I am – heaven help me – writing an academic paper about Shaw’s Major Barbara. My original plan was to put a PowerPoint together (much easier – fun, actually). But the paper (as often happens) had other ideas.

Wednesday morning  I woke up at 3 AM and spent an hour trying to link a series of ideas together. That’s when I knew that it was time to put everything else in my life on hold and get this thing done. (Well, I did take a dance lesson yesterday, and Charlie and I are cleaning up some hedges at the condo where we live. But everything else in my life is just sitting here.)

My brain is too scrambled to write a coherent post today. Instead I’m going to jot down some thoughts about this project.

• I wish I’d kept a journal while I was writing my paper about Pygmalion last year. When I think about the ideas for this year’s paper, I keep imagining a big, sticky ball of dough. Everything is connected to everything else. How am I going to link the ideas into a logical sequence? Was the process this messy last time? Have I lost my touch? Is this normal? Am I normal?
• There’s always a moment when I know that a project is going to work. (I wish those moments would come sooner in the writing process – sigh.)
• I always listen to music when I write. (Abba was my constant companion when I was writing my book about Pygmalion.) I’ve been listening to the traditional Christmas station on Pandora.
• Despite what the experts tell you, the most important requirement for a successful writing task isn’t a thesis. What you absolutely have to have is an exciting idea. If you have something to work with, you can always come up with a thesis. But if you’re bored by your topic, there’s no point in even trying to write about it.
• It takes a certain amount of faith and courage to push a project along and believe that everything is going to fit together in the end.
• Part of the excitement is watching the connections fire off. No – let me revise that. The real reason I write is that it’s so much fun to watch the fireworks.