20131008.0746

I have been at work on this blog since 4 May 2010.  Much of the three years and nearly a half more have seen me less than diligent in updating this space, although since May of this year, I have been better about hammering out a short essay or a poem or, if nothing else, a series of loosely related observations, if not daily, at least working toward it.  The practice, the habituation of writing, is doing me some good; I think my writing is getting better, and the thinking that ought to underlie writing is, I think, likewise improving.  Since my profession of professing requires that I do a lot of thinking (or it ought to), improvements to my ability to think are desirable.

It need not be the case that I work mostly in essays.  I could offer snippets of verse for each of my entries; the generative process for my poetry is much the same as that for more sober prose (not that I write when I am drunk), and I could string words together in lines instead of in sentences.  Or I could post fiction--probably flash fiction or something like it, given the medium; it would be a different challenge, but I do not think a greater one, to invent and tell stories instead of offering analysis or argument.  (I was about to write "insight," but I am not certain I am comfortable with that level of hubris.)

There are snippets of verse in this blog space (as well as discussions of them), although I have yet to post fiction (as far as I recall--but I am human, and my memory is not always what it ought to be or used to be).  But I still write more essays than anything else.  That I do likely owes to my training as an academic; most of the classes in my undergraduate major and in my graduate coursework required papers of me, essays of varying length, and in the admittedly abortive efforts I make to contribute to scholarship, I hammer out more essays.  I am habituated to the task, therefore--and there is nothing wrong with that (although it may be the case that I ought to get away from work when I am not at work).

I am forced to wonder about a few things, though.  Are my assertions above correct?  Accustomed as I am to putting things into essay form, with occasional insertions of verse that have not attracted much attention, would I be able to cast things into verse over more extended periods?  Would I be able to craft a fictional narrative (and I have been tempted to try out NaNoWriMo)?  Do I actually have enough to say, or enough of a story to tell, to be able to carry out such projects, particularly with the ease I imply above?

Whether I do or not, do I do well at crafting essays?  I tend to think so, partly from arrogance, partly from some outside validation (my conference papers--essays--have generally been well received, and I do have a few things in print).  But, following Lopate, I have some doubt; I have not always been able to present my work, either in print or in speech.  And now, as I write over thirty minutes in the middle of the morning what I ought to have done in fifteen to twenty several hours ago, I have to question myself a bit.  Since I am to go to work to advise others about how to do their own writing, that sense of uncertainty may not be to my benefit...