End of another long and difficult week. Most of time spent conferencing and grading–mostly grading student papers as well as mid-term portfolios. I find these so important to teach but take time from my writing–my manuscripts. I did have time to record a few interesting videos I’ll soon be editing and adding to the Lincoln Land Review website. One of those videos includes a brief interview of Illinois author Ricardo Cortez Cruz. And what a great experience recording this interview and classroom visit. He discussed difficulty and complexity in his writing and he also discussed his sense of urgency and passion. He also discussed a bit on his idea of ‘slanguage’ which reminded me of my thoughts on spanglish and incorporating more representative language to fictive texts. And though I wasn’t writing or revising some of my manuscripts I believe I was focused of course on writing and the gathering of bullets or ideas on aesthetic to return to Monte Stories and perhaps some of my shorter work.
Also I’ll be spending some time in the next few weeks putting together my proposal for sabbatical. And so I’ll be putting together my plan for the next year to develop my creative and academic literacy through research of other’s fiction, travel to writing workshop and of course the act of writing at home.
So perhaps I’m beginning to think more like Prof Ron Carlson in this clip:
