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.

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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.