Fifteen pages

I just printed out my "draft" of my first chapter, the one I keep hoping to get knocked into enough to shape to show my committee. It came in at fifteen pages--fifteen messy, disorganized, and sloppy pages. There are still some "INSERT CORRECT DATE HERE" type statements, even where I give the correct date four pages later. And more than a third of my subheads (which I use for writing, but won't show up in the finished document) say "write something here about this." Sloppy, sloppy stuff. I can barely stand to read it myself, so there's no way I'm showing it to my committee. Plus, there's no really coherent argument yet, even though I have one in mind. Somehow that transition from "in my head" to "on the page" hasn't happened yet.

But I've printed it up so I can work it over on paper. I'm hoping that the format change will spark some highly-motivated fire in my belly. At least it'll get me away from the devil computer. (Sometimes computers are to me what cachaça[1] is to a Brazillian drunk.)

PLUS, I've got a conference presentation in a couple of weeks and I haven't started that paper yet. Yes: haven't started. It's the foundation (kinda) of my next chapter, though I might just do some fiat and change my vision of my dissertation so that it becomes the chapter. Well, the paper plus twenty pages.

Still, there's small progress (slow, painful progress).

NOTES:

[1] Since you're probably never been to Brazil, take my word for it that in Brazil cachaça is cheap, strong liquor. Think of Everclear at $3 a bottle. Every drunk I ever met in Brazil had cachaça oozing from his pores.