Progress Report

So it's been about a week since I started working on the proposal for my translation.  As per Prof. Boice's advice, I have been working in brief, regular sessions of forty-five minutes at a time, cumulatively no more than three or four hours a day.  I spent the first several days reading over the only other major study of the text that has been written in English (the other is in Italian; I haven't tackled that one yet) and taking notes about what I might want to say.  I started "writing" yesterday; rather, putting my notes into outline form.  By the end of the second day (i.e. today), I had a draft of some 2000 words, in part still notes, but at times already shaping itself into something approximating prose.  I can't quite say how long it will take to turn the outline into text, but curiously, I am not worried about it.  The ideas are there; I am making good progress taking notes from the scholarly literature and working them into my argument; and I can already see where I want to take what I want to say, at least in sketch.  Even more curiously, it has been astonishingly painless, nothing like--and I do mean nothing like--writing anything more formal than a blog post since, well, ever. 

To put it mildly, I'm gobsmacked.   

You mean writing doesn't have to be like getting your teeth pulled, every word ripped from the depths of your very being? 
 
Even counting carbs pales in comparison.

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