Well, it was a day

This was a morning when, if I were still in the classroom, I'd probably have opted to stay home. I had just enough of a headache and was just sufficiently sleep-deprived that my impulse was "fuck this, I'll stay home." But then I thought, "Four and a half hours? Probably not constant work; probably down time in there? Oh, I can do that, no problem. And I finish at 4."

So, here I am. And in fact I did have a fair amount of down time--enough that, for a switch, I started playing around with ideas for a clear, student friendly guide to GSP (grammar, spelling, punctuation), working from absolute basics and presented in a way that students would, I hope, find more engaging and understandable than any style manual I've ever seen. But in the process, I realized that one of my colleagues is absolutely brilliant at clear explanations of grammar points; in fact, he produced an illustrated guide to tense structures that I've been using with great gratitude in working with some of the ESL students who come in for help. So I asked him if he might want to collaborate on something. My dream would be for whatever Matt and I put together to be packaged as a companion to Paul's book that addresses the deeper, more theoretical/intellectual aspects of college writing. But in talking with Matt about it, I realized that what I was doing would be absolutely the wrong thing: too many words. (Sort of like Mozart and "too many notes." https://youtu.be/H6_eqxh-Qok?t=26) Matt is right: it needs to be highly visual--and the information needs to be presented as students would learn it in a classroom. So, for example, comma splices wouldn't be discussed in a section on commas but in their own section. Actually, the style guide I've used addresses them in a section on grammar, along with run-ons and fragments, which is slightly better, but even that's too unwieldy. There needs to be a section just on sentence boundaries, then another on building complex sentences, and so on.

Hell, I'm retired: I have nothing but time to do this kind of thing. But really, I think Matt would do a much better job at it than I would. The only thing I have that he doesn't is time to screw around with it.

Otherwise, I have very little to report. I came; I saw students; I noodled. Now I can take off. So I will do precisely that. I realize I truly do not feel that I am in the trenches anymore. I'm not sure what the war analogy would be; maybe I'm in some kind of negotiations. But this work doesn't feel like a battle, which is quite lovely.