A word about process...

My writing process tends to be very...big. I schedule huge blocks of time, at least a few hours at a time, sometimes days even, surround myself with stacks and stacks of research, make a pot of coffee, and hunch over the computer until I "need to get the blood moving," then I stalk around the apartment for a while (maybe eat something over the sink) and get back to it. In a six hour block I'll usually get a good five pages written. Call it slow, call it inefficient, call it privileged - but don't call it unproductive. These are habits I formed as an undergraduate who worked during the day and had only the night to write. Writing papers through the night was not uncommon. Yes, these papers tended to be due in the morning.

But these habits followed me to graduate school, which was fine at first, I guess. It's very difficult, granted, when there are several commitments throughout the day demanding your time and taking away writing time. But I managed. Weekends, nights, and the occasional non-teaching day.

Last week, though, my wife asked me to drive her to work everyday this week (she's expecting in a month (our first, yeah!) and has to drive an hour each way, so there's no way I would say no). I did, though, stupidly bring up the problem this poses my writing process. (Idiot).

"But I need my computer and, you know, stuff, so that I can write," I say.

"There's a library there. Can't you bring it with you?"

Of course I can. And I did. But I put on the back burner any hope of getting writing done. New environment and all that.

But you know what? I'm writing more and in shorter bursts of time.

Weird.

I haven't blogged since when?!

...Since April!?

Damn.

Been knee deep in dissertation stuff, wondering what the view's gonna be like when I'm neck deep...

In the meantime, I recently finished Michael Jarrett's *Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing* and loved it. Here's the third paragraph:

"Elvis Costello once said in a remark now widely quoted, 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's a really stupid thing to want to do.' Costello's wit is notoriously barbed, which ensures that interviews with him are always thoroughly enjoyable. But his sentiments, echoing and extending Armstrong's ("Lady, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know"), are diametrically opposed to mine. First, as a side point, I'd jump at the chance to see dancing about architecture. Second, writing about music is hardly any more problematic than writing about any other subject."

He had me at "notoriously barbed."