Well, today I actually completed the editing on two articles of mine for publication – in addition to handling a number of e-mail requests with dispatch, and making a healthy breakfast (oatmeal with chopped apple and dried cranberries). And all without wearing myself out or staying up until four a.m.
Doesn't sound like much, does it? But the editing, although I resisted it strenuously (as usual) for several hours, wasn't that difficult; and the resultant papers are, I think, far better for the extra work – and, in fact, they're now quite good. That makes me more pleased with them than I am with my two most recent publications, both of which were interesting but not very carefully finished, nor were their arguments worked out as far as they should have been.
All of which makes me feel as though: aha, I can actually do this – I'm not an academic fake: all I need to do is keep it up. If only!...
I always think in this context of Saki's story The Oversight, where Lady Prowche is desperately trying to match her guest list for a large house party so that there can be no major arguments (over suffrage, politics, Greeks and Bulgars, etc.). She doesn't succeed, of course, which is where the comedy lies. But lurking as it were behind the story is Sir Richard, who "has his literary work to think of; you can't expect a man to concentrate on the tribal disputes of Central Asian clansman when he's got social feuds blazing under his own roof." She tells her friend about another year when the guest list went wrong and there was a huge argument, and says, "That was the year that Sir Richard was writing his volume on Domestic Life in Tartary. The critics all blamed it for a lack of concentration."
I'd love to think of my own work this way: if only one could have a tasteful Edwardian house, with someone anxiously trying to keep things calm and pleasant; and, much more importantly, if only I were the kind of person who – if things were quiet – would always concentrate, be disciplined, work hard, and produce good work....
Well, I can dream. As long as I don't have to write about domestic life in Tartary.
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