Sunday, July 08, 2007

Saigon. I'm Still In Saigon. Or, It Sucks To Work On My Book

I bet you all have been wondering: with all of the Radical's interests on display in the last month, is she really writing her book? What was all that fuss and bother about at the beginning of the summer? Has she just gone underground? Is there a book? Or is this "book" a blogosphere fiction?

Well the answer is, I am finishing my book. And it sucks. Utterly. It is like the last three weeks of pregnancy in August when, it has been my observation, it is relentlessly hot, peeing has become an hourly event, and my pregnant friends are weeping hysterically and saying, "Just cut it out, OK?" So in the interests of getting to work today (and not extending the childbirth metaphor), I would like to purge my mind of everything self-destructive, poisonous and distracting with the....(drum roll) "Four Reasons Why It Sucks To Work On My Book" post. I am giving you only the four top reasons (rather than the dozens that there really are) so that this does not take up the entire morning and so that you retain some respect for me.

Reason Number One:

It is July, and the summer is approximately half over. More than half over if you figure that on August 13 I am going to a lake in Minnesota for ten days, and when I get back, I will have to leap into school business immediately. Hence, there is enough time left to know that I can get most of the manuscript revised if I really apply myself in a reasonable way, and not enough time to actually know, for sure, that I will finish. Having done book-finishing once before, I know that I cannot package this up and send it away on Labor Day (ha -ha) without going through the kind of pain and anti-social isolation that a person of fifty simply can't muster the strength or will for anymore. Hence the agony may continue into September, when I had hoped to be book-free. I must come to terms with this possibility and keep writing at the same time, as if I were finishing. This sucks.

Reason Number Two:

This book is all about men in the nineteenth century, and my new project, where all my reading is focused, is about women -- feminists -- in the mid- to late twentieth century. This means that my secondary reading (focused on project 2) and my writing are fighting each other for supremacy in my brain. It's kind of like Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots, which is a violent game children of my generation played instead of Grand Theft Auto, and were equally vilified for by whatever parents caught us doing it. Here's an idea: what if I stopped writing my book and marketed a knock-off toy called "Rock 'em, Sock 'em Historians" and marketed it to graduate students at the AHA in January, with exchangeable bobble-heads of famous historians, past and present (which could be ordered - and paid for -- separately)? It's a concept, isn't it? And I bet I would make more money than I would make on this book. The amount of money I will make on the book will suck.



Reason Number 3:

It's getting hot, and that only aggravates my love-hate relationship to revising a manuscript that I would have been happy to publish two years ago to massively contradictory critical acclaim. But I have acquired too much creative and intellectual distance on it and its flaws have made themselves apparent in hideous and gruesome detail. So now I have to totally revise and restructure it so that I can at least have a chance of publishing something unique and different in the field that will cause people to talk about me in a wondrous way. So heat, or no heat, I am tromping through it line by hideous line, 'graph by hideous 'graph, and by the end of the day I am in an utterly foul mood and no fun to be around. And the ceiling fan is thumping overhead, causing me to imagine that I am Martin Sheen in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now: "This is the end/Beau-ti-ful Friend/This is the End...." The Horror. The Horror. Which is another way of saying: this sucks!



At least Martin Sheen eventually got to be President.

Reason Number 4:

If I abandon this book, I can never apply for a job or a fellowship again. If I finish this book now, I can apply for jobs, fellowships, a crown in heaven, a mortgage in another city, and a new passport for a trip to Paris next summer, for which we just purchased tickets with some of our three trillion airmiles. The balance of interests is clear: I must finish the book, whether I am having fun or not, whether it is summer or not, whether the war in Vietnam is a good idea or not. And I detest being in a position where anyone is telling me what to do, even if it is Fate telling me what to do. It totally sucks.

This should be a lesson to all of you: Never Get Out of the Boat.

27 comments:

GayProf said...

Oh, I am so with you right now.

Tenured Radical said...

Gayprof: What if the AHA trained us as the Special History Forces, and sent us on a long difficult journey to Atlanta to extract Eugene Genovese? Do you think that could be the movie we really want to be in? Is there $$ in it?

TR

Clio Bluestocking said...

Can I place an order for that "Rock 'em, Sock 'em Historians?"

Sisyphus said...

Ha!!!! You could extend the market for your Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Historians by making additional bobble heads of famous literary theorists --- Eng. and History are quite sizable disciplines and I'm sure you could live nicely off the proceeds.

Is it a) good to hear that everybody hates revising and editing or b) depressing that it never gets better magically? Eh, dunno.

Flavia said...

I love the Apocalypse Now analogue, and will try hard to keep myself from staring at my own ceiling fan when I ought to be writing. But I'm wondering: do you take time to surf, every now and again?

(And. . . I'm pretty sure it's Martin Sheen. This Balsalm dude I don't know.)

Margaret said...

Oh, I hear you. Yes I do. And I love the Rock Em Sock Em bit. I am working on 3 different projects right now, and my head is about to explode.

Tenured Radical said...

Clio and sisyphus: This idea has legs, I'm sure of it. If we combined the AHA with the MLA, then add every graduate student in the United States there is an unbelievable market. Then add retirement parties, tenure parties, book parties -- all of which require presents and favors of various kinds -- egads!

Flavia, Egads woman. How could I have missed it? Martin Balsam was in a number of cop shows, but he definitely was not in the Estevez family, and not in this movie. I have edited -- would you be my back-up brain?

Maggie: Hang on, lassie. And drink a lot of red wine. It calms things down at the end of the day. Buy a case. If you don't finish a book, you can at least finish the wine.

dhawhee said...

omg, this post elicited massive overidentification for me, esp. with the dueling of the shiny new book project, off in the distance, glimmering with potential brilliance or at least unsullied and interesting. And the one I need to just finish already. And only yesterday did I finally utter the words "this won't be done in August."

sigh.

Margaret said...

Oh, btw, I don't know if you've posted on this before, but I am curious: What kind of job would you be looking for? I.e., what are you looking for that you're not already getting at Zenith?

Lesboprof said...

I have another project that I am simply avoiding. I resent having to do it and it is so close to done. I had to promise the gf it will get done so I can stop talking about it as I avoided it.

Perhaps I can just repeat to myself, "Hey, it isn't a book."
;-) I love the historians in my life, but there are times I just embrace the article-love of my field. This would be one of them.

Hang in there, TR. You are an inspiration!

The Combat Philosopher said...

Well, at least you are in Northern climes. It cannot really be that hot. You should try the swamps! We have the heat, plus the humidity. However, perhaps this is the excuse that my co-workers will now use for not writing anything.

That being said, I admire your 'nose to the grind wheel' attitude. I try and keep to this too. However, I wonder if you could get a franchise for Rock 'em sock 'em philosophers too? I'd love to see Locke verse Berkeley!

So, I hope that you get the crown in heaven. As for me, I outta here for a while, to climatically more bizarre places. I'll be back at months end -- just in time for the Hurricanes!

The Combat Philosopher

AcadeMama said...

For those of us who'd like to remain all enamored and idealistic about the road that lies ahead..you know, after the Job Market section of Purgatory,...do you think you could post 4 Reasons It's Great to Be Writing/Finishing a Book? Just dangle a little bit of carrot? Please?

moria said...

I clearly have not even the bittiest inkling of a notion of what this process is like, but I can say with some confidence that the book itself - as opposed to the process of birthing it - not only does not suck, but completely rocks. In fact, I'm dead certain of this. And I don't even know what it's about! So that's something.

Also, once your little business is off the ground, I'd be delighted to help with the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Theorists spinoff, as well as perhaps Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Feminists (I'll place an advance order now for the Starhawk vs. Donna Haraway edition, please).

Tim Lacy said...

I don't know if I need a Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Historians game, but I'm intrigued by notion of Famous Historians as Bobbleheads. I want to see Arthur Lovejoy's bobblehead shaking at me as I'm comparing Mortimer Adler to him in my diss. rewrite. - TL

Anonymous said...

The reward (other than the trip to Paris) is the book, which will be really cool.

The famous historians bobbleheads would be a great thing. They could be sold at the AHA, OAH, and a special feminist historian version for the Berks!

Anonymous said...

Oh. My. God. Apocalypse Now references! I thought I was the only one who regarded Apocalypse Now as the cinematic reflection of my academic struggles.

God, I so regret getting out of the boat but the boat is gone. It chugged away a long, long time ago and I'm just here waiting for the fire to rain down.

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