1. What are you working on?
Long answer: article edits, syllabi, comprehensive exam prep, a memoir, a novel, some journal articles
Long answer: article edits, syllabi, comprehensive exam prep, a memoir, a novel, some journal articles
This week: comps prep essays, notes, and reading
2. How does your work differ from others’ work in the same genre?
I guess it depends which genre you're talking about. Academic writing is an interesting one, because I straddled the gap between college and my MA at NYU obsessed with theory and its jargon. I think I thought that I could only be a successful academic writer if I wrote like that, and I also thought that I needed to pretend I understood it. In my Ph.D years, where I am now, my writing is much clearer, I think, and I'm less attached to slippery, polysyllabic words. Ultimately, I guess, I'm much more interested in how to make my writing elegant and clear than how to make it sound fancy.
Where memoir is concerned, I'm working on a grief memoir about my mom. What I don't want it to be is just that - I want to include as much or more of her happy, healthy, amazing life as I do of her illness, her death, and my experience soldiering forward without her.
Where memoir is concerned, I'm working on a grief memoir about my mom. What I don't want it to be is just that - I want to include as much or more of her happy, healthy, amazing life as I do of her illness, her death, and my experience soldiering forward without her.
3. Why do you write what you do?
Most boringly, I write because it's expected of me, but I wouldn't have chosen a career path so centered on it (academia) if I didn't love it. It frustrates me routinely, but then, so does love.
More profoundly, I write to honor my mother, who died unfairly, painfully, and too soon, and who gave me a voice and a desire to use it. She was one of the most poetic and clear writers I have had the pleasure to read. (Her personality was like that, too.)
I write because I feel most like myself when writing is part of my day.
I write because I can't stop - I have written on the walls of my bathroom and I write when I run (I pause and I take notes on my phone).
More profoundly, I write to honor my mother, who died unfairly, painfully, and too soon, and who gave me a voice and a desire to use it. She was one of the most poetic and clear writers I have had the pleasure to read. (Her personality was like that, too.)
I write because I feel most like myself when writing is part of my day.
I write because I can't stop - I have written on the walls of my bathroom and I write when I run (I pause and I take notes on my phone).
4. How does your writing process work?
I could write a dissertation about that. I try to write at least 750 words a day, my favorite motivating tool for which is 750words.com. (It's free! It's fabulous! You should use it.) I don't always get that many down, but I like having a no-frills platform that I can access on any browser. I write on my iPad a lot, since I'm often in transit between home and campus and/or yoga studio or what have you.
Lately I have been rediscovering my own handwriting. I carry a small notebook now to jot in, rather than my usual habit of using the app on my phone. (I do both, actually.) It's very nice, and I'm rediscovering the ways in which my thinking is facilitated differently by different technologies. DragonDictation fits into this nicely (also free! You should also try!).
I could write a dissertation about that. I try to write at least 750 words a day, my favorite motivating tool for which is 750words.com. (It's free! It's fabulous! You should use it.) I don't always get that many down, but I like having a no-frills platform that I can access on any browser. I write on my iPad a lot, since I'm often in transit between home and campus and/or yoga studio or what have you.
Lately I have been rediscovering my own handwriting. I carry a small notebook now to jot in, rather than my usual habit of using the app on my phone. (I do both, actually.) It's very nice, and I'm rediscovering the ways in which my thinking is facilitated differently by different technologies. DragonDictation fits into this nicely (also free! You should also try!).
My dear friend Valerie Wetlaufer, an amazing poet, did this awesome process tour as well: check her out!
