My Chiu grant proposal

Thought I'd post my grant proposal for the summer trip to Taiwan. Here's a link to it (on my Academia.edu page).

Writing group falls apart before it begins

Well, that's depressing. A couple of members of our writing group are bowing out because we weren't able to line up our schedules enough for everyone to meet at the same time (even for a once-a-month meeting). Well, it's partly my fault, I'm sure. I have a pretty tight schedule, so I didn't help matters. Maybe we can still email each other and report on our weekly progress. Maybe I can report on my progress here to whomever happens to stumble onto this blog.

Joining a writing group

So I'm sort of signed up with a faculty writing group. I wasn't able to attend the meeting at which the group's plans were discussed (a bad omen, indeed), but they decided that we would email each other each Friday to report on

• time spent writing
• progress made and accomplishments
• challenges faced, and
• plans and goals.

My biggest problem figuring out what to write about the first one is deciding on what counts as writing. Maybe they talked about that at the meeting.

[Update, 1/26/15: Looks like they did.]

Another blog post about writing blog posts

Back in July I wrote something about trying to start up this blog again, but since then it doesn't seem like I've written very much. I guess a lot has happened since then (mainly our son's arrival) that I comment on in other places, like Facebook. I think I will try again to get back to writing here, though. Here are some thoughts on what I might (or might not) write about:

• Maybe I'll write about things that I'm reading (assuming that I get to read anything besides student writing and baby books). I'm currently reading Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference by Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, and I might have some thoughts about that once I get finished.
• My New Year's Resolution is not to go overboard in thinking (and ranting) about Taiwanese politics--that's going to be challenging since we got a TVPad and now I see a lot more Taiwanese news than before--but I might do some writing about Taiwan if I have any thoughts to write about.
• I probably will have some thoughts about Taiwan in relation to George H. Kerr, since I managed to get awarded the grant that I applied for last summer. That grant, from the Chiu Scholarly Exchange Program for Taiwan Research, is going to help fund my trip to Taiwan this coming summer to do some research on Kerr's papers at the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum.
• I probably won't write much about baby-related stuff. There are lots of baby blogs out there and I don't think I will add anything interesting to that discourse. Plus I'm not comfortable posting too much personal stuff here. (I do have a running collection of pictures on my school website in case you want to see pictures of the cutest baby in the world...)
• I probably won't write anything about local academic politics (lack of job security prevents me from doing this...).

OK. So that's a start. I guess I'll have to keep up on this blog now...