Summer Project Time

Well, I'm not going to make my quota. I blame this on being gone for half of May. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to make up for it in subsequent months. Maybe. Anyway, now for what I really wanted to write about.

Every summer around the end of May students from all over the nation embark on Summer Projects to, well, everywhere. And every time I get a giant bag of checks from Such-and-Such Summer Project at work my mind flashes back to my own summer project and I grow simultaneously nostalgic and jealous. Perhaps this is enhanced realization that I, having gone and returned from my summer vacation, am not getting on a plane and going anywhere, and that I, being boring and unmotivated, am working all summer sorting checks for all the people going on summer project to exotic places. And then I'm reminded via internet and work that several of my friends are on summer project. Keith, Scott, Katie...the list continues. And while there is some consolation in the knowledge that they too have to get up in the early hours of the morning, I know that their days will be filled with something fun, exciting, and more importantly, varied, whereas mine will indubitably consist of typing, sorting, batching, more typing, breaks at 10 and 3, and lunch somewhere between 12 and 1.

Trying to Meet My Quota

I decided several weeks ago when I was making changes (I'll call them structural changes) to my blog that I would try to post at least six times a month. So I'm writing in an attempt to meet my quota. That sounds bad, but when I read about writers or hear interviews I'm struck by how many of them had to force themselves to write at the beginnings of their careers. They would set a word quota, or a page quota and just sit and write. No matter what. Whether they had something to write about or not, they would write. Even if they knew that the words they put down on the page would more than likely be cut in subsequent revision, they would write. I sometimes marvel at people who have that kind of willpower. I certainly don't. I would always set goals for myself in my homework when finals week rolled around and everything started getting crazy, but I seldom met those goals.

Now that I'm out of college, I might try setting a quota, perhaps daily or weekly. My playwriting professor said that if you never wrote anything, you were never going to become a good writer. Like anything else, writing takes practice. I should practice more.

And that reminds me, I have yet to post about graduation. I'll get around to it, maybe that will be May post #2.