I've Never Been Very Good at Math

Homework for my grad school project period breaks down like this:

Write 25 original pages of fiction
+ Read 2 books
+ Annotate 1 book (3-4pp)
+ Participate in online discussion of other book
= One month's worth of work.

So, I've been slaving away, writing and reading. Last night, I made two discoveries. One: The book that I chose to annotate for next month is 638 pages.

FAIL.

Don't get me wrong: I'm excited about reading it and happy I chose it. But, seriously? Did I need the added pressure of reading a book that's the equivalent of 2 -3 books in one when I'm already juggling my other reading, writing, and that whole OTHER life I lead, the one that involves actually doing some work from time to time? No. No, I did not.

Guess what else I discovered? Anyone who's been around me in the last two weeks knows how much I've been stressing to get out my 25 pages. I managed to get on a 5-a-day schedule and bust it out, but not without an immense amount of self-doubt and frustration along the way. (I also benefited from having someone who's like "Uh, no, it won't be a problem for you to finish this, so just do it, Silly," which was very helpful, but more on that another day). Point is that reaching that 25-page marker was quite the milestone.

And then I noticed something funny. I've become so accustomed to writing journalistic articles that it seems, somewhere along the way, I got very used to writing everything single-spaced.

Yep, single-spaced. Do you know where this is going?

It's an interesting moment when you realize you've actually written 50 pages, not 25. There's of course the: Daaang, look at that, go me reaction. But there's also the: Uh oh. In this rush to bust out pages, is any of this writing even any good? I knew this was a situation that called for sleep and inevitably I would wake up the next morning and one reaction would be overriding the other.

So, it's the next morning. And, um, yeah: I'm definitely wondering if any of this writing is even any good. We shall see.