The approaching horizon

For the past several months, my ultimate horizon has been the winter break, when I will complete revisions on The Prince of This World and submit the final manuscript. There are presumably things that will happen afterward, but it’s difficult for me to picture anything beyond that momentous, attachment-riddled e-mail to my editor.

Now I have completed my grading and am working my way through the last volume that my reader reports recommended I consult. I still have duties at Shimer, but I can devote most of my energy in the next couple weeks to finishing off what amounts to the biggest single writing project of my life so far. And weirdly, I’m looking forward to the process. Revisions are a painful part of writing, but I think I have enough distance at this point that the emphasis doesn’t fall on destroying the work I completed at such great cost, but on improving and clarifying what I’ve done.

The question will be what comes next. Late this summer, I was dreaming big dreams about diving straight into the next project (on the Trinity). That likely will be the next project, but it’s clear in retrospect that it would have been impossible to make substantial progress while getting into the swing of my altered duties at school and stressing out about the review process on Prince of This World.

The fantasy, I think, was that I would somehow be able to remain “in the zone.” And what stands out to me now is how different “the zone” is from the normal run of things, how seldom I really have time to spend honing and grappling with my own ideas. My job is to help others hone and grapple with their own ideas, and much of my day-to-day writing is reactive rather than self-determined. All of that is worthwhile and meaningful in its own way, but it’s not “the zone.”