dissertation woes redux
In light of my sort of horrendous problem (ie, that a 2011 book has left me with nothing to say - because oh yes, come to find out, my plan to start with homilies instead since she discusses everything else is out, because she discusses my homilies too), I am in a horrible, horrible writing place. The plan was to have two chapters to my committee by the end of the month. At this point, since I have absolutely no plan for chapter two (I have nothing to say about AS ontology that hasn't been said now), I will be personally ok with only having one chapter to the committee by the end of hte month, though god only knows what this will do to the rest of my schedule and to the whole "finish diss in spring" plan.
I am trying really hard to stay positive and just keep writing, but this has made my natural tendency to go "I'm not ready to start writing yet because I still have fifteen more articles to read/three more monographs to outline/four more dissertations to obtain/one more dead language to learn/etc" even worse than usual. But I also know that I never really know what I'm going to say/where I'm going to arrive until I am actually writing, like writing in such a way that i'm organizing things and making transitions (I have a "chapter one sandbox" file that is 23 single spaced pages of unconnected stuff, and it does not contain even one third of my marginalia from reading over the last year and a half, nor does it contain any translations, which take up lots of space, nor does it contain a definite, clean outline or argument. I have countless bursts of thinking in notebook margins, text files, and post it notes that are scattered all over the freakin' living room and computer. It will be the work of a solid week just to collect all of that, and that's optimistic, and that's even if I don't read another iota of secondary stuff or translate another line of OE. I am messy as hell. But I hope this means that if I actually start stringing things into proper prose form then something will emerge, some hail mary moment will happen. I mean, it freakin' HAS TO.)
I guess a big stubmling block is that my starting place was going to be "everybody is framing the discussion in binary/dualistic terms, and here is how that doesn't work and here is how that framework/preconception helps us miss all this other stuff, and then here is some cool other stuff that we can think about in these new terms I'm framing." I figured I'd arrive at something a little better than that after I actually started stringing paragraphs together. But now I don't know how to start, because now everybody is NOT framing the discussion in binary/dualistic terms - this really important, brilliant book has just come out and I don't have time to thoroughly read and grok it before my draft needs to be done. I just really don't know what the hell to do, but I MUST have a chapter draft this month, AND I have to give a conference paper on this chapter draft in less than a month.
So for the first time ever, really, in any research project, I actually had a pretty solid idea of where I was going before I got a bunch of stuff properly written. I mean, I could tell you what I was going to argue, even though i was pretty sure I still had some surprises in store for myself that would emerge, and I had a bunch of loosely connected stuff I had to sort through and some of it would end up not fitting in. But now, I cannot tell you what I am arguing or doing that has not already been done.
What in the hell do I DO?!
God, I wish I hadn't gotten my hands on that book until I had the stupid chapter actually written. This has never happened to me when I've been so far along and invested in a project before. And I don't even want to think about a writing sample right now for job applications - that is a whole 'nother freakout (and now, a not-insignificant problem. I mean, my forthcoming thing is absolutely related to this work, but the version of it that is [supposedly] forthcoming [for a quarterly, the journal is taking *forever* to actually print it] has most of the medieval and most of the apocrypha and most of the theology stripped out of it, and it's been reframed to speak to a few current issues in early modern scholarship right now. It seems silly to apply for medieval jobs wtih an early modern writing sample, but given that a lot of the prose I've already worked out in the form of the prospectus and assorted bits is now redundant and may not even be in the diss, I really don't have any other good options. I guess I could dust off a Chaucer piece I have on the burner, but wouldn't it look screwed up NOT to send a writing sample from a diss? Or am I being stupid? I mean, if the forthcoming article were on medieval *anything* I wouldn't sweat it if it weren't from the diss. This will actually be in the diss, but it's the END of the diss, and a lot of other stuff that is not in great prose shape yet has to be polished first AND the piece slightly reframed in order to "fit" with the previous chapters. Also, the Chaucer piece may actually be a piece of shit and/or dumb and/or ill-informed - I'm apparently no judge of my own writing at all.)
Please don't tell me to ask my advisor. I won't go into that in an unfiltered post, but that is not helpful advice.
Man this sucks.
I am trying really hard to stay positive and just keep writing, but this has made my natural tendency to go "I'm not ready to start writing yet because I still have fifteen more articles to read/three more monographs to outline/four more dissertations to obtain/one more dead language to learn/etc" even worse than usual. But I also know that I never really know what I'm going to say/where I'm going to arrive until I am actually writing, like writing in such a way that i'm organizing things and making transitions (I have a "chapter one sandbox" file that is 23 single spaced pages of unconnected stuff, and it does not contain even one third of my marginalia from reading over the last year and a half, nor does it contain any translations, which take up lots of space, nor does it contain a definite, clean outline or argument. I have countless bursts of thinking in notebook margins, text files, and post it notes that are scattered all over the freakin' living room and computer. It will be the work of a solid week just to collect all of that, and that's optimistic, and that's even if I don't read another iota of secondary stuff or translate another line of OE. I am messy as hell. But I hope this means that if I actually start stringing things into proper prose form then something will emerge, some hail mary moment will happen. I mean, it freakin' HAS TO.)
I guess a big stubmling block is that my starting place was going to be "everybody is framing the discussion in binary/dualistic terms, and here is how that doesn't work and here is how that framework/preconception helps us miss all this other stuff, and then here is some cool other stuff that we can think about in these new terms I'm framing." I figured I'd arrive at something a little better than that after I actually started stringing paragraphs together. But now I don't know how to start, because now everybody is NOT framing the discussion in binary/dualistic terms - this really important, brilliant book has just come out and I don't have time to thoroughly read and grok it before my draft needs to be done. I just really don't know what the hell to do, but I MUST have a chapter draft this month, AND I have to give a conference paper on this chapter draft in less than a month.
So for the first time ever, really, in any research project, I actually had a pretty solid idea of where I was going before I got a bunch of stuff properly written. I mean, I could tell you what I was going to argue, even though i was pretty sure I still had some surprises in store for myself that would emerge, and I had a bunch of loosely connected stuff I had to sort through and some of it would end up not fitting in. But now, I cannot tell you what I am arguing or doing that has not already been done.
What in the hell do I DO?!
God, I wish I hadn't gotten my hands on that book until I had the stupid chapter actually written. This has never happened to me when I've been so far along and invested in a project before. And I don't even want to think about a writing sample right now for job applications - that is a whole 'nother freakout (and now, a not-insignificant problem. I mean, my forthcoming thing is absolutely related to this work, but the version of it that is [supposedly] forthcoming [for a quarterly, the journal is taking *forever* to actually print it] has most of the medieval and most of the apocrypha and most of the theology stripped out of it, and it's been reframed to speak to a few current issues in early modern scholarship right now. It seems silly to apply for medieval jobs wtih an early modern writing sample, but given that a lot of the prose I've already worked out in the form of the prospectus and assorted bits is now redundant and may not even be in the diss, I really don't have any other good options. I guess I could dust off a Chaucer piece I have on the burner, but wouldn't it look screwed up NOT to send a writing sample from a diss? Or am I being stupid? I mean, if the forthcoming article were on medieval *anything* I wouldn't sweat it if it weren't from the diss. This will actually be in the diss, but it's the END of the diss, and a lot of other stuff that is not in great prose shape yet has to be polished first AND the piece slightly reframed in order to "fit" with the previous chapters. Also, the Chaucer piece may actually be a piece of shit and/or dumb and/or ill-informed - I'm apparently no judge of my own writing at all.)
Please don't tell me to ask my advisor. I won't go into that in an unfiltered post, but that is not helpful advice.
Man this sucks.