This week I clicked my computer keys frantically as I stared down two impending deadlines. Deadlines always seem to plot against my composure. Physically bedraggled, with untamed hair and puffy eyes, my mood is rendered visibly. To forewarn others, I keep a sign near my computer which, on one side, advises "Approach with caution," while the other side requests, "Do not feed or touch the bear."

I am in two writing seminars this quarter: one for grant-writing and the other for the dissertation. These courses provide two things that I have found essential in the writing process: outside readers and people holding me accountable for a writing goal. In addition to the readers in these courses, I have two peers whom I call upon to unravel my prose. One is an English scholar (who happens to be my boyfriend); he is an innovative thinker and an elegant writer. He and I both work on the eighteenth-century, so he is an excellent resource in this regard. He also returns my work in remarkable time. My second reader is a peer in my discipline. He knows quite a bit of gender and performance theory, and often helps me think through the ways the music and performance might be working. In the last few days, I have even been advocating outside readers to my younger colleagues.

Since I work on the Enlightenment, it is nice to cultivate my own Republic of Letters. While we often discuss each other's writing over steaming cups of tea or coffee and flaky croissants, I would imagine the seminar room doesn't have the same opulent atmosphere of an eighteenth-century salon. Yet it can, at times, have the same constructive criticism and polemicism.