One chapter left

I have been a bit sick these past two weeks--nothing serious, just a cough that won't go away and occasionally keeps me up at night. But given that the cough had turned into a bacterial infection in the chest, my doctor urged me to take both the antibiotics and steroids that he had prescribed. I hate feeling like I'm coughing up a lung, so I'm now on day five of this course, with some, but not much improvement.

What this has to do with writing: perhaps you've been on prednisone. Perhaps you know that it can make you a bit...manic. Not usually the kind of manic that's good for writing, and whether this was that, I do not know. But over there on the right, you'll see sixteen new pages. In a day.

Willow will read them over the next few days, and point out the places in the argument where (very likely) I have skipped over two of three important pieces of information moving from pithy line to pithy line, but hey! it's drafted, and it's a conclusion, so it doesn't need to have quite the same level of analysis that the other chapters require.

So that leaves one chapter left, and not one that is particularly daunting. It does deal more substantially with race than other material I've written does, and I've never been particularly insightful on that topic. I have a senior colleague, however, who is very good on that subject, and so if I can have a draft completed by October 15, I can submit it for our faculty writing group.

In the meantime, I have a batch of response papers to grade, as well as a batch of quizzes, a dissertation chapter to read, and six recommendation letters to write for very bright and committed students who deserve really good thorough ones.

But tonight, perhaps I'll let my 16 pages stand as a good day's work.