Writing Update

I took the afternoon off (as all of the football nonsense in my neighborhood was making it difficult to concentrate anyway) and went to see Cloud Atlas--what a wonderful movie!  Yay for intelligent film-making!

I spent the rest of the evening revising my conference paper in a leisurely fashion.  I started off with 12 pages, and have now got about 9-2/3, which is a good length, I think.  I've sent it off to my writing group buddy, who's offered to read through it for me.  The hard part for me in this paper was (1) trying to say something I haven't really said before, and (2) saying it in the limited space of a conference paper.  It took a lot of organization work--what happens if I put these ideas together like this?  Or maybe this has more in common with this other thing?  I think I finally found an organization that makes sense now, and makes sense in less than ten pages.

I am having so much trouble reading.  It's as though my brain decided that once exams were over, it's not reading anything more challenging than rock star memoir. (I will say that John Taylor's memoir is not disappointing--so good!)  I really would like to regain some reading concentration, though, as I really do need to get through some reading in order to write my prospectus the way I think I should write it.  I read through a friend's prospectus this week--which was fantastic--and I feel like I've got a better idea of what it should look like now.  But I know what I need to read, and what I need to figure out, and my brain is being less than cooperative.

I will say that this 14-day writing challenge website has continued to be helpful.  I'm having to admit that dedicated, concentrated writing time during the day really does get me to accomplish in much less time what it would take me much longer at the end of the day, when I'm used to writing. I sometimes don't realize that I'm actually tired at the end of the day.  Maybe I should try dedicated reading time, too.  Urgh, do I have to admit that the books are right, that scheduling writing and reading time actually works for me?