(no subject)

I've started the day with a guest post on the other side of the world, and soon I shall be shopping. The guest post was because another friend had kindly let me celebrate my book on her blog. We talked about what might suit her and she really wanted the true (and somewhat spooky) origins of the mirror in Ms Cellophane. There are pictures...

(no subject)

I must be recovering, for all I can do today is sleep. I did an hour's work this morning before I gave up and went back to bed and I've been up nearly an hour again now, when the same thing is happening. The other possibility is that I'm coming down with something and this possibility is one I refuse to admit.

I re-bound my finger yesterday and it needs a couple more days secured, but it's definitely improving. The infection is all gone and all the swelling and bruising except around the joints. Most of the muscles (except on the one hand, obviously - there's a joke in there, somewhere) are almost fine, and I was able to wash some light dishes last night and wash my hair (one handed washing!) today. Tomorrow I get to put the rubbish out and on Sunday I tackle the heavier dishes. And I can put on shoes again, not just zip-up halfboots.

I'm progressing, except for this tiredness. I was wondering how such a simple accident could lead to so much fatigue, and then I realised it was on top of a really busy semester, with much teaching (90+ hours), and PhD work, and some travel and exceptional eventfulness and that I followed up the simple accident with 12 1/2 hours work. I have much to do today, but my body is definitely telling me that it needs a nap, first. Again!

Next time, I shall take a holiday.

(no subject)

Regular as clockwork, one of my regular-as-clockwork issues has come back to plague me. Each time it returns, it does so with new twists. What scholars care about is seldom what the general public either wants to know or needs to learn. The amount of scholarship on a subject can't often be used to set-up a general article or book or chapter on a subject.

In this instance, it's a chapter of a book and the first draft was all my fault. I wrote lovingly about all my favourite types of Medieval literature. This means that I have the signal responsibility of fixing it, for I know the actual relative importance of Medieval literatures and I had done a careful balance between them and the scholarly importance, and I'd completely left out the general public. Since the general public is who the book is for...

Actually, it wasn't all my fault. It's the way we think about the Middle Ages and are taught them. It's the way some of us focus on Arthur, or some on Icelandic sagas or some on hagiography. Even the best overviews are fuelled by the base we learn from.

I can't ever eliminate my own specialisations. All I can do is balance them a bit more and write something that makes sense of Medieval literature so that someone who reads it has a balanced and straightforward entry point. I made a terrible bosh of the first go, and a bad but not quite as bad bosh of the second. And I've had critical assistance along the way. I don't normally need so many drafts! The problem is that I know the subject too closely and from too particular an angle.

It's very good for me to write for those who don't know my subject at all: it's a salutary lesson. Maybe all specialists should write one book (or one chapter, anyhow) for those who know their subject not at all, and get that sense of "Oh, I didn't know I was carrying this bias," and "My goodness, do I really love this bit so much that I completely exclude all those others?" and "This isn't an overview, it's my first doctorate in miniature." In fact, that first doctorate is part of it. These advanced degrees engrave patterns into our brains, and they're not always the patterns we either need or think we have. It does me a great deal of good to question mine.