I'm going to Tenerife in May to give a talk about Luis Feria, a poet born there in 1927. They are paying my way and hotel plus honorarium. Anyway, they want me to talk for 50 minutes, so that's a good sized article-length piece, which will then be published in the actas of the conference. I thought it would be useful to keep rigorous track of exactly how long it takes to write. (Yesterday, I spent about 2 1/2 hours reading through his poetry, today, 15 minutes writing 200 words that might be the start of an introduction.) I'm guessing it will take 30 hours total, not including thinking about it in the shower and while riding my bike, so what will be interesting is seeing whether this is a low or high estimate, or just about right. It won't have many citations, so that's a plus. I don't know if ideas flow faster or slower to me in Spanish. I suspect Spanish might be slightly faster simply because I have fewer stylistic resources at my disposal--and a less choppy rhythm, more paratactic, such as is the case in Spanish, is conducive to writerly flow.