Sunday 16 October 2011

Thinking-soup

Don't get me wrong. I am enjoying working with two huge projects (beginning the MA and getting the book-show on the road) at the same time. It's just that sometimes I feel a bit disintegrative.

The MA head needs to read, reflect, re-read, make a note or two and carry on reading. It is a quiet, creative process and takes time. And I love it - though it isn't always easy. My mind seems to find new ideas in quiet spaces; I notice things between the lines in a way I don't when I'm simply reading for fun.

Meanwhile, the book is at the typeset stage. It needs reading for mistakes. My head is looking, not for ideas (please not ideas - this book is, basically, finished!), but for sentences that don't scan. Or the confused 'thats' and 'thans' and 'ifs' and 'its' and 'it's'. The lonely lines at the top and bottom of pages. It needs a logical, more detached, clinical approach. I cannot let it get under my skin - not now. This is a mechanical process and I am trying to approach it as such.

Which means I am asking my head to switch from clinical to reflective mode, like brain-skipping. And, though it's rare that I move directly from one task to another, they may be separated in time by nothing more divisive than a cup of coffee. I am aware that my thinking is beginning to feel like a sort of cognitive soup - a soup with bits in coalesce in an almost unidentifiable way. (Surely we've all tasted soups like that - they might have begun life as vegetables, but who knows what they are now?) When I wake in the morning one or other book is at the top of my thinking agenda, but in a floaty way. It will neither make itself knows as an identifiable problem, nor sink to the bottom so something recognisable can appear.

I will, I tell myself, get used to this. And my book will, before long, be on its way, with a real cover and read pages and (gulp) real readers? Which will clear the decks a little.

But in the meanwhile, I'm drowning in thinking-soup. Anyone have any ideas how to start swimming?

8 comments:

  1. Disintegrative! I love that word and all of my soups have a taste that is unidentifiable! But seriously, studying for a Masters is not easy. I know. I tried doing it while I was teaching full-time. I ended up on the sick but that's another story. My advice to you is to be proud that you're studying for an MA AND preparing a book for publication. There aren't many of us here who have such a work load and don't panic if you feel soup-brained. Who wouldn't with such a lot going on. It's only your body telling you to stop what you're doing and take a break.

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  2. Ros - you are kind. Maybe I should play with my grandchildren for a day or two - that often realigns the priorities.

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  3. I think Rosalind's idea to take a break is an excellent one. I really do admire what you're doing. I'm afraid I don't have any good advice, but I can at least be a cheerleader :-)

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  4. Sarah - together, you and Rosalind are so consistently supportive. I can begin to tell you how much I appreciate that.

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  5. Have just read this post while eating soup... savouring the excellent metaphor (and the real thing!). I entirely sympathise, and while I'm not trying to cope with an MA, I do feel I can empathise with the brain-split, as it were, since I'm grappling with writing articles & doing events to promote publication while at the same time trying to keep some headspace for urgent work on my new book... and I find that the two tasks are so very very different and require such a different energy, such a different mental state. I'm finding, in fact, that they're pretty incompatible and that I need to do one at a time... I wonder if it's at all possible for you to deal with the book & take a break from the MA while you 'put it to bed' as it were?

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  6. Thanks, H, for your sympathy - good to know I'm not the only one trying to keep all these balls in the air (to mix my metaphors).

    The MA is asking for weekly, online seminars this term, to discuss books. I'm more or less up to date with that - and my book is almost done (well, typeset etc) - so I think I'm just about swimming with the tide at the moment. But am prepared to miss an online seminar with pretend-flu if necessary!

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  7. If it would be any use to you at this stage to have an 'outside' eye on the Book, I'd be glad to help - but I do understand if you feel you have to do this last one your own self! love Cx

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  8. Thanks for the offer, Carolyn, that's really kind - and yes, I am going through it myself - I feel that I have to take responsibility for any surviving mistakes! But I'm nearly done.

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