Life in Thesis-land : writings

Incarnate

Karen.Hall — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:54:00 GMT

My thesis came to me last night in a dream. My thesis incarnate, I should specify, unlike other dreams about extra chapters in thesis related books or dreaming about the chapter I was writing. Somehow my thesis had taken on human form and was trying to talk to me. She looked like the Empress Jadis, from C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, and the assassin statues on Dr Who a few weeks ago, coming closer and closer. I couldn't hear what she was saying.

I'm pretty sure this is a sign I need to get this thing finished and handed in.

Good Habits

Karen.Hall — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:47:00 GMT

In the quest to find some way to balance the job-thing and finishing-thesis-thing while maintaining some shreds of sanity (don't laugh!) I've decided that the key is good habits. There is no point in pretending that I can manage to live on sugar and caffiene for the next five months, just writing and not sleeping, and doing well at either of the things. So I am aiming for sustainable but solid work practices and balance. So here are my new habits:

Going to the gym again. Having fallen into a gym slump in the absence of my gym buddy - because gossip can motivate me to get out of bed, but machines of torture aka circuit and pump classes cannot - I'm trying to reverse the trend and get to the gym 3 times a week.
Restricted TV watching. As some of my previous frivolous posts might have shown, bad TV has to get pretty bad indeed to stop me watching it. My current scheme requires me to register with Housemate Sister a weekly roster of shows I am allowed to watch, while she has total control of the remote and permission to be Official TV Doorbitch.
A tidy study desk, with all the resources I need on hand. Any junk that tries to move onto the desk has to go to a proper home or the bin.
Blocks of time. Thesis writing time is two hours each weekday evening. That means the two hours have to be done, but also that once they are done I can switch off the computer and go to bed.
Rolling Things To Do List. All the steps that need to be taken to get the thesis done get written down, and eventually crossed off. At the end of each evening's writing time, I select that tasks for the next day from the list. For example, tonight is two paragraphs of writing for Chapter 5, where I've blocked in the topic but haven't written the content, and one paragraph for Chapter 6. Small steps and attainable goals, that's my mantra.
And in a confession of potential New-Age wackiness, I've found that using an oil burner at my desk can help me get into writing headspace. I guess it is a sensory signal to myself to get to work, plus having the candle burning makes me feel like I shouldn't leave the room.

Tour de Thesis

Karen.Hall — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:50:00 GMT

Over the next few weeks, I'm planning to combine two obessions - the thesis and the Tour de France. Much to the amusement of just about everyone who knows me, I've become a Tour fan in the last few years: staying up late to watch the live broadcast on SBS, sharing Tour trivia with anyone silly enough to ask, egging on friends in Europe to stand on the roadside in silly costumes. The amusement comes from the fact that my bicycle is actually more of a habitat for spiders, and in general, I'm not into sport at all.

Nonetheless, I figure that sitting myself in front of the TV with my laptop means that I'll have a regular schedule for writing - and the excuse to make bad analogies between cycling and thesis writing! There will, I think, be more in common with Le Tour de Lounge than the Tour itself.

Day in the Life 5: Some Context

Karen.Hall — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 05:55:00 GMT

I'm staring blankly at the screen, so I figured I might as well start on this next post, in which I plan to talk about the thesis and my writing process.

While I don't want to go too much into specifics - either you the reader won't care, or if you do, I'd rather you read a more polished version - I hope it is enough to say that I'm looking at a particular type of science fiction story, and following it through from the late nineteenth century to the present day, in order to ask questions about genre formation and re-negotiation, as well as about these types of stories. As a way of making this manageable, and because it presents other interesting questions, I'm focusing on print texts and texts by women writers.

At the moment I'm slowly making my way to the finishing line: two chapters are drafted, redrafted and will only need minor work (touch wood) in the final overall editing, another two have been drafted, then ripped apart and redrafted and will need a bit more finalising, one chapter is drafted and with the supervisors, and the last one is - staring back at me from the screen - begin drafted. The structure of my thesis is a little strange - the result, I suppose, of chronic indecisiveness and multiple intellectual and theoretical commitments. It is chronologically organised in the sense that it moves from the beginning of the period I'm studying the the end, but it is also built around thematic foci of genre, memory, space, time and evolution. In practical terms, this has meant three sets of paired chapters, where the first of each pair provides the nuts and bolts account of what is going on in the long nineteenth century, the first half of the twentieth and the second half. This is where my materialist/history of the book side comes out. The second chapter of the pair is the 'thematic' one, where the texts introduced in the previous chapter are explored from a different perspective. Trying to get the balance between the pair right has been the main cause of re-structuring and re-drafting in my thesis process.

Now that I'm on the last chapter, I have a fairly good idea of what it needs to say and do - which, strangely enough, doesn't make it all that more pleasant to write. In the earlier stages, I felt more open to wild ideas, strange connections and just seeing where things would take me. Now, for all that I do feel more competent ('Of course I can write a chapter, I've already done it five times'), I feel a little more hemmed in.

Strangely Enough, I'm In The Zone

Karen.Hall — Wed, 30 May 2007 09:07:00 GMT

'The Zone' - for me - is that semi-mythical space where sentences move from your brain through your fingers and onto the keyboard. It's where thesis work actually happens, where at the end of the day you can stop and look at the x number of words or pages with a sence of accomplishment and a conviction that you can get up and do it again tomorrow, and eventually, everything will be done.

I stopped believing in the zone sometime ago - it was so long since I'd been there I'd forgotten the directions.

But for some reason, today has been different. Despite staying up late and getting up early to get marking done, teaching this morning, detouring to the department for some admin work done, sore neck/shoulders/back/elbows/fingers (yes, I'm planning to go to the physio soon), and eyeballs telling me I've spent too long looking at the screen, I've been in the zone. Chapter Five, bane of my life for the last month, is being rapidly whipped into shape. Despite the pre-emptive editorial notes for myself ([PARAGRAPH NEEDS TO BE PUNCHIER]; [TRANSITION]; [AARGH - CLUNKY] and the deadly FIND REF!!!), another few hours of work should have it coherent enough to hand in to the supervisors as a first draft.

So, what might the landmarks be for finding the zone again? No email. I haven't checked once today, and my god does this help. Good music in the background. And a stuff it, just say something attitude that comes from a lack of sleep, a sense of being over this thing, and a lillte bit of supervisorial fear.

Back to it!

Communities of Research

Karen.Hall — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:54:00 GMT

I'm always fascinated by acknowledgement sections, in books and in theses, as a textual trace of the narratives and experiences underlying the formal, often disembodied, academic writing following that introduction. Seeing the acknowledgements section from a friend's recently submitted thesis emphasised to me how the acknowledgements section is one space where we can talk about the communities of scholarship we participate in, in an affective as well as intellectual way. Another reminder - for me anyway - that research is always embedded in a human context.