I Need A Day Off

From the news, not from writing.  I'm going to shut down my computer and not go on it again till Friday morning.   And I'm not going to listen to the radio either.   Not even if I hear from a relative that they've proclaimed the second coming of Mitch. 

Till then. . . 

In case someone wondered what I mean by going through that small book as a quick self-directed course here's what I do.

Type it out, making comments and taking notes along the way,

- put the book on a clip board with clips or clothes pins, or in a holder  (mine's a cookbook holder my sister-in-law bought but my brother decided to get rid of ) to hold it up flat and prop that up where I can see it as I read and type.

- Then, starting at the start of the text,  I read a paragraph twice, then type it out, then read through what I've typed out to correct and check it.  For those writers with a more complex writing style or a book that does, you might find it faster to read it more than twice before typing it out.  David Bentley Hart's writing is an example of that kind of thing, his paragraphs are very long so I don't try to do more than about a page a day with him. 

- then type any questions or thoughts on that paragraph.

Then move to the next one.  

I go by what they claim monks in a scriptorum were able to do and never try to do more than two pages in a day.   Again, more complex text might need to be taken at a slower rate.    I started out writing it out but my hand's can't take that anymore and even with my practice of only writing things out in block capitals, I can read it but no one else is ever going to want to. 

And also never try to have more than two books going at a time, the temptation is to think you can do more than you can.   It's better to go through fewer books better than more books where you're just skimming.    You don't have to finish by the end of the semester, you're not paying anyone or getting paid.  You don't even have to do tests though writing out ideas like in a theme paper might be useful. 

If you have suggestions of how to do it better,  please, tell me.  I'd love to have more efficient ways to do it. 

Schools are increasingly credentialing rackets, not places of education.   Your education is, ultimately, in your own hands. Really, it always has been.  For older books in the public domain, the internet has been a positive boon, especially since many town libraries have more or less given up.  And this way you can take any course you want, whether or not its offered, whether or not it's approved.