Tuesday 11 February 2025 Like last week’s blog entry, today’s blog started out as a rough draft for this blog site. As the writing became longer and more complicated, I convinced myself that it should go into my Katyn memoir manuscript. In fact, I wrote this piece as a culmination of a series of conversations […]
“Professor, Am I a Cynic?” Read More »
Tuesday 04 February 2025 During the Spring 2024 semester, I began creating new content for the revised draft of my Katyn manuscript. Originally, this piece was to be a blog intended for my “Professor….” Series. While drafting it, I quickly realized it was becoming a long, very complicated essay exploring cynicism, supposedly, mine. By the
“Professor, Are You Cynical?” Read More »
Tuesday 28 January 2025 “Ten years. Today is my tenth anniversary teaching this war class here,” I began. I started teaching last Wednesday, and I was more nervous than usual. To be honest, I haven’t felt nervous before starting a new semester in years. I felt something more than “first-day jitters.” This mood felt different.
Monday 20 January 2025 I start teaching classes this week. Revising my course assignment requirements and revisiting some poetry and nonfiction that I haven’t taught in years and adding them to my Spring’s reading lists, I am striving for a more effective, streamlined approach to my teaching. While fine-tuning my war classes and their course
Monday 13 January 2025 Last Tuesday (07 January 2025), I started proofreading my revised Katyn manuscript. King Arthur and I both agreed that not much correction to it was needed: modifying verb tenses, shortening and clarifying confusing sentences, providing very BRIEF background information to certain figures or events… in essence no substantial changes. No new
The Revision Diaries: Some Brief Thoughts on Proofreading my Katyn Memoir Manuscript Read More »
Monday 06 January 2025 During the Holidays, I steadily worked on revising my Katyn manuscript’s Dedication and Acknowledgements Pages, two parts of my future Katyn book I waited until the end of my writing journey to complete. As I am about to start the final stage of my writing process (proofreading the revised manuscript) this
Monday 30 December 2024 I am sure that when Herman Melville, Lev Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky were all alive, their writing desks weren’t in the immaculate and orderly conditions they are now when I visited respectively each of the writer’s homes. When these artists were alive and writing, I assume their writing desks looked something
The Revision Diaries: In Praise of a “Messy” Writer’s Desk Read More »
Monday 23 December 2024 I knew from the beginning that I would dedicate my Katyn book to the Polish military and police officers, border agents, and other leading Poles whom the Soviet NKVD murdered during the Katyn Massacres. However, back in July 2007 I didn’t even think doing so would be so complicated for me.
The Revision Diaries: Dedicating a Book Isn’t So Simple Read More »
Monday 16 December 2024 The moment I finish grading the last student’s final exam (Finals Week begins this week), I will return to my Katyn manuscript. Although my slightly younger self would have liked to have had proofread the Summer 2024 revised draft this past September, I am glad I didn’t. I would have rushed
The Revision Diaries: Proofreading Travails Read More »
Monday 09 December 2024 You served as my Katyn manuscript reader. You bore witness when I conceived of the idea of writing a book about the Katyn Massacres and when I revised the manuscript to a memoir, not a scholarly work. You read several different versions of the manuscript: fragments of ideas, working and finished
The Revision Diaries: Interview with King Arthur, My Katyn Manuscript Editor Read More »