Despite being scheduled 2nd shift during a packet week, I successfully completed and sent my 33 page first draft of the ECE last Friday. And while the pressure's not completely off, I feel markedly relieved to be at least done with the drafting stage. For me, drafting is the pits. In a way, critical papers are kind of easier than creative pieces because you have to structure them very thoroughly, and such structuring leads pretty much in one direction: supporting your thesis and proving it. The lack of the creative spark in such composition, makes critical sentence slugging kind of boring after a few pages. While thinking up the things to say, and researching is very exciting, laying it all down is pretty boring.
But at least until I hear back from Louise, I'm taking a break on the ECE and working on some new creative material and getting back to reading non-research books. I'm currently about halfway through Barthelme's Forty Stories, some of which I really like, and other bits that are just a bit too quirky to really capture me. I'm also reading Rachel Harper's book out loud 1 chapter per day to Sue. It's a great book, and I'm really glad that it was picked for this fall's book in common for fiction. Our nightly poem is coming from the Poetry section of McSweeney's Quarterly vol 23--they do this big poetry chain thing where 10 poets pick 10 poems. Since I haven't read much poetry, I'm hoping all the exposure will turn me on to some more people. So far, it's been kind of lukewarm; Dave's book was much better in every way. I'm also looking forward to reading Lincoln's Melancholy, the new issue of Fence, Opium4, Democracy (Joan Didion), and Demonology (Rick Moody). If I get through that, I'll be about half way through the list of books that I considered for this semester.
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