I managed to squeeze out a tiny bit more writing this evening and, again, I am not sure how I feel about it. Some of what I have written strikes me as decent, even solid scholarship, but I cannot help but shake the feeling that, at least in a few places, what I have written is superfluous. True, I am introducing my subject, so contextualizing my study will necessarily take me beyond that subject. Still, I feel uneasy about some stuff I've been working with, even though, in reality, it's probably not that bad at all.
I had a really hard time getting myself out of bed this morning. In fact, I had a hard time getting myself to do much of anything today: I struggled to get out of bed, I took nearly two hours to get myself out of my apartment once I had gotten out of bed, and I had a difficult time focusing on my reading when I got myself to the cafe at which I had hoped to make a bit of progress. In the end, I did manage to get a tiny bit of writing done, most of which seems at least consistent, quality-wise, with what I have been writing lately. I was actually planning on writing some more before going to bed tonight but, after having composed a few lines, I find myself too sleepy to maintain the sort of focus I would need to produce anything worth reading, so I am going to call it a night fairly early and try to use tomorrow to get some more work done.
As I have mentioned several times previously, I am really struggling with the introduction. I continue to find myself disoriented by a mode of writing that is both similar to and different from the sort of prose I've been writing all along. It is academic, of course, so I am still in scholar-mode, but it is also less critical, which means I have to shift gear to a more general form of writing that, at times, feels alien to me. I mean, I am used to doing lots and lots of very specific research and analysis in preparation for my writing and, while the introduction certainly requires both, the type of research and mode of analysis are just different enough to disorient me a bit. The other very big problem I have been having is that I am so profoundly burnt out (this is the perfective "burnt out" now, which should be distinguished from the less total "burned out") that even the simplest of tasks (reading over criticism, prewriting, taking notes) have become excruciating ordeals for me.
Then again, I keep reminding myself, my supervisor has rather explicitly told me that I need not devote nearly as much preparation time nor as much mental energy on the introduction because, as I have said, the very mode of writing does not demand the same sort of rigor with which I approached previously-written (i.e., subsequent) chapters. But this knowledge causes problems for me, too: I cannot seem to avoid taking the same approach as I have been taking all along yet I lack the energy to do so.
I did a little bit more writing this evening, which brought me to about half the minimum suggested length of the introduction. Today's writing did go a bit more smoothly than yesterday's, too, so I am almost feeling satisfied with myself tonight.
Since I would like to do a bit of re-reading before proceeding with the rest of this mini-section, I may not do any additional writing this weekend, though I would certainly prefer to do so...
I began writing the next mini-section of my introduction this evening and, while I am not especially enamored with it, it is nice to have gotten a bit of work done.
I'm still feeling pretty burned out, which is probably to be expected when one has worked on something every single day for more than two years. Still, I suspect the burnout runs a bit deeper than that. I mean, I felt burnt out after my first year as a master's student in 2002, and have felt as if I were running on fumes for the past seven years. I suppose it's rather like a too-perfectly-scripted movie: the car runs out of gas and has to drift, slower and slower, towards the ultimate destination, which it hits just as it stops moving...
I finished what I hope is the second mini-section of my introduction this evening and, after having spent far more time writing and rewriting what is, actually, one of the least important bits of prose in my entire dissertation, I am ready to move on to the next mini-section. But I am frustrated with things again. I am largely dissatisfied with what I have written and, while I doubt there is much I can do to improve it (I mean, really, there's only so much one can do with an introduction), I cannot seem to let go of what I have just done. I keep feeling like I want to do something more to improve the damn thing when, really, I need to just move on. I suspect that a huge part of the problem is that, having already said everything I wanted to say in the body of the dissertation, the introduction feels extraneous. I mean, I understand its function, but, since I am not adding to or building upon anything I have already written, I find it uninteresting. What worries me most about this feeling is that I do not want it to affect the way that I write the introduction because, while it may be old-hat to me, it serves a very real and very important purpose for my readers.
Or maybe I'm just growing impatient with the end of the project so near at hand. I feel like I am done, ready to defend the dissertation, but I still need to finish writing it. The introduction, in other words, feels like a technicality...
I haven't been having the most productive of stretches. I had hoped to finish rereading Coetzee's Youth a day or two ago, but I found it remarkably difficult to focus on reading. Part of this difficulty has no doubt been the result of readjusting myself mentally to the routine of a new semester, which can be challenging for an individual like myself, who eschews waking up early in the morning yet regularly ends up with early-morning classes...
At any rate, I have done more socializing over the past couple of days than I have in quite a while, which took up most of my weekend. This included an epic two-hour chess match (epic in length, I should say; neither I nor my opponent are particularly good at the game), a few nice meals, a lot of wonderful conversation, a bunch of music, some movies, and more conversation. The socializing I have enjoyed these past couple of days, fortunately, seems to have invigorated me a little bit and I finally made some real headway in my reading this evening. I intend to continue reading for a while this evening before going to bed and, hopefully, I can start February off on a positive note.
Since it is getting late (by school night standards, that is) and I have only done a little reading for my dissertation, I will not spend a whole lot of time writing tonight and, instead, try to read some more before going to sleep.
One of the biggest worries I had coming into the semester has been a concern for how working five days a week would affect my dissertation schedule. For the past two years, I have worked very long (my days would often exceed fourteen hours) Tuesdays and Thursdays so that I could secure long weekends for writing. Sometimes this strategy worked wonderfully, giving me a regular pattern of school-free clusters during which I could research and write my dissertation. Other times, working fourteen hours and driving two hundred miles twice weekly would result in my sleeping through a significant portion of Wednesdays and Fridays. So it had its ups and its downs. This term, as I have mentioned, I am working five days each week, just like a normal person. Only my work days will involve no more than seven hours of my time, driving included.
It's odd. I feel like I have less time because I have fewer "off" days, but I'm also unaccustomed to finishing work by, say, two in the afternoon, relaxing for a while at home, napping for a couple of hours, and waking up as fresh as the proverbial daisy, all ready to sit down and write. But that's exactly how today panned out for me. I ended up revising the paragraph I had written a couple of days ago and with which I had found so much fault yesterday. It is now two longer paragraphs with which I find significantly less fault, so I am closer to feeling satisfied with myself than I felt yesterday.
Like I said, naps are beautiful, beautiful things sometimes.
Still, now that I have elaborated this one particular sub-section, I feel the distinct need to expand the concluding bit of this mini-section of the chapter before moving on, so I may spend the next day or two preparing to do just that. Either way, I have made some progress and am, for better or worse, that much closer to being finished with this monstrosity of a dissertation!
I'm going to be brief this evening because I really want to get a little bit of reading done before I go to bed. I am currently working on plotting out the next mini-section of my introduction, so my reading is largely a review of material with which I am already familiar. While this makes it easier to read, it also makes it more difficult for me to focus because I have a nagging sense of "I know this already!" drawing my attention away from the task at hand.
One thing worth noting is that I have been quite uncomfortable with some of what I wrote yesterday and I may have to delete, rewrite, or otherwise heavily edit the offending bit of text before I can even feign satisfaction with the chapter. I hope to work on that tomorrow.
For tomorrow: Prepare for the next mini-section and/or address the unsatisfactory passage.
I am thoroughly exhausted at the moment. It's 1:30 in the morning and I have been working, more or less constantly, for ten consecutive hours. The majority of the time went into designing the syllabi for the four courses I will be teaching this semester, though I did set aside a solid chunk of time to devote to writing my introduction. I have finished the first mini-section, which is nice, though each subsequent mini-section will be more difficult, so I do not feel particularly accomplished yet. The doubts about the quality of my writing have begun pestering me already, though.
For tomorrow: Begin preparing for the next mini-section.
