I forget how much I enjoy writing.
My life prevents me from doing this as often as I should. Or more accurately, teaching prevents me from writing as often as I should. Although, if I’m truthful, teaching is a choice that I make.
Still, those rare moments when deadlines are so upon me that procrastination is no longer an option and I must write. I treasure them.
Tonight was one of those nights, even if the writing I did is not the kind of writing I would normally do.
Still, I finished a draft of my first textbook chapter, a treatise on how emerging social technologies can transform the university classroom.
The chapter, which grew out of a talk I gave to the college faculty last fall, is a weird mix of academic research (thanks to Rhett, my super fabulous Graduate Assistant), technical papers from the 1940s, 1960s and 1970s, book writing and Internet research. Honestly, I’m interested to see how it flies in the wonderful world of the academy.
Either way, I’m happy with it and it will find a home somewhere.
***
The thing I enjoy most about writing is piecing the puzzles together. The words come much easier today than they ever have, a confluence of experience, practice and voice. I know what I want to say (mostly) and I know how to say it.
What is different, always different, are the pieces of information. I construct and move and wrestle and tinker and write and delete and look up and write and delete and look up and write. It’s that swirl of information on the page that excites me. Figuring out how to find just the right piece of information that I can plug into the hole to tell the story the way I want it.
Like the gym, though, when I get too far away from that process I find myself – in my head – forgetting how good it feels to engage in that.
Instead, projects languish and pile up behind a wall of administrative duties for school.
***
I’ve booked a weekend excursion to Indianapolis this weekend now that I’m free (mostly) of my duties for the year. Surely there are still little pieces of this and that which must be finalized. And, as always, I am positive that I’ve fallen behind in other areas as well.
But not for this weekend.
I will move my world downtown on Thursday to a hotel near Victory Park, where the Indianapolis Indians play. My plan: evening baseball games, morning writing for three days (minus Friday morning when I’ll be delivering a talk at the Indiana Public Relations Leadership Summit).
My two favorite past-times, rolled together into a nice ball of awesome.
Where I will write and stay decidedly offline. Because I promised myself that after these deadlines, and after this blog challenge, that I would turn my attention to my work for the summer. That I would finish my projects. That I would write for me. To finish the things that I have started.
To enjoy the writing once again.
***
For now, I am just enjoying the draft I finished tonight. Not a masterpiece, but a finished text from which to work.
Here’s how the chapter ends.
With each iteration of technology, each software upgrade or processor advancement, our devices become smarter. As we integrate these technologies into our lives, as our children will surely continue to do so, it’s imperative that our educational environment strive to not only keep up with this pace, but reach out as far ahead as we can as well. We can no longer view our classes simply as analog gathering places where directed learning takes place. We must create information story streams, bits of data that extend from one semester to the next, from one year to the next. Reaching beyond the classrooms to where our students live, work, think and share.
