This is my study leave, and I’m supposed to be working on two writing projects. But I made no progress today.<\/p>\n
The big project I’m supposed to be working on is a series of stories for children about religion. I know the approach I want to use — an approach where I don’t try to reduce the other traditions to platitudes that fit into our own religious schema, but instead retain something of the strangeness and unfamiliarity of other religious traditions. I have primary and secondary source materials lined up. I even have something of a general outline. But I just didn’t get started today.<\/p>\n
I’m also supposed to be revising a collection of children’s stories that I put together last year for the religious education program here at the Palo Alto church. I’m supposed to be correcting typographical errors, fixing a few factual errors, and adding a couple of stories that got left out by mistake. But I just didn’t get started today.<\/p>\n
What I did do is this: I finished reading a book. I responded to an editor who had some questions about a short essay I wrote. I read a science fiction magazine. I worried about another article that seems to have been swallowed by another editor’s desk. I read the newspaper. I made extensive notes on proposed writing project that, although it is on the topic of a religious or spiritual practice, has only a tangential connection to my church job. I read a professional journal. I did laundry. I sat and thought. I sat and didn’t think.<\/p>\n
A month ago, I made a beautiful schedule of how I was going to organize my study leave so I could finish both writing projects in two short weeks. I’m usually pretty good at sticking to writing schedules. When I’m not good at sticking to a schedule, it usually means there’s something missing in the overall plan for the project, and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on right now. I even think I now know what the problem is. But in the mean time, I have made no progress, and I’ve already lost two days of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my study leave, and I’m supposed to be working on two writing projects. But I made no progress today. The big project I’m supposed to be working on is a series of stories for children about religion. I know the approach I want to use — an approach where I don’t try to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7240,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239\/revisions\/7240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}