one step at a time

I keep wanting to take weird photographs like this one:

the sidewalk, light and shadow, pocked and smooth. the flat spaces underneath my feet simply mesmerize me these days.

for ten days and no less than 7,781 words (as of yesterday) I have been writing diligently in a file of meta-scholarly writing. it's unpolished writing, somewhat stream-of-consciousness in places, but tethered loosely, along with my brain, to the various scholarly pursuits stretched out in front of me.

writing habits are something every writer tries to get into, and it's seriously time for me to get into one. even beyond emails, writing is my job. a sort-of-weekly-maybe-usually blogging habit is something, and I want to get back to that too. but this is slightly more focused, or at least that's what I'm going for with it. one thousand words a day is my official minimum. it is not hard, unless too many meetings get in the way. I've done fairly well sticking to it. the 2,300-ish words that are missing from the full tally are partially accounted for by a 400-word conference proposal, a 250-word project proposal, and a 500-word reading response that got written elsewhere.

I write in this file about my other writing. I set myself mini writing tasks, like "create an abstract for that article-to-be." it makes it somewhat more fun. the habit will probably evolve, in lots of ways.

and I write about my reading. last week I was reading whole journal issues and finishing Ambient Rhetoric, which is a book whose author has his office around the corner from mine. not only was Dr. Thomas Rickert waving at me from behind the words of his book, he waved when we crossed paths in hallways, or at coffeeshops.

this week I am trying to read a print copy of The Electronic Word, at last. Richard Lanham keeps using the word Arnoldian as if all his readers should know what that means. have you ever heard of the critic Matthew Arnold? maybe you have, and my cluelessness is therefore less excusable. now I have heard of him, courtesy google + wiktionary and also this odd little blog where I also discovered this astonishingly random, exciting teaching activity that I don't know if I could ever pull off. woah.

anyway--these are the main scholarly projects that take up my meta-scholarly writing attention at the moment:

articles
two drafts to work up and submit to somewhere by the end of March, I hope. at least one, I hope.

conference presentations 
I sent out three or four proposals earlier this year, and hopefully will be preparing to present later in the year. the research project I'm a part of just had a paper accepted to the American Society for Engineering Education conference, so that'll be fun.

World Englishes project
I have wild and careening ideas for this paper, and it will involve some of what I've been exploring in the LibriVox catalogue, but I'm not sure exactly what all of that will settle into.

dissertation prospectus seedlings
more LibriVox thoughts. and various other readings and explorations as I search about for a way to frame at least some of the fascination I have with this community/organization/project/artifact.

professional documents
I need a website more up to date than this one. that shouldn't be so hard to work up, but I haven't gotten to it yet.