Sunday, October 28, 2007

Oh, and Crazy Is Lazy

So. I've got a stack of grading, and a book to finish (ah, that index, how I cannot make myself do it!), and some small revisions to do on an essay, and an MLA paper to write (or at least to begin researching).....

And this weekend, I did no substantial work on any of it. Nope, not at all. And I also have yet to do this here meme that I've been tagged for (it's all so complicated!) though I do intend to do it in the coming days. So what have I been doing?

Hmmm. Well, there was some menu-devising and grocery shopping. There was an extraordinary amount of phone talking (and yet I still feel like talking on the phone, for I may well be 12 years old). There was a good deal of napping. There was a bit of cooking. There was dinner out and coffee after with BFF tonight. All in all, I think that it was exactly the weekend that I needed. Or, well, exactly the weekend that part of me needed, the part of me that needs to recharge and not to be stressed out constantly about the job, but not what the other part of me needed, the part that needs to not be behind on work. Ah well, Monday shall be a day of reckoning, and I shall complete many tasks and do so with a smile (even if forced) on my face.

4 comments:

Margaret said...

Crazy, I'm not sure if this would work for you, but I hired a professional indexer to do the job, at the very end of the book production process. I got the school (ok, the Dean) to pay for it. Any hope of you doing that? Because indexing? Is a pain.

Dr. Crazy said...

Ah, the professional indexer. Well, there are two things: 1) it would be highly unlikely for my institution to offer any money toward something related to the book; 2) I actually kind of want to have control over the index, as much as doing it will be a pain. I'm thinking I'm going to hunker down next weekend and attempt to knock the thing out in a marathon of indexing.

helenesch said...

Wow, you're already at the index stage? I couldn't do my index until it was in page proof form, which was many months after I submitted the completed ms. And I paid--out of my own pocket--to have mine done! Whenever I hear non-academics ask whether I'm getting rich from my book royalties, I think about how many hundreds of dollars I spent to pay for the index...

Dr. Crazy said...

Ah, Helenesch, here is the reason I'm at the index stage: it is because my press, while reputable, is also small, which means that I had to opt either to make the manuscript camera ready myself or I'd have had to find the money someplace (again, can't count on my university for this) to pay to have that done. As I am poor, and relatively good with layout sorts of things on the computer (ah, thank you, younger self, for all of those years doing layout and design for publications in high school and college!), I decided to do that myself. So, I've got a version of the manuscript that's basically at the proofs stage on my computer. (Remember: I submitted the original full version of the manuscript in April; what I submitted at the beginning of this month was the MS with minor changes based on readers report suggestions.) When I submit the thing for the contract deadline, I'll submit that camera ready version along with the index. I'll see the manuscript one more time (I believe) after that, and then, voila! Crazy has a book! (Although also Crazy might have some sort of need to be hospitalized for exhaustion.)