Sobriquet 38.15

The following post was originally published on 1/15/08.

It's nice to be getting ready for bed at 1:45 when I'd been going to bed at three or four in the morning the past few weeks. I really hate waking up at six in the morning, but it does help regulate my schedule considerably. In any case, I did not expect to get a whole lot done today since it was my first day teaching at a new school, in a new town, with new students, and new material, but I managed to get some reading done during my downtime on campus and, despite a enjoying a nap that took up most of the afternoon, I did read a few more chapters in The Master of Petersburg. I also wrote two more pages of the dissertation, making today, by far, the most productive day I've had in quite a while. So, um, yay for me, or something.

I am happy to report that the first section (of two) on Age of Iron is done. I'm not terribly fond of it, to tell the truth, but I think it serves its purpose in introducing the second, more important, section of the piece on the novel. If anything, I think I have learned that I will need to do some additional pre-writing for each mini-section. I really felt myself floundering at times with the first bit, even though the section came out more or less tolerably. I think that if I spend some time tomorrow ironing out a detailed outline, this section should go more smoothly than the last.

The same old fears have been plaguing me, too. The big one, now, is that what I am writing is not good enough to be a dissertation. Not that I have any real idea of what would be judged "good enough," but I always worry that my work is substandard in some way. Again, I suspect that once my adviser takes a look at what I have done, once she gives me her impressions, I should have a better idea about where I stand. Until I get enough written to be worth reading, though, I suppose I will have to wrestle with the doubts. In any case, I reason, even if this first section is not my strongest work, I can rewrite it, tweak it, or otherwise rework it to fit with the pages that follow but, if anything, it marks the beginning of the dissertation, a crucial step I had been terrified of taking for as long as I can remember. So, I guess, something good has already come of the experience and, with my new approach to planning, it may have more than one positive result. We'll see.

For tomorrow: Read another twenty pages or so in The Master of Petersburg, work on planning the next mini-section of the dissertation, and get the work I need to do for Wednesday's classes finished.