“Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.” -Liz Smith
It’s been a little hard to focus lately. As a general rule I usually drift back and forth between two and three books at any given time (not counting any magazines, blogs, etc. I read – when Mental Floss shows up in my mailbox it’s a given that all other reading projects stop for an evening. Unless, of course, Scott steals it first). Keeping that baseline in mind, I’ve been juggling 6 over the past week: Nazis and the Occult by Paul Roland, Violin for Dummies by Katharine Rappaport, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency by the Bathroom Readers’ Hysterical Society, Dead Funny by Rudolph Herzog, Hollywood Haunts by Tom Ogden, and most recently Beautiful, a biography of Hedy Lamarr by Stephen Michael Shearer. These don’t count the project books I’m working on (more on that later, though to be fair I’ve put those on hiatus until I get through some of the others) or the copy of The Corpse in the Cellar by John Stark Bellamy that I got halfway through before it was stolen by the kittens (and just this morning rediscovered behind my writing table).
A few months ago, just before opening my WordPress account, I sat down and brainstormed a whole list of things that interest me that I wouldn’t mind writing articles about. Some were general topics (“ghosthunting,” “turtles,” “math in history,”), while others had more structured ideas (under “LEGO,” for example, I’d listed “story of founders,” “becoming a Master Builder,” and “how LEGO used in engineering, architecture, etc.”). Some were very specific questions, like “Why does vinegar help alleviate headaches?” and “Did Hitler really believe in the occult?” (hence the first book listed above – I’m halfway through both Roland’s book as well as the English translation of Mein Kampf, and from everything I’ve read so far the short answer appears to be no. The long answer, to me anyway, is a lot more interesting). I keep adding to this list, both on the original sheet tacked above my desk and in the notebook I carry around. And because I am simultaneously inquisitive and impatient, I am bogging myself down with a lot of (admittedly interesting) reading, but not following through on the original purpose of writing about them.
Two things happened yesterday. The first was a conversation I had with one of my students regarding some issues she was having in her writing class. The instructor is having them practice writing outlines to plan out writing assignments, which is something my student was struggling with and (as she put it) didn’t see the point of. As we talked through how she plans her assignments, I pointed out how really she’s doing outlines already, she just hadn’t been writing them out. Building on that, I explained how while with smaller projects this would usually suffice if she had a clear idea of what she wanted to talk about, as she got into bigger assignments a written outline could help her organize and break down her larger task into smaller ones. That way, she doesn’t forget anything she wants to discuss and at the same time doesn’t get overwhelmed with the larger project.
Like me with my idea board.
The second thing happened later that day as I worked on sketching out this week’s campus newsletter, and came across the quote at the top of this post.
The universe is not very subtle sometimes.
thefourthcastle.com 