Marshalling the Forces

Besides writing a thesis, PGR students are supposed to hit a bunch of smaller benchmarks in order to be considered to have successfully finished the program. Some of them are stupid easy, such as earning the requisite professional development credits, which most of us do completely by accident and without plan. Others are more difficult, such as getting an article published in a reputable academic journal, which sounds like it's tough even for the professionals who have been playing this game for years. My personal Waterloo on that front has been finding a conference. I've run into ones on law, politics, education, childhood, but none of them had calls to which I could tailor my critical work enough to have a dream of getting accepted. The thing that made it even more frustrating was that they all seemed to be held places like Hawaii, Mauritius, Japan - the kinds of places that I'd kill to have a legitimate work reason to visit. 

So imagine how ecstatic I was when I finally found a conference for which my work was suited. And imagine how much more ecstatic I was when they actually accepted my paper proposal. 

So, what's the catch?

It's in New Jersey.

Not even old Jersey, but New Jersey, where approximately 80% of my relatives live, where I've been dragged for weddings and christenings since before I was old enough to realise that even the people who live there aren't exactly crazy about the place. No offence to anyone, but I hate New Jersey. I can practically hear the gods laughing. 

Now that I have a place to give a paper, I actually have to write it. They only allow presenters twenty minutes apiece, so it isn't going to be that long, and it is delivered verbally, so the usual rhetorical stylings and five-dollar language goes out the window in favour of clarity and simplicity. You'd think that would make it all easier. For some reason, the mere idea of getting started is terrifying me. Maybe my Everest of secondary sources has something to do with it.

Yes, that is a blackbird. Yes, he is hanging upside down. I don't know why, ask him. 

As things go, the timing is really fantastic. Annual Review has just been, and the major decision made therein was that I'd hand over a full draft of the critical thesis in September. Which means that I need to sequester myself over the summer and write it. And what better way to get into the groove of writing a thesis than by writing a smaller, simpler, more straightforward portion of one of its main arguments? The secondary sources (pictured above; probably overkill) have been gathered, the calendar has been cleared, the outlines have been drawn up. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from hammering out both conference paper and critical thesis.

It probably means a lot that instead of actually beginning the paper, I pulled up a web browser and wrote a blog post. 

Somebody send reinforcements.

Slouching towards the finish line

This weekend, by the power of coffee, the page proofs were sent back to Random House all squiggled up with little blue pen-marks. The changes I made were extensive enough that I'm now a bit nervous about the fact that anyone is going to see the bound proofs, which consist of the pre-final edit text. Which means I should either learn to lighten up a little or push myself to be more ruthless with the things that I know I need to change but don't have the will to change yet when it comes to the earlier revisions. The final edit mostly consisted of metaphorically bouncing every word against the table to hear whether it rang true, and messing with the ones that thudded, so I'm less of a basket case than I was on the day I finished the structural revision and realised that I was essentially done writing the novel. 

And while I've been tweaking the insides, other people have been tweaking the outsides:

There should be a little box of bound proofs turning up on my doorstep any day now...

And now that that's mostly done and dusted, there's nothing keeping me from locking myself in my flat in Norwich and writing up my critical thesis.

Oh, dear...