Contradictory Composers

I actually worked today. On my dissertation. Miracle of miracles. After boring Peter to death last night about what a miserable waste of paper my dissertation is, I decided I needed to lighten up and stop being a punk about this project. For today anyway. So while I worked this afternoon I opened a blank word file and every time I felt desperate to leave the chair I typed something on the new file, which I named "hassles." I averaged an entry about every 28 minutes or so, between 3 to 10 sentences in length. Entries covered a range of subjects---worried comments about a searing burning sensation in my esophagus, despair that I could never get through a muddled section of text, lists of possible blog topics---and somehow this seemed to help. Progress was made. It won't work tomorrow though. I've learned not to count on set processes.

And speaking of no set processes...Saul Bellow's editor wrote a piece about editing him for Slate this week. I especially liked one section where Saul made a change she suggested but railed against it while doing so. These are the contradictions I love in the editor/writer relationship.