Blogs as Writerly Spaces: The proposal

When I am advising students who are working on their thesis or a final writing project as part of our MA in Written Communication, my most common bit o’ wisdom is that when you’re working on a project like that, you have to “touch it” every day. I’m not suggesting to these students that they work on their projects for an hour or two every day (though, if you can be that disciplined/regimented, that’s probably a good thing), because different days will afford you different amounts of time. But, I tell my students, even if you have all kinds of other work and life responsibilities and the like, you still should try to at least touch your project, just to keep it in the back of your mind. Sometimes, that will mean spending just a few minutes on it. But those few minutes, I tell my students, will help you on those days when you really do have time to work on your project in more detail, and those few minutes at a time will help you keep on your long-term goal of finishing.

Like I said, this is advice I give to my students, but like so many other pieces of advice, it’s easier given than followed.

Well, today I’ve decided to start taking my own advice and I’m going to make myself get back into the swing of a project I’m calling Blogs as Writerly Spaces. Thus the category here of “BAWS.”

My first “touch” on this project (and to be honest, I see only touches on this thing for the next couple weeks at least, but hey, I’m still following my own fine advice) has been to revisit the proposal I submitted for a sabbatical for next year. I’d be of course curious to find out what others out there have to say about it– oh, and if you’re a book publisher and want to offer me a contract straight-away, let me know.

I’ve obviously got a lot of thinking, researching, interviewing, writing, etc., to do on this yet. But I will say that it’s nice to look back at this proposal, something I haven’t paid much attention to for about two and a half months, and still be reasonably happy with it.