Saturday 28 April 2007

Writing? What Writing?!

It is nearly the end of the semester for the undergrads. I'm looking at my frozen word count in despair. The novel limps along a sentence at a time in long hand. On one side of my desk - hell, what am I talking about - I can't see my desk anymore, having piled all the marking up, and the admin tasks from the research department etc., etc.

Here's my To Do List for the coming weeks:

1. Marking - lots of this - essays, dissertations, short stories, exams.
2. Interviewing students for summer courses.
3. End of module admin - collate feedback, attendance, evaluations etc.
4. Prepare final week's teaching - mostly essay/exam surgeries but also revision for grammar and phonetics.
5. Attend a writing workshop with Toby Litt - looking forward to this one!
6. Attend a 2 day teaching conference.
7. Prepare teaching for summer access courses.
8. Squeeze in riding lessons!
9. Housework.
10. Arrange childcare for when I'm working - school pick ups etc.
11. Squeeze in gymnastics coaching - thankfully only once a week.
12. Complete PhD 'what I've done this year' admin stuff for research dept.
13. Attempt to remain calm.
14. And sane.
15. Second marking and deliberations.
16. Prepare mission statement for new journal with colleague who has a to do list similar to mine, minus the riding.
17. Prepare am abstract and write a conference paper for June - not sure this will actually get done though...
18. Write the novel first draft.
19. Keep reading for PhD, fiction as well as the heavy stuff.
20. Make sure everyone has clean clothes, healthy diet, and that homework (7 year old) and revision (14 year old) is done on time.

There's more I'm sure. Better get started!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm exhausted just reading it. Take it one step at a time.....good luck :-)

hesitant scribe said...

Er yup! Yesterday I did well though... got all the washing done, hoovering and bathrooms cleaned, planned teaching for the week, did the PhD annual thingy and made a start on the marking. Phew! Now here I am on a Sunday morning preparing to start again :) I'm focussing on a week off in May and then time off in August and Sept to write write write!

Hope all is well with you X