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After writing 1000 words in a three hour writing session this morning I am starting to come to grips with the fact that my writing pace is slowing as I get deeper and deeper into the academic semester. I did not have time to work on the ABS project on Monday (thus no update) and this morning, though I did manage to dump some more prose into Chapter Four, I did not feel like it was a very productive morning.
Perhaps I am being too hard on myself. I am on Chapter Four of a fourteen or fifteen chapter book and I have about eight months to finish it.
This book is confirming something I have felt for a long time. Namely, that I am losing interest in being an academic historian. What makes this book so enjoyable to work on is the opportunities to tell stories about the past through my writing. For example, today I wrote about a poor ABS agent with horse problems. His first horse went blind. His second horse was put to rest after braving a cold winter on the Illinois prairie And he expected his third horse to die “any day now.”
Stay tuned.
