Worst blogging partner ever

So, it's Sunday morning, and another week has passed with nary a glance at the files in my dissertation file. I'm feeling a sense of bewilderment. Henceforth, I will not let this feeling dictate my life; I will at the very least blog what is going on. I want to talk more about these questions. What are the motivating questions of my current chapter? If I write them down, will I feel less scared?

While Jeff has been diligently blogging, I've been avoiding. Avoiding blogging, avoiding dissertating, and, oh dear, avoiding even the thought of dissertating. Then I woke up at 4:30 AM and felt the urge to write. It might have felt a bit panicky and anxious, but it was still there: the urge. So, it's an hour and a half later and I still haven't opened a file. And then I realized I could at least blog a couple of paragraphs, and then I could open the file. And then I could feel sure that progress would be made. One word at a time. Also, this week is blog week for me. I will blog my progress each day. March 13: check. March 14: you're mine. I'll check in later.

Jeff: when's the conference? Have you been writing the paper? What have you learned from printing out your chapter? Please report in.

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.

Ice cream deadlines

I really wanted to put a pun in the post title about "marching onward" or something clever, but my best self prevailed. You're welcome.

My goal was to have a chapter drafted by the end of February, and that didn't happen. But it is closer. I still want to have a solid-but-short version ready by the end of this week, which I might count as still part of February since the week started in February, and so that's still technically part of... no? All right, still, I'm hoping for Saturday to have something I can send to my committee and get their feedback about at least my general direction.

As per my last post, I have right now organized my chapter around two major questions. They're loosely tied together, and one of my big struggles is finding the overarching question that links them together and links them with the other chapters. But I haven't written the other chapters, so that glue isn't really connecting right now.

Now, I do know thematically how they're connected: it's the subject of my dissertation after all. But I don't have the Big Question solidly in mind. It's still just subjects and themes and mushy wibbly wobbly stuff. Any questions I write now feel like they're written in melting ice cream. Thus, the chapter I intend to give to my committee this Saturday will be two loosely connected questions and some ice-creamy question that binds them together. Which isn't much of a goal when I write it down that way, but it is a goal and boy howdy do I need someone cracking a whip over me regarding deadlines.

On Saturday I hope to look at my metaphorical whip-cracker and offer her a metaphorical dish of delicious ice cream and we'll smile and, for one evening, enjoy our (Jeni's, so long as I'm imagining I might as well imagine the best) ice cream together.

Something that helped: asking questions

A few days ago, I read Clarissa's basic rules for scholarly writing and found a couple of things worth thinking about. In particular, I found the following section most immediately useful:

Create a specific question you will be answering. The question should begin with an interrogatory word (why, when, how, why, etc.) and end in a question mark. "I'm going to write about Cervantes" or "I'm going to write about Galdos's modernity" are not good essay topics. They will confuse you and create a very watered down, imprecise piece of writing. The best thing to do is to come up with a specific question, write it on a cue card, and stick it in front of the computer screen. Then, every sentence you write should be aimed at answering this particular question and not spread out into other topics.

I realized that I could not answer a specific question about my chapter because I didn't have it boiled down to that point. Since then, I've worked to come up with the right questions that really reflect what I'm doing. And you know what? It's really useful. The chapter organization seems much more logical and imperative, and I have a clearer vision about where it's going. I have a feeling that it will also pay off in the writing itself, but that remains to be seen.

Blogging through the pain

Okay, so the summer was bad for productivity and the fall wasn't much better. And, yet, here we are. With the prospectus passed, I have a momentary feeling of hope and a commitment (once again) to work. To writing. My new deadline is April 21. Chapter One must be in excellent shape by then so I won't feel like I'm submitting complete crap to my co-advisers. They do not like crap. They do not deserve crap. Thus, I will be writing crap and then revising it into something slightly less so. But that means that I need to have it fully drafted into something manageable within about a month. So, March 21, watch out! Here I come...

The work starts tomorrow with some reading and note-taking. Then with some outlining and some planning. I will work in tiny chunks: 1250 words a day is all I need to do to get somewhere. I'm pretty sure that four days a week of 1250 words each day will get me to someplace fairly decent in the span of four weeks. That would mean I could achieve 5000 words a week and 20,000 words in four weeks. If 250 words is approximately one page (double-spaced), then that means I'd have 80 (double-spaced) pages by March 21. Then those 80 pages can be trimmed down to a much sleeker and more stylish 50-60 pages, which hopefully will be met with praise, or at least positive critical encouragement, from my brilliant co-advisers.

But is this a reasonable goal? I don't know. I'll take it one day at a time. Tomorrow is Friday, my first work day of the week after a kind of crazy week with my sister, work, and way too much socializing. Time for some books and quiet and my little happy typing fingers. I still can't believe that all that lies between me and a PEE-AITCH-DEE (and that silly hat) is a bunch of writing. Just me, my books, my laptop, and my advisers. Hoo boy. I feel excited and scared and happy all at once. Lots of positive energy right now, actually. But how long will I be able to ride this wave? I don't know. I'm counting on the blog to help alleviate any pain that arises. Don't fail me now, nonexistent readers. I need you.

And, so, this entry concludes with a brief celebratory moment. Cue confetti! Cue the streamers! Cue the noisemakers! Loud horns of exclamation for Jeff! Raucous banging of the drums for Anne! We're off to the races, folks, and we will be blogging the revolution. Stay tuned for further castle-storming.

My prospectus is done

Yes, it has taken me months, and my high-productivity summer wasn't highly productive. But all is not lost, no friends, all is not lost.

Indeed, I have hurdled the final institutional hurdle between me and full-time dissertating and have successfully submitted my prospectus and have already put it out of my mind. It's like the dream that seemed so real while it lasted, but then dissipates before breakfast.

It's done, so perhaps the less said the better. It was a step of institutional necessity but not one that really provided me much value (to be frank) (maybe I'll change my opinion later, but I'm not banking on it), and I'm glad to be through with it.

But now I feel some (little) exhilaration that is giving me some temporary momentum. I wish I could say it was real momentum, but history has shown me that usually this kind of burst is short-lived. So with that realization, I'm going to do my best to translate as much of it as I can into something more substantial.

And I'm setting ambitious goals. My first goal is a little crazy: I'm going to have my first chapter organized and roughly written by the end of next week. It would be crazier if I hadn't been putting together notes and (rough rough rough) rough draft work for the past six months or so. It will be mostly the work of doing some organization (so I tell myself; we'll see how I feel in a couple of days).

Mostly I need to say welcome back to the blog. Welcome back, Anne; welcome back, Jeff. Now we're off to the races.

I'm still here

So, my summer has begun. Classes ended. Grading ended. One more meeting with a student over a disputed grade, and then I'm done. Done with teaching.

I've been meeting friends everyday to work. We meet at about 8:30 to work at a coffee shop or other study location: Cup O' Joe, Starbucks, Caribou, or library. Today it's the library. My friend, who is almost done with her dissertation, has been helping me break down the prospectus into tiny chunks. Which I need to do. Because I can only write in tiny chunks. Little pieces. Bits. Nuggets. Morsels.

Now I'm hungry.

Okay, so today I'm going to just answer questions that I've posed for myself. Then I will proceed to setting up my critical overview. Then I will describe my project. Then I will explain specific chapters.

Yeah.

I am dissertation writer; hear me roar.

Yesterday I wrote five-and-a-half pages on a manual typewriter. They were useful and there's a good bit of useful stuff in there, but mostly I recast my whole argument for one chapter in those pages. Perhaps "recast" is too strong of a word, since it implies that my previous thinking included an argument that was worthy of being called an argument. Rather, I took my vaguely argument-like idea for one chapter and thought it through over the course of five-and-a-half pages and came out with something that feels good: an argument that's worthy of a chapter. It still needs refinement, but I feel like I can move forward with that chapter now with much, much more facility.

What? Me slacking?

Actually, it hasn't been as bad as all that. But I'm in a good mood now and so I'm being pretty self-forgiving. Probably too much so.

I have been writing, but not in any organized, forward-moving way. I've mostly been writing around my dissertation topic, trying to really get a grip on what I'm writing about. It's useful, I'm sure, but I think I need to get over the idea that my prospectus needs to be in any way accurate. It just needs to be plausible.

Like I tell my students, they don't need to discover some new Truth when writing a paper; it just has to hold together and be supportable in the text. Beyond that, anything goes. For the dissertation I think the standards are a little higher, but only a little. And for the prospectus, it needs even less than that. Or something.

Also, grading. As of this morning at 1:30, I am caught up. But that's going to change on Thursday when they turn in their final papers. Between now and Thursday, however, I've got no excuses. Plus, I bought a new (old) desk on Craigslist and now I'm even higher on the productivity scale. Look at me now, I've graduated from the folding table to the $25 recycled desk that really, really needs to be refinished. But it's sturdy as the earth itself, made of solid oak, and might be older than my parents. Lovely.

My next report will have some specifics, because I'm going to keep track with real numbers: hours and pages and tigers, oh my! You want specifics? Too bad, I'm going to give them to you anyway. Because I'm unstoppable, that's why. Cue "Eye of the Tiger", ready Steadicam, places everyone: action.

Great new source of inspiration via facebook/twitter

http://twitter.com/search?q=%23TeamAchieve

Weeks later

So, I'm not sure what happened but the last couple of weeks disappeared. I freaked out over my prospectus last Wednesday. Now, I'm not freaking out, but I'm still feeling stuck. And the grading! I've successfully procrastinated it for two weeks now! That's awful. Today, I will plunge in and do as much as possible. I want to just be done.

Also, teaching has been pretty awful for the last couple of days. My students hate the last book I've chosen for them to read (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth), which really sucks. They have either not been reading or do not care that I'm suffering in front of them trying to talk about this hugely complex book. Discussion has been dead. Dead! What happened to my wonderful class? They have exited the building. I'm left with a bunch of duds.

Okay, it's 10:17 a.m. Can I finish grading by 8 p.m. and still have time to work on my prospectus?

Oh, right: I'm supposed to be writing now.

I'll be honest: I'm having something of a struggle getting into a rhythm now that my exams are done. I've been so focused on them for so long that the process of churning out intelligent prose seems daunting, even a little overwhelming. Or a lot overwhelming.

Plus, you know, there's grading. Which is going slowly and isn't being helped by my attitude and isn't being helped by the only way I can motivate myself sometimes is to keep a little window open to Netflix so I can watch something half-brainless.[1] I strive for 2 papers per episode, but when I'm tired that goes down to 1 paper per episode. If it goes longer than that, it's time to either (a) turn off the show, or (b) stop grading. Usually B.

But a whole day of grading-plus-dumb-TV makes for a really unsatisfying life. I find myself going to bed feeling crappy about myself and about my work and about the organization of books on my shelf and about the music on my iPhone and about, well, everything. If I write, well then, then I feel much better.

I've written just about every day (except yesterday. Yesterday was not good), but a few days it has been only for five minutes and it hasn't been any writing that really gets me anywhere. It's on topic, at least, but it's mostly high-level, thinking-about-the-big-issues stuff. Important, sure, but I can do that kind of writing all day long and never actually get anywhere. To really feel good, to know that I'm moving forward, I need to sit down and spread out some books and some notes and write something with substance, something that's attached to my primary texts or at least to significant scholarship.

I did some of that this morning. I wrote about a page for my prospectus (the intro section where I lay out the big picture and the theoretical framework and the scholarship to date) that counts as that kind of writing. It'll surely get revised down to about two sentences, but it is something. And it felt good.

So my progress for the week so far is one page of purposeful, happy writing and a few handwritten pages of mushy meandering writing/thinking. I've also just about finished reading a scholarly book and have waded through the numerous introductions leading up to a primary work I've recently added to my stable of primary works under consideration.



NOTES

[1] My half-brainless stuff-to-watch-while-grading used to be Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but I've now watched every episode on Netflix. I've started watching Bones, but it's not as good as L&O:CI. In fact, Bones is pretty dumb and it is both simplistic and condescending at the same time. But it is nice to have Emily Deschanel on screen.

Please let the grading end

I read a little tiny bit this morning before going to tutor. That was it. Then I graded. And graded. And avoided grading.

I will write tomorrow.

Tuesday means seminar day

On Tuesdays I go to my dissertation seminar. To prepare, I read and comment on documents submitted by other graduate students. In many ways, this has been helpful to me because it helps demystifies the process of writing. I see that no one writes a perfect first or second draft. There is always room for improvement, even for the most brilliant writers in the group.

But other days it feels disheartening: so many people are so much further along and have come up with such great ideas. I try so hard not to compare myself, my writing, or my project to others or their work, but it's hard. I question everything: have I chosen the right field? Will I ever come up with a project that makes any sense? Do I have anything to say?

I know this is all very unproductive, so I'm not going to dwell on this. I'm tired. It was a long day. I taught (successfully) this morning, had several appointments with students, and then prepared for dissertation seminar. Days at work are difficult. I can't get much work done in my office because I know too many people. Too many people want to talk, and while I love all the interactions, this also prevents me from getting more work done. By the time I get home, I am exhausted.

Tomorrow I do two hours of volunteer work in the morning and finish grading the exams my students took last Thursday. But before that, I will spend at least one hour in the morning working on my prospectus. That's a firm commitment.

Friday a bust, Saturday better, Sunday doesn't count, Monday disappeared

So, it's almost midnight, and I teach first thing Tuesday morning (yes, that means 7:30 a.m.). I have prepared my lesson plan for tomorrow and graded about one-quarter of the total midterms that I need to have graded by Thursday. It was a total waste of a day for writing. And, really, so was Friday. I just could not write. Well, on Friday at least I tried. Today I didn't even attempt it. I woke up with a headache (gack! humidity! you will be the death of me!) and then went back to bed, woke up again and felt like I was still asleep. I managed to grade a few exams, go into school to administer one last exam, and then prepared to teach poetry tomorrow. And that was pretty much the day. How did it go by so quickly?

Luckily, Saturday was a much needed day of work and progress. I actually opened my Word doc and actually typed some sentences, cut some other sentences, discussed my plan with a fellow PhD student. It was all rather refreshing. So, the key on Saturday to progress was: leave the house, meet up with a fellow dissertator, don't plan to do any teaching-related work, and don't have high expectations. I just planned to look at the document, and--lo and behold!--I actually did more than just look. I managed to think through the possibilities of various chapters and organization and all that jazz.

Wow. So, I'm learning. Slowly, but surely, I'm learning that like Jeff, I need to work on my stuff first or it will never get done. Mornings are going to be the key. Leaving the house and going to a cafe or the library might also be important elements. Working with another dedicated writer might also help. All these things are going into my toolbox.

Okay, off to bed and on to another day of work (mostly teaching, office hours, and dissertation seminar tomorrow, sadly).

Jeff's results for Friday, May 14

What happened? Somehow the day disappeared swamp of sloshing muck. I ran a few errands, took care of things around the house, and, well, that's about it. I did some reading for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Writing-wise, I might have put down two sentences, but I can't remember where or, frankly, what they were about. Maybe they were something I dreamed about during my nap.

I had some half-hopes to get a little done before bed, but I was called away before 9pm to watch some friends' kids while they were at the emergency room with another child. That took me to 2:30am, which has thus thrown off my plan for today (Saturday). Dang it, I need to exercise some more control than this.

I'm starting to learn (emotionally; because it's pretty obvious to my rational brain) that writing first thing in the morning really is important, if only because it'll help me avoid days like Friday. For now, enough. I'm going to stop reading about the books that influenced the writers of Lost[1] and I'm going to go read a few pages of Crawford's Blood, Bodies, and Families in Early Modern England.


NOTES

[1] Which I stopped watching a couple of years ago because it felt like it had descended too far into absurdity. It sounds like I left when things were still pretty normal. Sheesh, who wants to work so hard just to watch TV?

Anne's big goals

So, after getting behind in my studies (two years behind?), I want to see if I can make up some of that time this summer by being an incredibly diligent dissertator. Like Jeff, I have to write my prospectus first. I'm still figuring that out, but it seems like it needs to be a good, solid document that allows me to have fairly sure footing about how I proceed to writing the first of the many (four? five?) chapters that will certainly make up my dissertation.

I am the biggest procrastinator ever, and I have major writing anxiety, so I hope that this blog will give me motivation to write every day and help me work out my anxieties about putting the pen to paper (or, the fingers to the keyboard, as we do).

This was my first week of a really open schedule in which I could have written every day and didn't. Instead, I did everything else possible. I took care of a stray cat, washed dishes, chased the ants around my kitchen, did several loads of laundry, ate cookies, fretted about my new job's low wages, napped, worried about my student's mid-term exam. And other stuff that's too banal to list here. It was also the first week in which my partner was out of the house everyday. He started work in Dayton for the summer, which means I am without a car but have gained an empty house, which should be perfect for writing and reading, right? Well, it wasn't perfect by any means. I got a headache; I got overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. I may have to begin going to the library to work. Home is full of domestic temptations. And a nice bed that is way too perfect for naps. On the other hand, I have all my snacks and hot tea and books here. And I don't have to lug it all on my back when I want to work. I can just clear off my desk (aka dining room table) and get to work. Or something.

Well, like Jeff, I would like to accomplish between 70 and 80 pages this summer, which means not only about 5 pages a week, but also means a lot of writing and note-taking and thinking. Please let my brain work this summer! Please let me have brilliant ideas! Or even mediocre ones that can be formed into sentences.

Fortunately, it's only 1 p.m., so I still have time to be productive. I have an appointment at 4 p.m., so I will read and take notes for my prospectus until then. A report to follow later today or tomorrow.

Jeff's goals: the big picture

Right now I'm looking at a target rate of only 4.5 pages per week to hit my big goal of 80 pages[1] before the Fall term begins. I wish I could just sit down and bang out a page a day and call it good, but sadly there's a lot more to it than that.

Sometimes I wish I were just writing a novel and could do just that. Then again, I've tried to write a novel and discovered that it's hard, hard work. So sometimes I wish I were writing a novel until I remember how hard it is to write a novel and then I recognize that both kinds of writing are harder than they look.[2] I need to remind myself of that, often, so I don't get caught up in the self-loathing that is pretty typical for me.

Then there's the other little problem that I don't yet have my prospectus done and accepted. So I need to write that first, and then perhaps recalculate my pages-per-week. Which is kind of a bummer, because I find the 4.5 pages per week a pretty comforting number. And nothing says that I have to wait until the prospectus is finished before I start writing the parts that are unlikely to be changed by my committee. That's the plan, at least.

Honestly, for now my goal is just to write consistently and make nearly perpetual progress. If I'm writing every day, then I'm getting closer. The faster I write, the faster I finish.

Hm: "the faster I write, the faster I finish" sounds like a good mantra for this week. I think that's going onto a sticky note on my monitor, so's I don't forget.[3]


NOTES
[1] My real goal is two chapters, each about 35-40 pages each. If I get two 35-page chapters completed, I'll consider my goal met.

[2] I'm not sure that's a true statement either. No one looks at a guy writing a dissertation and says, "that looks so easy! I'm sure I could do better than that."

[3] I'm stymied by that phrase: how do you write it? "So as I won't forget" is too slow and stilted. But "Sos I don't forget" looks funny. Then again, maybe I'm the only person who says that, and maybe it only works verbally. Sometimes language is a stinker.