011-12-19T21:51:00.058-08:00

I am going to inventory my strengths in this post, for two or three reasons. I want to put myself up for a distinguished professorship, so I better have some idea of what my selling points are. I also find it helpful to figure out how to exploit the things that I already know how to do well. (A separate post will outline my weaknesses.) Thirdly, I want to continue writing in these 25 minute "

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-92063714961439312992011-12-19T10:40:00.000-08:002011-12-19T11:02:05.199-08:00

Just as Jonathan once had a low opinion of business-inspired approaches to the writing process, ten years ago I would have balked at the idea of modeling the writing process on an exercise regimen. In fact, I think I even used to explicitly balk at the idea of mens sana in corpore sanum.But I do also remember, in those same days, beginning to worry about the collective and individual conditions

Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-81086672201018001582011-12-18T06:29:00.000-08:002011-12-18T06:29:00.212-08:00

As an academic I used to scorn productivity techniques and gimmicks that I associated more with the world of business. My time management skills were not all that great either, and I could get away with it up to a certain point because I could write fast when I needed to. I think this might have caught up to me in the late 90s or so. I was still producing articles, but longer projects became

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-5176538472624152412011-12-17T18:21:00.000-08:002011-12-17T18:25:31.494-08:00

I have begun to use google docs for documents that I need to have on every computer, so that I don't need to carry them around on a flashdrive or worry about what the latest version is if the doc is on two hard drives. I just log into my blogger account and find my docs under "My Account." I can even edit them on the ipad, which otherwise lacks a suitable word processing program (at least my

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-37904829112291721892011-12-17T18:14:00.001-08:002011-12-17T18:20:35.513-08:00

Timeboxing is the technique of allotting tasks to very well-defined and usually short periods of time, or boxes. You might also call it microcheduling. During the winter break I am going to be doing some of that as I work to get a lot done before classes start on January 17. If I can fit in three or four 25-minute sessions almost every day between now and January 17, I could get an amazing

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-65126950024780819822011-12-17T10:09:00.000-08:002011-12-17T10:21:17.232-08:00

Jonathan's experiments highlight the importance of what we can accomplish in a very finite amount of time. Recently I've been trying to make a list of things I can do or would like to be able to do with some facility (i.e., ease) in 30 minutes. Things like:Run five kilometers,Swim one kilometer (I'm now almost able to do this),Write a prose paragraph for academic purposes,Copy-edit five

Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-87275821376855925632011-12-16T11:51:00.001-08:002011-12-16T12:04:51.061-08:00

The second experiment had me write as fast as I could for 25 minutes, with the "exam topic" being my book Lorca: modelo para armar. I produced 785 words (not 924 when I blogged metacritically about the experiment itself. So I was typing 31 words a minute, about half of what a reasonably fast typist could type from a prepared text. That gives me a kind of maximum baseline for writing at

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-42587044586083419342011-12-16T11:23:00.000-08:002011-12-16T11:49:11.631-08:00

The book I am writing in Spanish will be called Lorca: modelo para armar. The idea is to present my views of Lorca, in more or less complete form, in a way that is accessible to Spanish readers, updating some of the conclusions in two previous books: Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch (Chicago, 2009), and What Lorca Knew: Spanish Poetics and Intellectual History (in progress). I took

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-79951442244647231932011-12-16T11:19:00.000-08:002011-12-16T11:21:54.853-08:00

I wrote a 25-minute blog post of 924 words. All sentences are grammatical, and the prose is readable and coherent, although the organization is a bit rambling. My next experiment will be to give myself 25 minutes to write a substantive explanation of the book I want to write. We will see how that goes. Fasten your seatbelts.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-48696475290425712332011-12-16T08:03:00.000-08:002011-12-16T08:29:03.497-08:00

Inspired by Thomas's post below, and by my use of the pomodoro timer, I am going to write for twenty-five minutes, just to see what quantity of fluid, comprehensible prose I can produce within that window of time. I began at 10:04 central standard time. The idea is that if I can figure out how much I can write within such a period, then I can use my writing sessions to better effect. I don't have

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-36835451924385274972011-12-16T07:59:00.000-08:002011-12-16T08:03:31.278-08:00

There are people who, when you ask them to explain their current project, will always use the exact same wording. I think you should be able to explain what you are doing in a dozen different ways, for different audiences and in different circumstanes. One way of getting yourself unstuck on a project is to explain it in an email to someone who is not in your direct field, or someone who is not an

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-4753338682251916912011-12-16T02:55:00.000-08:002011-12-16T03:09:36.299-08:00

I will miss Christopher Hitchens too for his "facility with words". You don't have to like his ideas, or even his style, to admire the strength of his prose. The shape of his form. This interview on 60-minutes underscores the point. Though I don't recommend begging off for a moment to write after dinner, having the power to do so is entirely part of that "power of facing unpleasant facts" that

Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-34067333647775774002011-12-15T12:01:00.000-08:002011-12-15T12:32:29.039-08:00

There are two or three facets of my intellectual activity that I would like to explore in my career: my own poetry, translation, more work with music, and prosody. Well, I guess that's four. The problem, once again, is one of finitude. I don't have three or four clones of myself who can get this stuff done while I work on the two books in progress. What I need to do, though, is to have some

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-50423208751446235702011-12-15T11:39:00.000-08:002011-12-15T11:57:14.220-08:00

I meet with a group of truly brilliant people most Thursdays here in town. A distinguished professor (I mean someone holding that title, but who is also distinguished in the true sense of the word), a small handful of amazing poets and scholars, one the former poet-laureate of the state, one the de facto laureate of the university, an extraordinary translator of the classics, and a few others of

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-59796399608297439962011-12-14T12:18:00.000-08:002011-12-14T12:28:20.886-08:00

I've decided to have my name nominated to be a Distinguished Professor. It is curious that I think of myself as plausible candidate when I look at my cv, but that I still have a hard time asking others to support me in this process. I keep thinking that people will say I am not prominent enough for that. It is an odd dichotomy. I think I am more or less at the level I need to be (of course, there

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-71844537809148214682011-12-14T08:44:00.000-08:002011-12-14T08:46:14.752-08:00

An excellent article on the topic of fast food scholarship. Not scholarship on fast food, but scholarship produced quickly and without requisite research and thought.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-44889845905043158642011-12-13T14:18:00.000-08:002011-12-13T14:29:03.071-08:00

Think of a very adept Shakespearian actor, going out on stage and beginning the prologue to Henry V: "O for a muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention..." Now think of the the same actor doing it, but with power point slides projected on a screen. Would the words on the screen add or detract from the actor's performance? If the actor were any good at all, the mere

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-83011470504621844912011-12-12T11:01:00.000-08:002011-12-12T11:02:10.824-08:00

There's always room in the budget for administrator raises.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-63757480933034258122011-12-11T17:40:00.000-08:002011-12-11T17:52:35.403-08:00

I know that it's true for me, at least, that I become appreciably dumber when I do less research. As with other areas of life, things are usually improving or deteriorating in my mind, rather than in pure stasis. I am either becoming a better writer, or a worse writer, at any given time. I couldn't imagine still teaching the information I learned in my Graduate Program, which I finished in 1988.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-19207597995192255542011-12-08T10:17:00.000-08:002011-12-08T10:18:29.283-08:00

I need one more follower of this blog to tie Bemsha Swing. Who will it be? Sign up now.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-70247148692587248912011-12-08T08:41:00.000-08:002011-12-08T08:52:08.484-08:00

According to JSTOR, many of the most frequent articles downloaded from Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea are about Lorca. Not surprising, since he is the most canonical figure of 20th century peninsular literature. So the chances that an article on Lorca will be cited are much greater than the chances of an article on Antonio Gamoneda. ALEC has never even published an article on

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-27679116176628201562011-12-08T06:00:00.001-08:002011-12-08T06:00:43.687-08:00

The Professional Human.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-50663997895620138502011-12-07T07:35:00.000-08:002011-12-07T08:16:44.174-08:00

Just when I said I wouldn't be following my vanity metrics, I realized I was creating my own profile in google scholar. You can consult it it you want, by googling my name and going to google scholar. It might be better termed a humility metric, because I don't have nearly the numbers of citations I would need to justify my enormous ego. I have 50 followers for Bemsha Swing and 49 for SMT. This

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-43365149157572621292011-12-06T08:20:00.000-08:002011-12-06T09:17:54.110-08:00

Bauerlein makes the argument in the Chronicle that there is too much scholarship in the Humanities, that this scholarship is not cost-effective. He uses google scholar to make his point. Now there seems to be a contradiction here, in that pointing to the low numbers of citations that many articles get invests these citations with a value that they do not have, in Bauerlein's own view. in other

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-21034737679000131822011-12-05T13:25:00.000-08:002011-12-05T13:29:14.858-08:00

A new trend I've noticed is that you write a recommendation for a PhD student, and then the school calls you with a list of question to answer. They go down the list of questions mechanically and you just answer them out loud. Presumably the nice faculty member on the other side of the phone takes notes on what you say, probably including the most significant phrases. Never mind that you spent

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-43816665468342765842011-12-05T11:55:00.000-08:002011-12-05T11:55:01.015-08:00

I know psychologists describe human satisfaction in terms of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I tell my student that my job is the greatest I could ever hope for. I research and teach Spanish literature and they pay me money to do it. It almost seems unbelievable. I experience high levels of autonomy in my job. Nobody tells me what I have to write about, and I can design courses of my

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-65361896678026857012011-12-05T11:26:00.002-08:002011-12-05T11:40:30.526-08:00

Clarissa pointed me to this vile editorial by Russell Berman. I'm afraid I might have to quit the MLA again in protest. In my field, two years of course work for the PhD is not going to be enough. The reason is that students coming from Spanish majors simply have not read enough in their undergraduate programs. To do enough reading to be even minimally competent would require more than three or

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-61620009634001935352011-12-04T09:13:00.000-08:002011-12-04T09:28:08.915-08:00

How many of these do you have?(I found this through Tanya's facebook feed.) I am quoting these habits and then interpreting them for my own purposes. "Consuming more than you create" Obviously, as scholars we have to do more reading than writing, in number of pages for example. But an example of consuming more than you create might be spending most of your research time reading and

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-91092366971833008242011-12-04T08:56:00.000-08:002011-12-04T09:11:09.916-08:00

Self-confidence is a great tool. The last few days I have felt that I was writing a masterpiece of criticism, a great trilogy of Lorca criticism, that I could do what I was doing well and that nothing would stop me (despite some recent turmoil in my personal life). Curiously, the renewed self-confidence resulted simply from returning to work, after a few months in which I wasn't producing a lot

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-12781777393213951362011-12-01T08:15:00.001-08:002011-12-01T08:32:35.334-08:00

I can prepare a class in about the same amount of time it takes to teach that same class. In other words, I can take an hour and 15 minutes to prepare a class of equal length. This excludes the extra time it takes me to read a lengthy novel, for example. If we are reading 60 pages for a particular day, then I would need an hour to read those pages, and maybe another half an hour to 45 minutes

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-30736092964492481262011-11-30T06:52:00.000-08:002011-11-30T11:04:56.235-08:00

Suppose you were writing a book review. If you are anything like me, you would be thinking about what to write as you read the book, with actual words, phrases and even sentences forming in your head. Writing,then, is a mental activity. you have to write it down to know what you have, and also so as not to forget it, but the main work takes place in the brain. I only point out something so self

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-70230008254198647762011-11-29T08:24:00.000-08:002011-11-29T08:29:54.009-08:00

If you write every day and use some form of deliberative practice, in which you think consciously about what you are doing, then you ought to be getting better at it. Writing well should get both faster and easier. I say this because there is a common view that writing never gets easier, that true improvement is not possible, or that the first draft will always be crappy even for a good writer.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-16848138154392219312011-11-15T07:48:00.000-08:002011-11-15T08:04:30.205-08:00

I used to think of myself as very smart. This was a mistake, because what really matters is the ability to communicate ideas, whether through teaching or writing. It helps to have ideas, of course, but there will always be people more intellectually brilliant or more erudite, with more knowledge of philosophy or theory, than me (or you, probably). Some of these smart people write books that I

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-40611769569571279432011-11-11T08:30:00.000-08:002011-11-11T08:31:41.928-08:00

This is what we decided to do for the writing workshop. My colleague and good friend Jorge are doing this together. Writing workshop for 11/11/11I. Time management, writing every day, etc... (JM)II. Strategies for managing a larger project, working with advisor. (Jorge) III. The structure of the dissertation chapter and article. Avoiding the data dump (JM)IV. Model articles. JM and Jorge. V.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-70054489068744930262011-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:002011-11-10T09:32:18.395-08:00

The default font for Word is times new roman. I change my default to palatino, which I think looks better on the screen and page. One journal required me to submit in times new roman, so I did, but I was irritated. What are your default settings? These might be largely unconscious, so you might not even be aware of what they are. It might be the use of the passive voice: "In this essay it

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-5532156382527338742011-11-10T08:22:00.000-08:002011-11-10T08:37:46.881-08:00

I've received some invitations to be a referee in my email recently. "Hey, we're starting a new on-line journal, if you want to submit articles or be a referee for us... If you want to be a referee, send us your cv." My reaction, always, is to delete the message. Why? I have enough peer-reviewing to do already. I can publish, myself, in better journals. Being a member of an editorial board or

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-74190423575492185102011-11-09T11:20:00.000-08:002011-11-09T11:39:37.821-08:00

The Socratic method involves some complications. Ideally, it would be the method I always used, but I find myself sometimes lecturing, sometimes doing the group activities that the students like, sometimes using Socratic questions but not doing so well with them. I think if I outline the problems I am having maybe I will find a solution. The instructor in this method either does not know the

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-22324288483879192442011-11-09T07:53:00.000-08:002011-11-09T08:21:16.830-08:00

I am unusual, perhaps, in doing research and writing at my desk in my office at school during normal business hours. A lot of people I know think that you have to work only at home so you won't be bothered, or only in the evening. I've started using a pomodoro timer, which has several advantages. You can focus intensely for 25 minutes at a time on a specific task, and you can also keep track of

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-5875626422529718312011-11-08T06:52:00.000-08:002011-11-08T07:00:49.319-08:00

I recently came across a paragraph that included phrases like the following: To the foregoing roster of the transformative implications ... ... I now want to add, and devote the rest of this essay to unpacking, one last matter, the question of ... What follows wishes to bear out the claim that ... And thus from here—counter-intuitively enough, from the ... I wish this kind of writing were absent

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-12210223243777860362011-11-07T11:31:00.001-08:002011-11-07T11:36:43.130-08:00

The nuts and bolts of the dissertation chapter. Are they the same as those of a 7,000 article? You might think of the dissertation chapter, which is 40 pages not 20, as the double of the 6-7 thousand word article. Since they are longer, they tend to be less readable, harder to get through. What makes them longer, typically, is the kind of work that shows the committee that the dissertator knows

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-73147911425846371222011-11-07T11:24:00.000-08:002011-11-07T11:31:17.766-08:00

Every kind of paper has its nuts & bolts, its most logical and conventional organizational structure. Once you figure out what that form is, you can master it. Now I imagine that you probably also want to learn how to write papers that do not follow a structure like that. For example, I would be very bored writing poetry analysis poems in which I always analyzed four poems. My recent paper "What

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-1918134563994727402011-11-04T08:20:00.000-07:002011-11-08T07:48:26.114-08:00

The writing philosophy below dates from 2002, and I still agree with most of it. All of it really, but today I would add other things and de-emphasize some points. I also have a document on "Nuts & Bolts of Analytical Papers." It is oriented toward the mechanics of writing about poetry, how to organize a paper on this subject, but it also has lessons for other types of papers. I am too lazy right

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-90143514183785307452011-11-03T11:38:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:38:00.267-07:00

My colleague had a piece I had written for a writing workshop several years ago, long before I started Stupid Motivational Tricks. She just gave it to. It will be interesting to see whether I still agree with what I wrote. Writing philosophyHow can we define acceptable writing in an academic environment? There are certain basic norms or conventions to be learned, but merely following basic

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-27609500900400307222011-11-03T10:13:00.000-07:002011-11-03T10:13:00.183-07:00

Grammar on the other hand... My course is advanced composition and grammar. The students are getting to be good writers, but they still make far too many grammatical mistakes. Once again, I am motivated to teach grammar because I am interested in language and linguistics. My students are interested in grammar in the sense that they want to eliminate mistakes from their Spanish, but they are not

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-86689461299634261522011-11-03T08:46:00.000-07:002011-11-03T09:12:59.909-07:00

Although I don't enjoy every aspect of teaching Spanish composition, I am interested in it because of my commitment to my own writing, and to improving all of YOUR writing. I think I am doing a better job teaching it this semester than ever before, mostly because I've been able to tie it into my own personal goals. Today for class I am making a handout with the best sentences (or clusters) of

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-25808936555201173722011-11-02T12:41:00.000-07:002011-11-02T12:59:13.818-07:00

Part of my image of myself as a writer and scholar depends on my ability to function as a scholar in Spain: to give talks there, to maintain correspondence with Spanish academics, to write in Spanish and publish articles and reviews written in Spanish. Even though the bulk of my works are in English, I still need to feel that I can write in Spanish when called upon to do so. Other components of

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-57416205208041759282011-11-02T08:27:00.001-07:002011-11-02T09:27:46.058-07:00

If you take as your model a kind of standard academic prose, without really considering whether you, personally, really want to write like that or not, you will end up imitating the worst aspects of the prose in your own field. That is why it is important to emulate particular models of good prose, rather than unconsciously writing in a style that you assume will be an acceptable default. If you

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-74052744985830570232011-11-02T08:12:00.000-07:002011-11-02T09:30:36.128-07:00

Following up a theme I've developed here recently, I'd like you to visualize your image of yourself as a writer. Roland Barthes talks about André Gide and the image of the writer, a kind of conventionalized topos that, according to Barthes, was a little old-fashioned: he couldn't imagine a young kid wanting to grow up and emulate Gide. If you look at Woody Allen's recent picture "Midnight in

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-38033516962304218012011-11-01T08:12:00.001-07:002011-11-01T08:30:08.253-07:00

I will have published four articles and one book review in calendar year 2011. Our (all but non-existent) merit pay is based on the calendar year (strangely), so I think that this is an extraordinarily good year. Only 2009, when I published two monographs and one article, was better.(And perhaps 1990 and 1994, when my two other books came out. In 1990 I also published in MLN.) Even two

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-600478726879488342011-10-31T08:07:00.000-07:002011-10-31T08:08:19.554-07:00

Great post by Tanya on a similar theme. I do think you need to drink coffee to be a writer, but there could be exceptions.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-32620968397821860292011-10-30T08:51:00.001-07:002011-10-31T08:05:47.467-07:00

I wonder, after rejecting an article this morning (again), if my standards are just too high. I'm not saying I should accept everything, but I am getting a bit tired of being so much more exigent than most other people. It is very exhausting and frustrating to expect scholars to live up to my expectations. I dream of a Lorca criticism that is up to the standard of Lorca himself, that treats him

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-1797422937572688392011-10-27T09:04:00.001-07:002011-10-27T09:21:11.095-07:00

I am just a guy who learned Spanish and became a Spanish professor. I wasn't born speaking Spanish, nor did I speak it growing up. I learned it in college and through study abroad, just like my own undergraduate students. I learned to write in English and in Spanish by writing. I gained knowledge of my field by studying it, like everyone else did. I am a realistic model for imitation, then.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-56024582153753506432011-10-26T09:07:00.000-07:002011-10-26T13:22:37.735-07:00

I believe you can learn to write by imitating models of writing. The first thing that good writers usually have in common is having read a lot (quantitatively), but also with a sense of discrimination, thinking about what makes writing effective along various dimensions (clarity, elegance, good organization, etc...) Realistic models are those in the same language and genre in which you are

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-36334649060257128182011-10-25T14:09:00.000-07:002011-11-08T07:46:41.530-08:00

Tanya made an interesting observation in a comment to a recent post: many academics don't see themselves as writers. I see myself as a professor (teacher), an academic expert and researcher, but I also see myself as a writer. The genre in which I write are poetry, translation, and academic non-fiction prose, but I am a writer above all else. You can tell, many times, when an academic is writing

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-80082212069736327072011-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:002011-10-25T14:00:47.449-07:00

A very eminent scholar, retired from my department and now teaching at UCLA, was in my office just now and was complimenting me on my natural talent for writing. It could be that some part of my talent, such as it is, is innate, but I think I learned to be a good writer of prose by carefully looking at the way in which poetry is put together. The language of poetry is visible, foregrounded. Once

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-22866366900458788232011-10-25T09:25:00.000-07:002011-10-25T09:25:00.551-07:00

I am doing a writing workshop for students in our doctoral program in a few weeks. The problem I'm having now is that I know too much and it is going to be hard to remain finite, since the workshop is only about an hour. When I gave such workshops in the past, it was before I began SMT, so it was much easier. Here is a possible outline:The basics are fundamental. What people do wrong in the

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-29665558913126006492011-10-25T08:22:00.000-07:002011-10-25T08:25:43.670-07:00

The same problems in writing that afflict college students afflict their professors too. Lack of clarity, overgenerality and vagueness, lack of original ideas, bad organization, inability to integrate more abstract principles with concrete examples. At what point should you learn these things? I would say the earlier the better...

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-72515426163685272292011-10-23T06:59:00.000-07:002011-10-23T07:05:35.588-07:00

People, have a native speaker of English check over your prose. Even if you are a native speaker of English. For reasons I cannot disclose, I have had to read a lot of sentences recently about how "my project portrays the adumbrations of residences of ethical disport in the work of the the prize-winning author, XXX, who is a personal friend of mine." Maybe you are native speaker, but you

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-33456305971669543842011-10-19T12:06:00.000-07:002011-10-19T12:20:43.019-07:00

My article "Was Lorca a Poetic Thinker?" (published in Romance Quarterly, arrived in the mail today, so I guess that is technically the first one I've written that deliberately avoids over-deliberate signposting. It's nice that I have three articles (so far) appearing in 2011, so that my cv doesn't look pathetic for the calendar year. There should be a fourth one too in December. I'm happy to

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-38250230337150882472011-10-19T08:56:00.000-07:002011-10-19T09:09:04.026-07:00

I was a reading some proofs of an article yesterday, one that you will soon be reading too if you would like since it will on line. It was one of the first in which I deliberately suppressed obvious "signposting" while still signaling the direction of the argument clearly in a more implicit way. I was very pleased with the writing in this article: enough time had passed so that I had not

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-22034643196143185562011-10-09T08:34:00.001-07:002011-10-09T08:34:50.667-07:00

This is post #800. How am I doing?

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-49555830224641984662011-10-09T08:32:00.000-07:002011-10-09T08:33:21.816-07:00

Was Lorca a Poetic Thinker?

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-51546060686641687482011-10-09T08:00:00.001-07:002011-10-09T08:10:11.058-07:00

I feel vaguely uneasy or lightly cheated when I publish something for which I have never received any substantial feedback. What I write is good, I will cop to that, but not that good. It's nice that people are putting their confidence in me, and all, but even if my work were twice as good I would still benefit from suggestions of some kind. I guess this complaint will provoke envy rather than

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-86209171917061937492011-10-09T07:47:00.001-07:002011-10-09T07:49:31.694-07:00

I've been in several special issues of journals recently in which I have had access to my own article, electronically or through offprints, but not to the entire issue of which my article forms a part. In some cases, we don't have that particular journal in my library. I've already read my article, thank you very much, but I'd like to read those of the other collaborators.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-89067746574934641402011-10-06T06:30:00.000-07:002011-10-06T06:40:34.190-07:00

My colleague told me this the other day. My first response was "Well, then you chose the right profession." In other words, someone's who writes literary criticism, teaches others to write it, edits a journal of literary criticism, etc... My second reaction was something along the lines of "I, too, dislike it." (Marianne Moore). The obligation to got through novels and plays and what-not,

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-55947524902455496682011-10-03T15:12:00.000-07:002011-10-03T15:13:22.084-07:00

See an interesting LL post here.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-80339650503351799732011-10-03T13:54:00.001-07:002011-10-03T14:05:46.547-07:00

I tried out Pomodoro, a tomato-like application that is basically a timer for your computer desktop. It times work sessions in 25-minute increments (you can adjust to 30 or 35 too), then gives you a five-minute break. Today, in an 8-hour day on campus (8-4), I did 8 25-minute sessions and finished grading a set of compositions, finished reading a book ms. and writing a report on it, read over a

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-18382670540794121052011-10-03T08:27:00.001-07:002011-10-03T08:38:35.042-07:00

A prevalent attitude is that the quality of scholarship does not really matter. Just go through the motions, get your publications, be easy on the younger people, etc... Don't worry about how well it's written. "It's just a dissertation, not a book."The problem is that when I am the reader for work like that, I get seriously pissed off. Two world views collide.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-90904914691445368142011-10-02T07:12:00.000-07:002011-10-02T07:16:10.809-07:00

In case you missed all of Pullum's previous writing on the passive voice here is yet another piece.It is fine to use the passive voice. That being said, a book manuscript I am reviewing right now contains far too much passive voice. The dumb prejudice against the passive will persist because some bad writers love using the passive voice as much as they can.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-71543723882130225332011-09-29T10:02:00.000-07:002011-09-29T10:07:48.426-07:00

Lorca is mine. Please don't write anything about him that I could possibly disagree with, or that question's my ideal image of him. I sometimes feel like that, lacking any disance from my proprietary interest in the objects of my research. It's good to feel ownership in some sense, but not to feel one has a monopoly interest.

Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.com0