Bail and row

I'm finally at the point in my essay where I could finish it in a week, if I could just find the time. This is the part of the writing process that I like the best, the only one where I'm so consumed by my work that I don't even want to click over to email and Facebook. It's not that this stage is easy, and I may still spend hours revising a single paragraph--but at this point something about the experience has shifted. You could say that I'm still bailing out the lifeboat, but no longer afraid of drowning.

The problem is that I can't bail fast enough when it's the last two weeks of the semester. Today I received 45 essays. Tomorrow I have an M.A. defense. And I'm behind in writing class observation reports for a couple of colleagues and reference letters for a couple of students applying to Ph.D. programs. I also haven't started reading the book or article manuscripts that I agreed to review and have been sitting on for weeks.

That doesn't make for an unusually burdensome last two weeks of the term; in fact, it's not impossible that I could find two hours a day to write, even in the midst of the above. But I'm at the point where I need more than two hours a day. For most of my writing process, two hours a day would be amazing; in fact, 80% of the time I probably can't write for more than three hours at a stretch. But now I'm at the place where I can, and where it feels not just possible, but necessary: the shoreline is in sight, and though the countervailing currents are strong, my adrenaline is pumping. I can bail and row simultaneously!

Or I could, if only someone weren't constantly borrowing both oar and bucket. Instead, I may get swept out to sea.