20150603.0828

A year ago, I offered a report of what I had been doing, commenting on having had something of a head cold, among others. This morning, I felt my nose begin to run again, and I noted that Ms. 8 is having a bit of trouble in that line. I have to wonder if I am getting sick again--but if I am, it is at least at the end of the working week, so that if I can but make it through the day and back again to Sherwood Cottage, I will be able to take some time to rest and perhaps to recover. Even so, I rather hope that I am not about to be ill; it is never a good experience, and there is still much that I need to do.

I intend to have a relatively easy afternoon, Ms. 8 permitting. I completed a freelance order yesterday, going through a document someone else had written and making corrections and adjustments to it. Once that was done, I picked up the book I need to do the next order on my docket. If circumstances permit, I will read it today and begin the write-up this evening. I expect to be pad for 5,500 words, and I expect to end up writing a few hundred more than that (in part because formatting cues and headings show up as words to be counted, which generally annoys). If things go as I would like them to go, I will be able to complete the job tomorrow, making it three on the week that I will have submitted. The money that comes in as a result will be decidedly welcome.

Other work still awaits me. There is a post to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog that I have in draft, and I probably ought to get it completed. (I probably ought to get other contributors, too, so if you or someone you know has ideas about how the medieval gets portrayed in the post-medieval, let me see them. I cannot do the job alone.) Too, I really need to put together an abstract for the International Congress on Medieval Studies; I have not had so many ideas in that line as I should like, but I need to get at least one of them out and on "paper" so that I can justify attending the conference (aside from the service line or lines I am likely to get, since I will offer to preside over a session and may get asked to cover another, depending on what abstract I write and whether or not it gets accepted). And I have the book chapter that needs writing, as well; although it will not pay so well as my freelance writing, it will still serve to highlight my status in the academic world, and it may help me land a job. I am certainly talking about it in my job letters--and I need to send another one of those out today...