Fencing Bear at Prayer

Well, that didn't take long.  Here I have been biding my time, looking forward to the day when I could start blogging again, planning all sorts of re-entry posts about who I am now, how I have changed over the course of the year, what it feels like to have almost a complete draft of my book done, and BANG!  Here I am writing about being attacked by the devil again .  How apropos. It happened to Sister Mary of Ágreda , and she is a much, much more gifted writer than I will ever be.  (Mainly because she understood the true nature of her gifts--they came from God, as she well knew; I still have the presumption to imagine that what I write somehow depends on me.)  As she tells it in the introduction to the second part of her masterpiece, The Mystical City of God (Mystica Ciudad de Dios, first published in 1670 ) : 1.  When I was ready to present before the throne of God the insignificant results of my labors in writing the first part of the most holy lif...

I'm still here, just lying low for the moment.  Work on the book is proceeding apace , but I am finding it harder and harder to write about anything else.  This is a good thing, I think.  As the Preacher says, "for everything there is a season,"* and this is the season for me to finish the draft of my book.  I don't want to say much more just now, lest I scare away the Muse.  Let's just say it's going well...better than I ever dreamed possible.** *Ecclesiastes 3:1.  **Meanwhile, the Dragon Baby is snoring, probably dreaming about that squirrel she caught yesterday.*** ***Yes, that makes twice she has counted coup on the rodentia of the trees.  We're both having quite a year!

Everything hurts.  My back hurts, particularly a point over my right shoulder blade.  My hands hurt, particularly my right hand if I try to clench it.  My feet hurt, particularly the top of my left foot, where the tendons are.  All of my joints are stiff, particularly my right wrist and ankle.  All this after getting a massage on Tuesday and spending the week doing something other than sitting on my couch with my laptop on my lap, writing. Talk about Sitzfleisch .  I looked it up on Wiktionary : "The ability to endure or carry on with an activity," from the German for "the ability to sit still."  I have another definition: "The way your body feels after you have been sitting still for five months working on your book manuscript." It creeps up on you.  Back in the winter, when it was so cold that it took a full five minutes to get the layers on before taking the dog out for her midday romp, I just thought I felt stiff because I had so many cl...

I'm sorry, this is so great, I just have to share it with you.  In the comments for my last post , PapaFreeak has just paid me an enormous compliment.  He reads my blog, get this, even though, he says, "I find about 75% of what you post to be odious."  ODIOUS!!!!  Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard?!  But wait, there's more: "This [he explains] is why I return: I don't understand why someone with your advantages--intelligence, health, a supportive family, good income from meaningful work in a prestigious job--is so astoundingly petty, envious, and self-pitying.  I think you fascinate me because you provide access to a mentality that is genuinely foreign to me."  Gosh, what can I say?  A FAN!!!!  This is what Elizabeth Gilbert must feel like all the time ! But PapaFreeak only finds "about 75%" of what I post to be "odious".  Which makes me wonder: what 25% could he possibly like? Could it be that, having the "...

It's been a rough week out there.  The Boston Marathon bombing, the Senate defeat of the President's gun-control bill (okay, it wasn't technically his, but he reacted as if it were), the fertilizer plant explosion in West, TX (a town I didn't even know existed until it showed up in my mother's church's Facebook feed), the on-going trial of Kermit Gosnell for mass-murdering babies--all the subject of lots of commentary from the folks in the media (except, interestingly, the last ).  I'm in the media (sort of).  Shouldn't I have something to say? Well, maybe, but on what basis?  After all, like most of us, the only thing I know about any of these things is what I read in the papers (actually, online, mainly still at NRO , 'cause, you know, there are only so many hours in the day and I am supposed to be working on a book on medieval prayer), so what could I actually add to the conversation except more rampant speculation based on my own personal convi...

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting very much lately.  This is a good thing, really, although the Super Woman in me would say I've just been lazy.  I haven't, not really.  I've just been concentrating on other things.  Notice that I didn't say , "I've just been busy."  That's not it at all.  I'm not busy , I'm focused.  More focused than maybe I have been in my entire life.  So focused, in fact, that I have a hard time taking a break from the schedule that I have given myself, not because I am working "all the time," but precisely because I am not. Oh, but there are temptations.  "Are you coming to the tournament on Sunday?" one friend asks.  "Please join us to celebrate the retirement of our colleagues," invites another.  "So-and-so is coming in from out of town and would very much like to meet you," yet another entices.  "It's only an afternoon," yet another pleads.  B...

It's possible that I may be trying to do too much. I finished the draft of chapter 3 a little under two weeks ago, a week or two before (back in January) I had thought I would, after which I launched myself into reading Richard of St. Laurent's 840-page (ed. A. Borgnet, 1898) tome on the praises of the Virgin Mary .  In Latin. I've read long books in Latin before, but never, I have to confess, one quite this long.  The Latin is fairly easy, but even so, by the end of my Brief, Regular Sessions for the day, my head is quite figuratively spinning.  And I mean that literally.  Sort of.* But I want to finish reading the book as soon as I can so that I can get back to writing again.  Before it gets too late.  Before I run out of time and my leave comes to an end.  (Still six months away, but the pages are flying off the calendar....) I would read faster if I could.  Thanks to all the work I've done the past two years on my translation, mirab...

If a beautiful woman walks into a room, she has a reasonable expectation that a majority of the men who are there will find her attractive and want to talk with her.  Some of them may even be attracted enough to ask her out on a date or, instantly smitten by her beauty, beg her to marry them (or whatever).  Her life (as portrayed in the movies, at least) is one long series of people wanting her attention.  She is always surrounded by admirers and lovers, and she simply expects people to smile at her because they always do. Women like me have a rather different experience in life.  Sometimes, unexpectedly, men randomly smile at us in that way, but for the most part, we are simply ignored unless we are the only one in the room.  Then we might get someone coming up to us and wanting to talk, but rarely is anyone smitten simply by being in our presence.  We learn other ways of holding their attention, but we are always on guard against expecting a favorable ...

My Latin, apparently, sucks.*  I used "the" too much rather than "a."  I can't tell the difference between the future and the subjunctive (even though, in form, they are exactly the same).  But even worse, I failed John .  And the Virgin.  They are, I am told, " too narrow " to appeal to a wider audience.  Even among medievalists. I think I need to cry now. *That is, my ability to translate incredibly technical and abstruse thirteenth-century school Latin sucks.  Like translating Ulysses .  You know.

Cue montage...plus another year (or three*) of brief, regular sessions .  No need to be hasty, right ? *It's the footnotes and other support materials that are going to be the real beast, once the "writing" is done.

7:15am  Wake up. 7:20am  Take Dragon Baby out. 7:25am  Make tea. 7:30am  Kiss husband and son before they run out the door. 7:35am  Drink tea and read NRO . 8:00-8:20am  Meditate. 8:20am  Do arm weights. 8:25am  Take shower (optional). 8:35am (or thereabouts)  Make breakfast, read a little light conservative punditry. 9:00am Make coffee, light incense, get books out. 9:05-9:50am  Brief, regular session no. 1. 10:15am (or thereabouts)  Get second cup of coffee. 10:20-11:05am  Brief, regular session no. 2. 11:30am-12:30pm  Take Dragon Baby to the park. 12:45pm  Eat snack, make tea. 1:00-1:45pm  Brief, regular session no. 3. 2:00pm  Make tea. 2:15-3:00pm  Brief, regular session no. 4. 3:30pm  Stop.  Really.  NOW.  Put books away. 3:35pm  Take Dragon Baby out. 3:45-4:15pm  Eat lunch, watch Hulu. 4:30-4:55pm  Practice fiddle. 5:00-6:00pm  Read som...

"All those I think who have lived as literary men--working daily as literary labourers,--will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.  But then he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours,--so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas.  It had at this time become my custom,--and it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient to myself,--to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour.  I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went.  But my three hours were not devoted entirely to writing.  I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour, and whic...

"What do I do with myself from day to day?  I write when I can and I don't write when I can't; always in the morning or the early part of the day.  You get very gaudy ideas at night but they don't stand up.  I found this out long ago...  I'm always seeing little pieces by writers about how they don't ever wait for inspiration; they just sit down at their little desks every morning at eight, rain or shine, hangover and broken arm and all, and bang out their little stint.  However blank their minds or dim their wits, no nonsense about inspiration from them.  I offer them my admiration and take care to avoid their books.  Me, I wait for inspiration, though I don't necessarily call it by that name.  I believe that all writing that has any life in it is done with the solar plexus.  It is hard work in the sense that it may leave you tired, even exhausted.  In the sense of conscious effort it is not work at all.  The important thing is tha...

I did a little bit of work on my book this past Monday, the first substantive effort I have put into it since hitting the wall back in 2009 ...and promptly came down with the stomach flu.  I blame the Enemy.  He attacked Mary of Agreda, too, just when she was trying to get started on the second volume of her work on the Virgin Mary.  As she recorded her experience: "In addition to all the contradictions and temptations already mentioned, and many others not possible to describe, the demon sought to deprive me of my health, causing many aches, indispositions and disorders of the whole body.  He harassed me with insurmountable sadness and conflicting thoughts; he seemed to confuse my understanding, hinder correct thinking, weaken my will power, and sift me body and soul."* I might find this more comforting, I suppose, if I hadn't had to spend the past several days wary of eating for fear I would throw my guts up.   *Mary of Agreda, The City of God: The Incar...

It will be a week tomorrow morning since I started working on the annotations and corrections to my sample translation for the proposal that I am submitting.  Thus far, I have done five days' worth of brief, regular sessions on the sample, at least two and no more than four forty-five minute sessions per day.  I wish that I felt like I was making better progress. Which is itself my greatest problem: product orientation, as Prof. Boice would say.  I am too focused on "getting it done," and not enough on doing the work.  But I need to get it done (NB the "need") because I "need" to be working on my book.  But why?  I have been working on my translation for a good year and a half.  I have put hours and hours and hours of work into it, all in brief, regular sessions.  It is a major accomplishment already to have done so much, particularly given that I did the first draft of the transcription and translation over twenty years ago .  I know this ...

I had a bit of a glitch in my BDS* towards the end of last week when my new laptop came in and it took the College IT guys a good two days to get all of my old data and settings transferred.**  But I got back to my practice on Monday and have been making good progress this week on the cover letter for my proposal .  Excellent progress, in fact.  I have a good 2000 words on top of the 3000 or so words of notes that I took last week .  In real terms, I am romping along.  So why am I still feeling like I am not getting anything done? Patience, patience, I know.  But it's hard.  Why?  After all, I'm writing.  A good 500 or so words a day, which in academic prose is pretty amazing.  It's as much as I was ever able to write on my old schedule of "working" from 9am to 5 or 6pm every day (if I was in fact working that whole time, which I now very much doubt).  But now I finish around early to mid-afternoon (depending on how long of a br...

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...

"Hypomania provides an ideal ground for testing prevention and moderation.  But hypomania has garnered only a small, scattered literature related to writing.  Where we had hoped to find treatments, we uncovered little more than explanations.  Even these, however, prove fascinating. "The bulk of writing in this area comes from romantics who see the mania of manic-depressive illness as the fount of creative genius.  Somehow, these accounts proclaim, the most original artists and writers are visited by sporadic states of creative madness, almost as if by Muses.  Well-publicized fund raisers are held with the naive goal of honoring manic-depressives, much as though preserving an endangered species; well-known inquiries into mania repeat the misinformed worry that its cure might drain our society of creativity.  What the romantics miss seeing, though, is the real horror of mania as a chaotic, delusional, terrifying condition.  Truly manic states do not pe...

"Time management, done well, means allotting no more than the necessary time to any one task per day (even reading this book) and then, while still energetic, stopping and moving on to other important activities including rest.  In the case of writing, limiting ourselves to brief, daily sessions of, say, no more than thirty or sixty minutes (or to three or four hours maximum for professional writers) means that writing cannot interfere with more important responsibilities such as social life and exercising.... "1.  Timely stopping keeps us from staying with a project too long, until it takes on fatigue and the excesses of hypomania including rushed and nonreflective thinking. "2.  Timely stopping permits us to move on to other planned tasks and, so, reduces feelings of busyness and overscheduling. "3.  Stopping on schedule, compared to persisting in binges, produces far more quality and quantity of writing in the long run. "4.  The habit of timely stop...

"Learning to stop is an ultimate exercise in patience; the urge to continue includes a big component of impatience about not being finished, about not being productive enough, about never again finding such an ideal time for writing.  Stopping is also an exercise in building confidence and trust; without establishing enough self-esteem to stop midstream we deprive ourselves of chances to find confidence and control.  And, finally, learning to stop is a fundamental exercise in time management.  The most difficult but fundamental lesson about time use is learning that important tasks (especially those we tend to delay) can be carried out most efficiently in brief, regular periods." --Robert Boice, How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), p. 33.