Archive for September, 2010
Different Challenges
I wanted to blog yesterday, and talk about that culture/arts blog thing, but I didn’t get to it because I was trying to put together my first FYP report, which is proving to be quite a different challenge from the two essays that I’d done just before that. So, now, that I’m taking a break just before lunch, I thought I’d quickly put this together so that this place see the cobwebs.
The two earlier essays were bits of criticism, and it may just be that I’ve got rusty, but I found them strenuous and unfriendly. This puts me in a bit of consternation over the impending examination, but I don’t really have much of a choice except to ride out the storm. In contrast to my fiction, criticism has always been unexceptional but dependable for me. I’m not a great critic by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve usually been able to put together something with some organisation and conviction. It was a struggle this time/these times around, and hence my worries. I’ve since left the essays on the backburner, because I’ve had other things to work on, but I just hope I do okay and get something of a vote of confidence so that I can get things back on track.
(Yes, fiction has always been unstable for me, with pockets of satisfaction and gulfs of despair.)
The FYP report, on the other hand, has proven to be a different beast altogether. The main challenge is organisation, which, one might argue, is the same for a critical essay. The difference is that this early report is mainly a review of the literature that I’ve been through so far, and so it’s pretty much more of the organisation of external knowledge than internal arguments. It’s an intimidating task because there’s a lot to grapple with, and the subject is not entirely familiar. In many ways, the FYP is like a self-study project because it’s not likely that you’ll be assigned something that you’re familiar with, and a lot of these early stages so far have been about learning and learning more.
Whatever it is, I’ve had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to tackle the report. I am an odd writer, and I work in very idiosyncratic ways, whether it is with fiction, criticism, or my lab reports, and so it is that I’ve had to devise an approach unique for writing this report (as compared to my other writing, that is) and that took a long time. I’m still not sure that I’ve got it yet, but this morning it seemed to me that it is probably working. I still have a week to do it, so I’m hopeful that this will iron itself out.
Meanwhile, I’m rereading Beckett’s Texts for Nothing in preparation for my quiz on Friday and reading them a second time really seems to make them a lot more… intuitive.
And with that I should leave you, but only with an irrelevant quote from dear Monsieur Baudelaire, who wrote: “L’amour ressemblait fort à une torture ou à une opération chirurgicale.” The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.
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What I’ve been doing
Mainly:
Editing. Lots of it. My essays, helping out with two papers, and also a couple of stories. I did it through the night last night, which explains the fuzziness of my brain right now. It feels like yogurt.
Revising. I’ve reread a portion of my texts in an attempt to revise for a quiz this Friday. I kind of get the feeling I won’t do very well. I have a very poor memory for these sorts of things. I read Disgrace some time ago (for the second time no less) and a day after I’d finished it, I’d forgotten who Grace was.
Meeting friends. Met.
Reading. I read Marat/Sade very quickly, so I’m kind of far ahead on that particular subject with only two more texts to go, I think. Then I’m also reading George Lamming’s In The Castle Of My Skin and I should be done with it soon enough. Soon enough is probably the middle of next week. Meanwhile, I’ve been catching up on papers for my FYP. I have to put together a report for my literature review so far during the week. I hope to read something for my own pleasure soon. I have the recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Tinkers, in waiting, and that’s one possibility.
Participating in the global economy. I bought three books. A Barthes, a Camus and a Derrida. I wanted to get one of the Bertrand Russell books just to inaugurate my philosophy section in style, but I am a bit poor. I’ve managed to do so only because I staved off the immense temptation to purchase the Expensive Edition of Civilization V. I’ll just wait for a Steam sale, I think.
Planning. I’ve been looking into starting my own culture/arts blog, as you know. More on that soon.
Chatting. I love my friends. They are generally adorable people and I would in deep trouble of some ghastly sort, I think, if it weren’t for them. I think it was Dickinson who said, Forgive me the avarice to horde my friends. Forgive me indeed. Especially if I got the quotation wrong.
Blogging. Well, not very much, I know. But I hope to have a feature up one day soon. Maybe tomorrow. It will probably be something boring, like said details on culture/arts blog. We’ll see.
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Possible Newness
I’m thinking of starting up a new site, a sort of culture and arts blog that casts a reasonably wide net. Music, literature, photography, film, design, philosophy, et cetera. The idea of it sounds like it could work, but really, I might be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I might have talked about this before. I can’t remember.
It’ll take some planning. I don’t know if I can run it on my own, for instance. I don’t think so, because running this site alone takes up enough time in relation to my other work, but I don’t think I know anyone with compatible interests. And in saying compatible, I don’t mean that we have to like the same things, but rather that it doesn’t cause a dissonant effect on the blog’s identity (say, Ingmar Bergman and Boyzone on the same blog). That would be enormously distracting.
Also, I want to plan how to run it. The design of it, for one, and also the features that go on show. After what must be five years of blogging, I realise these things get really messy really quick if you don’t pay attention to them right from the start.
And the aforementioned identity. What sort of place do I hope it will be? That one’s a little tricky and I’m not sure I can plan for it. Yet, it’s still a useful thing to think about because it gives an idea of the direction I should be heading in. And what would be so special about it? I definitely haven’t got that part figured out. I’m kind of at the stage of where I’m saying, Well, it’ll be Singaporean. And. Erm.
My greatest fear is that I’ll run it to the ground in a couple of months because of a failure to keep up with it. I hope not. It wouldn’t be the first time doing anything like that though. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that these five years of blogging will provide a tiny bit of helpful experience.
But the most fun part about this, at least for now, is thinking of a name for it. I have a vague idea of what sort of name I would want, but nothing concrete. Suggestions welcome.
Right, onwards.
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