The Life of the Scholar

Today I will start a chapter that I'll send off to some other "scholars" who are writing about service-learning and composition. It's part of the deal for academics; we teach and write. My project with the After Breast Cancer group was a good one. It resulted in a book that I just did the final edit on yesterday. The article I wrote about the project is under review, and if I can stop blogging and get the chapter done, so too will it be part of my tenure portfolio.

But what about the book I'd like to write? I don't really know what it would be. If autobiographical, the plot line would be: Catholic Jersey kid leaves home at fifteen, moves West, then East, then West, then East, marries, has children, gets divorced, gets doctoral degree. Wow, that's exciting! Maybe if I put in the part about the clown business I had . . .

Maybe I'd write a book about a boy who builds a spaceship and goes to Mars and finds out that Mars is full of people and stuff . . .oh wait, that's a Belle and Sebastian song.

I know, I'd write a book about the dark, dirty underside of school politics in a small central New York village, where missing money leads to murder and then it turns out that . . .oh wait, that's really happening in Clinton. Well, not the murder part, yet.

You know, when I really think about it, I don't want to write any of that stuff. Maybe writing scholarship isn't so bad after all. My friend Prisci says she can get me work writing porn, but I'm sure I won't do that until after tenure.

What would your book be about, if you could write any book at all?