My Progress and Questions for Safiak

So, I had started feeling a bit panicked about my lack of progress. Mostly, I was nervous about how distant I was feeling from my topic, and I was starting to worry that I'd have a hard time starting the engines again or that I would have lost a lot of ground (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

But yesterday, I spent a couple of hours writing and editing, and I wasn't quite as rusty as I thought. I think a lot of my ideas and some of my research is still in my brain. Yes, I will have to go back over sources and re-read, but I've only fallen one of two steps back. This experience does make me realize that I need to do more note-taking, free-writing after each article/chapter that I read. I did that for the first piece I wrote last June, and it really helped. This fall, I was reading a lot of books, and I think I was overwhelmed by all of the info, so I didn't take many notes. Well, to clarify, I wrote down a lot of quotations, but I didn't write much about my own reactions to the texts and quotations. I need to get back to doing that since those notes can really turn into valuable text.

But so yesterday I wrote about 1000 words and was very happy. They aren't all good words, and they are a bit quote heavy, but it's progress.

So, SafiaK, how are things going with all of your deadlines? How is the conference stuff shaping up? What's the title of your paper?

Prospectus, Here I Come!

I've been puzzling over my dissertation topic lately, and I've been trying to write through possibilities and ideas I've got rumbling around in my head. I think I finally got to something close to what I want to do (even though it needs a clearer focus and the wording needs to be much, much more precise). Here's an excerpt from my freewriting today:

In thinking about a ‘so what?’ I need to remember my audience. I’m primarily writing for Renaissance scholars, and maybe for others with literary interests and training. My ‘so what’ doesn’t have to make the work totally relevant to today’s youth, for instance. I don’t have to make those kinds of stretches. I think my ‘so what’ will actually show up in response to other works.  For instance, “I’m considering the topic of women’s authority because I want to show that women had special authorities that worked synergistically to enable the category of women rulers so that people can understand that female autonomy was not fully limited nor defined by men, but exceeded the social definitions.” That actually sounds pretty good (even though it's not what I'm really trying to say). I think I’m at my best in responding to others or situating my work in a context (once I find what that context is). I do think I’ll have a section called “The Christian Woman,” “The Political Woman,” “The Domestic Woman.”  I’ll look at how social networks, and controlling those social networks enabled women to have a particularized power/authority/autonomy that took her out of the prescribed role as functioning only in the non-public sphere. And how the power granted in each particular case could translate through metaphors into the other spheres, culminating in the image of Elizabeth as “Mother of England, Christian Prince.”

Good Luck, SafiaK! (and a not so surprising reflection on reading)

SafiaK, good luck with all those upcoming deadlines. I imagine you feverishly working on your conference paper and application. You'll do fabulously.

I rediscovered again last night (I rediscover this often) that I really, really love to read. I'm trying to blaze through Sidney's Old Arcadia, and it's difficult to read quickly because it's just so fascinating. When I'm not actually reading and not actually writing, I forget how much I love it. I think I may institute a 5-pages-a-day reading quota (along with my 15-min.-a-day writing quota) just to keep the activity of scholarship consistent, to remind myself daily how much I (can) love what I do. (And maybe, just possibly, to keep the fear at bay.)

Dear Supervisor

Here is part of the message I just sent to my supervisor. I copied it here to share with you:

Dear Supervisor,

I’ve been intimidated by this next bit of writing I need to do, and I’m afraid I’m going to writing something that’s not very good and that I’ll embarrass myself and that you’ll think I’m stupid. It might be of tremendous help to me if you could give me “permission” to write something that might not be very good—just so I can get some things on paper—and if you could reassure me that you’ll try not to think I’m stupid. I keep feeling as if I need to read more, to know more, before I write, but that feeling might go on for ever, so I need to just do it. This means I will certainly have holes in my knowledge base.

Would that be okay? If I give you something that might be mediocre or even bad? Then I can revise and move forward as necessary.

Sincerely,
Good (Enough) Student

Getting Rolling.

Getting back in the groove of dissertation work is slow and daunting. I finally made a list of things I must do if I plan to finish, and things I must do before June to get my prospectus done.

My question(s) of the week: How did you know your prospectus was done? How did you know you were ready to start your first chapter? How much "pre-work" had you done before you started that first chapter? What form did your prospectus take?

As far as this week goes, I'm diving in to Sidney's Old Arcadia (which I'm hoping to blaze through), working more on taking notes (I think I have DevonTHINK and Bookends up and running), and gearing up for my February check in.