There’s this line in (I think) a Woody Allen film. It might be said by Tony Roberts in Annie Hall. He’s in television or something and when asked what he’s working on, replies – uh, I’m paraphrasing, “I’ve got this notion and I’m trying to find the time to turn it into an idea. If I can get some funding I might even turn it into a concept.”
To mis-quote Allen as his alter ego Alvy Singer, that’s the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with academia.
Alvy and Annie broke up.
And all this blogging is kinda like a denial of the fact that I’m having trouble writing my own chapter for The Routledge Companion to World Cinema that I’m co-editing. I actually asked myself for an extension but I’ve had two already so I said no.
Academic opportunities tend to resemble paintings by Monet. From a long way off they look simple enough, clear and easy to discern. But close up they’re an unintelligible mess. What, did he paint them with a ten foot paintbrush!?
Same is true when saying yes to things like chapters in edited books. When the deadline is two years off the idea seems simple enough, but close up they suddenly become so monstrous. I should never have said yes to myself.
The Routledge Companion to World Cinema started out as an idea too. Two years later it has a life of its own, somewhere between a naughty puppy and an alligator in hiding. Two contributors pulled out, one at the start, which wasn’t so bad, and one a few weeks ago. One contributor simply disappeared, stopped answering e-mails (it’s a good job we’re not paranoid. Should we be?). We’ve had chapters submitted that were much too short and chapters that were much too long. We asked for 6,000 words and once got 3,000. Another time we received 11,000 – and all of them great! (We’re still wondering how to cut that one down). We’ve had submissions in languages other than English and chapters that weren’t what we asked for but something else prepared earlier – ta-dah! We’ve also had perfectly formatted, 6,000 word chapters including abstract, contributor biography and list of works cited. These we have framed.
And me? I’m still at the notion stage, trying to find the time to turn it into an idea. Who knows, given sufficient caffeine it may even become a concept.
