I have been working on a short story for the past several weeks – a cause for rejoicing in itself, I agree. However, what has pleased me almost more than my recent creative productivity is the fact that I have at last found a use for my four years of college education.
You see, as a fledgling scholar, I am in the habit of saving all of my intellectual product (that is, my scholarly papers and other homework assignments) for future perusal and improvement. However, now that I am a penniless newlywed, I have press-ganged all of the hard copies of my papers for a higher cause. One evening it occurred to me that my entire scholarly corpus was only printed on one side of the page. Since this epiphany, I have been printing my story drafts on the reverse side of analyses of W.S. Merwin and Sherwood Anderson, et. al.
Not only does this provide a delightful opportunity for nostalgia, but when I am frustrated that my fiction is rocky, I can ‘bolster my esteem’ with the following:
69/75. Good resources here. You make a number of general stylistic claims that really need to be illustrated but aren’t, perhaps because you’ve taken a bit too much authority from critical assessments of the work in general.
Or
93. Good job. This provides a very workable intro to EB. I might have wished for a bit more attention to some specific poems.
Or
This paragraph doesn’t seem to hold together very well. It seems to abruptly shift from Poe’s fondness of the puzzle to the psychoanalytic discussion without clearly establishing the connections.
And I feel satisfied that I am at once being green by reusing paper products as well as providing a concrete use of my education. At least I won’t have to buy any paper until well into next year. Also, it pleases me to no end to line through my hours of mental anguish in favor of writing something real on the reverse.
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