No posts for a while, but for a good reason: around four days ago, I hit the point in The Chapter That Would Not Die where I could start to see the argument emerge. So, for the past few days, the pages have slowly been transforming from the stage that my friend and colleague C. refers to as "verbal vomit" to an actual chapter with a real live argument, and I'm beginning to have a bit of hope. I should have a semi-respectable draft within the next 48 hours.
Along the way, the revision process has involved pulling apart old material from the dissertation (four years ago now!), trying to make it play nicely with new material from recent archival trips, incorporating secondary research, providing some cogent analysis, and above all, trying to thread through (or even remember!) the overall theme of the book as a whole. What's this process like? Well, you know:
3 comments:
I was hoping there would be some sort of dance...you know, like SDB's "Turkey-herding Dance."
Oh, thank you for the link! I laughed and immediately zapped it on to like-minded friends.
Your current work sounds a lot like my own; only I'm digging further back (yikes, 8 years). And I'm not at the writing point, so you GO girl!
@ Hil -- oh god. That can *still* make me laugh, and I didn't even see it firsthand. Then again, I've learned firsthand that one will do some pretty weird stuff in front of a classroom, just from the adrenaline high.
@ Belle -- this is one of my old favorites. It's just so wonderfully deadpan and surreal at the same time.
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