On Over-(and Under)Thinking

It's been a while, as the faux-metal emo among us might have it. The semester usually gets away from me, and this one in particular ended pretty powerfully and busily. But I'm still here, and I'm still writing. My summer projects are all dissertation-oriented - I'm not there yet, but I'm trying to think of the next phase as an integral part of it (which, in fact, it is, whether I think of it that way or not). I'll plan to write more focused and specific posts about that work over here, and save this space for less professional musings (for the four of you who read this primarily, I suspect, as people who love me).

I did want to get some thoughts down here on overthinking, though, since I'm good at it and I've been doing a fair bit of it as I embark on this next project. Some of my research interests as a comp-rhet person center on process, so my overthinking sometimes can morph into the framework for actual projects. I love to talk to my colleagues and my students, for example, about their processes as they write. Lately, the idea of what my Process Will Be on this Next Important Project has made it hard to get much Actual Writing done. Guilt comes along with that, and also Intransigence.

But I've made it through to the other side (where actual reading and writing live), and that in itself makes me think: we, as thinkers and doers and teachers, need breaks. But we also have a lot of thinking and doing and teaching that happen when we aren't looking. Every time I talk to a mentor or a friend or a loved one about my work, I'm adding to the thinking I'm doing. It's like a low-level buzz - never really off, for good or ill. It's underthinking: happening all the time, feeding into the actual work that happens. It's part of the reason I do what I do.

Happy summer to all!

The Art of Fast Reading

I'm a fast reader. I've been one since I was a kid, and I swept the MS Readathon on an annual basis, toting home armloads of stuffed animals and trophies. (I'm glad to see it's still in existence - support it if you can.) The prizes felt pretty important them, but a quarter century or so later, I'm struck by the qualitative experience of reading (and writing) quickly.

There's certainly a balance to be struck - I notice that if I read too quickly, I skip words and sometimes meaning, and if I read too slowly, I get bogged down in unnecessary details. For me, reading quickly helps me navigate this disjunct, and it also assures that I'll find the curiosity and joy necessary to get through the hundreds of pages of reading required on a weekly basis in my PhD classes. 

Writing quickly isn't quite as slippery for me. I've been experimenting lately wi writing as fact as possible to see what comes out. My brain is usually a few steps ahead of my fingers, so that method works well for me. In a way, it does what Sondra Perl's groundbreaking notion of felt sense does when used in a writing classroom: it pushes away any overanalyses or fears or second guesses that can tend to hamper the writing process, and it allows me to explore my thinking more creatively than if my fingers are still. (There's an argument to be made here, too, for talking out loud, either as a writer at home or as a student in class.)

I'm exploring the power of speed and will keep it up in the coming weeks. After that, maybe I'll take another look at writing and reading slowly. I guess my stuffed animal days are over either way.