Progress

So despite the fact that between snow, sniffles, and holidays, we've had one or both kids home something like 35 of the last 43 days, I've actually been quite productive. I've prepped the one class well enough that it hasn't taken any appreciable time, beyond that day's prep, and the major committee I'm on has merely been enough of a break from the writing work I can get done that it hasn't really interfered.

The writing, then has proceeded apace. I've been doing some reading for the talk I'm doing in March, which is really exciting. That's a bit of a slow start, but I've got time for that.

The faster work has come on the book project, whose first big project was to complete re-write what had initially been a perfunctory dissertation introduction composed in two days in March, and re-frame as a full-on theoretical framework for a book project that is actually making an intervention in a field, not simply trying to get past five sympathetic readers.

Anyway, I had made some good initial progress before the holidays, but after the trip to California, and the subsequent siege of snow and sniffles, I'd gotten away from the writing. Anyway, about a week ago, the editor I met with at MLA emailed me back, saying she was "intrigued" by the project, and wanted soft copy of the proposal to pass around to some "advisors."

Since I had hoped that the introduction would be part of the sample materials I sent on, I buckled back down to write, and now have a 35 page draft of which I am exceedingly proud. Willow's reading over it for prose and the non-specialist's perspective, and a few others are looking it over this weekend, but that one big obstacle is now mostly of the way.
Onward!