Mindful Reading: Boice pp 43-50

Imagination: I was expecting a chapter on unicorns and Knights of the Eyre and flying cars and daydreams where I am the dashing young detective chasing down the kidnapper and saying something dramatic like "And that's how we do justice.... On the streets."

Luckily, Boice has a different perspective on imagination and what it is good for and how it can be used to journey to comfort and fluency. I'll echo one of the comments one of Boice's writers made and say that imagination (especially this 'filing' form of imagination) is important for dissertation writers, but I can definitely see how this might apply to all writers bar-none.

The list on page 45 where Boice describes the HOW of finding imagination was particularly interesting to me. The way he describes the marination between two different things (ideas, texts, artifacts, theories, etc) really struck home with me because I often find myself saying this to my students. I don't want them to completely re-write the book when they're writing, but I do want them to be aware that the simple fact of putting their own perspective on two texts makes it a new idea. This seems like an important fact for me to keep in mind as well. This is exemplified by Boice in #4 in his list on 45, "Integrating new and old materials into files can be aided by playfully casting ideas into types". This play is integral for finding the new (no matter how mundane) in the topic you're collecting materials for.

The other list Boice brings up, the list of methods for bolstering the imaginative impulse, is interesting and a necessary addition for the skeptical reader like me. I was especially interested in this section because that is often one of the blocks that disrupts my regular progress in writing. Finding and reading materials is one thing (sort of an easy thing in this day and age of immediate information accessibility), but the steps between finding and writing about them have always been a little blurry to me. I appreciate this list because Boice gives some practical and concrete suggestions, as well as some more theoretic and abstract. Both of which are very important for me at this point in my process and I plan on coming back to this section again.

***Listening Notes****

Today I was in need of some outside stimuli as I read, but I didn't want anything too lyrical or new. I went back to one of my favorite instrumental bands, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, which features one of the greatest banjo players of all times. If you ever just want some really really good (and quirky) instrumental music, or if you ever want to see someone push the limits of the banjo, check out this band.