Make that a stone's progress, lately. And not a rolling stone, either. My husband has sprained his ankle, so he hasn't been able to do as much housework or childcare. I have had to stay home extra, looking after the sonling so husband can keep his ankle elevated and iced. Not to mention, I've been up late every night cleaning, sweeping, and washing and drying the dishes--this in addition to my own usual share of the chores, which includes all the cooking and--at the son's own LOUD insistence--all of the nighttime and early morning childcare.
People, I am dead tired. My whole body hurts. I crave sleep like a man in the desert craves water, or like a writer craves original similes.
Tomorrow the babysitter comes. My husband will rest in the bedroom and maybe get a little writing done there, and I will go to the library and, let's be honest, most likely stare at my computer in the daze of utter exhaustion. This weekend I was supposed to wrap up the writing on my diss chapter for a while and send my pages to my advisors. Tomorrow I was supposed to get started on the first of two conference papers. Goddess alone knows what I might actually manage to accomplish tomorrow.
For now, I need to gulp down some tea, wake up, and finish getting dinner ready. My husband is watching the little one, and he can only do that for so long. Gotta go. No more time to rest.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I'm stuck in an exhaustion spiral. My non-dissertation chores all seem to have caught up to me in the past few days. They eat into my writing hours and into my sleeping hours. I cook and bake and clean, I make travel and lodging arrangements for various conferences, I track our finances to the penny, I apply for jobs, I tutor. I don't write much or sleep much. This takes its toll: I get more withdrawn, when I don't get to write. And lack of sleep leads to illness. I currently seem to be battling a case of thrush, and let me tell you: NOT FUN.
But what can I do? These other tasks simply must get done--and it isn't as if my husband isn't also dipping into his own sleep and research time to get a bunch of other tasks done--or to help me with mine. We'll get past this.
And, hey, I did get some writing done today. Let's see...206 words. Not much, but I had to spend some time researching some related historical details.
Also, I tried out some anti-fungal cream on the thrush. Pro: it has greatly improved the symptoms. Con: it gave me a rash. I'm still in no hurry to visit the student health offices on campus, though. Their job seems to be providing substandard care at a pace that even a snail gets impatient with. I do not have three hours to wait around in their offices, only to be given treatments or tests that are ineffective/inconclusive, expensive, or both. Their special trick is to order tests which require one to wait upwards of five hours for some technician to become available, which don't reveal anything pertinent, and which, although partially covered by my (crappy) student insurance, invariably results in a bill of a couple hundred dollars. (And I get anxious at having to spend an unexpected $10, right now.)
They also specialize in wrong diagnoses and protracted insurance feuds. My husband caught both in one go, when some incompetent practitioner diagnosed him with asthma and sent him home with an inhaler. He returned a few days later to express that the inhaler did nothing for his symptoms. She proceeded to discourse on how "people with his type of asthma" ought to care for themselves. He demanded at this point that she actually send him to be tested for asthma, which she vigorously refused for some time to do. (Oh, yes! Pointless tests are always OK, as when they insisted I have my gall bladder ultrasounded after I showed up for treatment for a flare-up of my bursitis, a known and pre-existing condition. That was an all-day affair, too. People, I have had bursitis for damned near ten years! I know what it feels like when my bursa gets inflammed! Oh, but gods forbid you want any of their off-the-cuff diagnoses to be backed up by evidence.) The test, which she eventually and huffily agreed my husband could have--oh, you know where this is going--revealed not a trace of asthma. The real kicker? A few months later my husband was billed for the full cost of the asthma test, and had to go several rounds with the insurance company and the health center to get them to admit that one of their doctors had, in fact, ordered the test, albeit at the patient's insistence. (Insistence that should never have been necessary in the first place.)
No, I don't run right over to those people when I get ill. I wait and see, rest and hydrate and try out a home remedy or two first. Seriously, can you blame me?
But here I am bitching, when I really and truly sat down with something positive to say today. You see, recently someone asked me what the worst piece of advice about writing was that I had ever received. I wasn't really sure what to say, because it seems to me that just about every piece of writing advice has been useful at one time or another. As one of my advisors puts it, sometimes more really is more. In no particular order, here is some advice about writing:
Write! Write something, anything. But write!
Don't write. Take a break from writing for a set period of time, maybe a day or week.
Try writing a few pages of your draft on paper, instead of on a computer.
Freewrite. Put down whatever comes into your head, for 15 or 20 minutes, to help you loosen up.
Keep a blog. You can track your progress!
Don't keep a blog. It will sap your writing energy!
Never delete anything you write.
Have a great purge and delete stuff that just isn't working.
Keep one eye on the main points of your current passage and your chapter/paper over all. Even write them down on a notecard you keep next to you.
Outline carefully and thoroughly in advance.
Begin right in with your writing, and only outline a little as you go, if you need to.
Write first thing in the morning, when you are at your freshest and most creative.
If you get stuck, use the time to work on other, related tasks, like research and bibliography-building.
Don't let your work on related tasks turn into a means of indefinite procrastination!
Carry a notebook with you at all times, to jot down your ideas. Otherwise you may forget them.
Talk aloud while you write, to keep yourself focused and lively.
Write in a private, quiet place, to avoid distraction.
Write where other people are writing. That way, if you are tempted to procrastinate, you'll know other people will see it. Harness the power of shame!
Write in a noisy place, like a cafe. With so much background buzz, you will not notice your neighbor with the stuffy nose or the sound of other people tapping on their keyboards.
Listen to music. Let its rhythms push you forward or move you to deeper contemplation.
Don't listen to music. It will distract and unfocus you.
Don't try to sound smart; that will result in you sounding weird, instead. Just focus on the concrete details of your argument.
Prize clarity above any other rhetorical value.
Drink lots of tea.
Avoid caffeine; it will make you jittery.
Write! Write first and write last. Always be writing. Write!
But what can I do? These other tasks simply must get done--and it isn't as if my husband isn't also dipping into his own sleep and research time to get a bunch of other tasks done--or to help me with mine. We'll get past this.
And, hey, I did get some writing done today. Let's see...206 words. Not much, but I had to spend some time researching some related historical details.
Also, I tried out some anti-fungal cream on the thrush. Pro: it has greatly improved the symptoms. Con: it gave me a rash. I'm still in no hurry to visit the student health offices on campus, though. Their job seems to be providing substandard care at a pace that even a snail gets impatient with. I do not have three hours to wait around in their offices, only to be given treatments or tests that are ineffective/inconclusive, expensive, or both. Their special trick is to order tests which require one to wait upwards of five hours for some technician to become available, which don't reveal anything pertinent, and which, although partially covered by my (crappy) student insurance, invariably results in a bill of a couple hundred dollars. (And I get anxious at having to spend an unexpected $10, right now.)
They also specialize in wrong diagnoses and protracted insurance feuds. My husband caught both in one go, when some incompetent practitioner diagnosed him with asthma and sent him home with an inhaler. He returned a few days later to express that the inhaler did nothing for his symptoms. She proceeded to discourse on how "people with his type of asthma" ought to care for themselves. He demanded at this point that she actually send him to be tested for asthma, which she vigorously refused for some time to do. (Oh, yes! Pointless tests are always OK, as when they insisted I have my gall bladder ultrasounded after I showed up for treatment for a flare-up of my bursitis, a known and pre-existing condition. That was an all-day affair, too. People, I have had bursitis for damned near ten years! I know what it feels like when my bursa gets inflammed! Oh, but gods forbid you want any of their off-the-cuff diagnoses to be backed up by evidence.) The test, which she eventually and huffily agreed my husband could have--oh, you know where this is going--revealed not a trace of asthma. The real kicker? A few months later my husband was billed for the full cost of the asthma test, and had to go several rounds with the insurance company and the health center to get them to admit that one of their doctors had, in fact, ordered the test, albeit at the patient's insistence. (Insistence that should never have been necessary in the first place.)
No, I don't run right over to those people when I get ill. I wait and see, rest and hydrate and try out a home remedy or two first. Seriously, can you blame me?
But here I am bitching, when I really and truly sat down with something positive to say today. You see, recently someone asked me what the worst piece of advice about writing was that I had ever received. I wasn't really sure what to say, because it seems to me that just about every piece of writing advice has been useful at one time or another. As one of my advisors puts it, sometimes more really is more. In no particular order, here is some advice about writing:
Write! Write something, anything. But write!
Don't write. Take a break from writing for a set period of time, maybe a day or week.
Try writing a few pages of your draft on paper, instead of on a computer.
Freewrite. Put down whatever comes into your head, for 15 or 20 minutes, to help you loosen up.
Keep a blog. You can track your progress!
Don't keep a blog. It will sap your writing energy!
Never delete anything you write.
Have a great purge and delete stuff that just isn't working.
Keep one eye on the main points of your current passage and your chapter/paper over all. Even write them down on a notecard you keep next to you.
Outline carefully and thoroughly in advance.
Begin right in with your writing, and only outline a little as you go, if you need to.
Write first thing in the morning, when you are at your freshest and most creative.
If you get stuck, use the time to work on other, related tasks, like research and bibliography-building.
Don't let your work on related tasks turn into a means of indefinite procrastination!
Carry a notebook with you at all times, to jot down your ideas. Otherwise you may forget them.
Talk aloud while you write, to keep yourself focused and lively.
Write in a private, quiet place, to avoid distraction.
Write where other people are writing. That way, if you are tempted to procrastinate, you'll know other people will see it. Harness the power of shame!
Write in a noisy place, like a cafe. With so much background buzz, you will not notice your neighbor with the stuffy nose or the sound of other people tapping on their keyboards.
Listen to music. Let its rhythms push you forward or move you to deeper contemplation.
Don't listen to music. It will distract and unfocus you.
Don't try to sound smart; that will result in you sounding weird, instead. Just focus on the concrete details of your argument.
Prize clarity above any other rhetorical value.
Drink lots of tea.
Avoid caffeine; it will make you jittery.
Write! Write first and write last. Always be writing. Write!
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The weekend, in numbers:
2 hours tutoring
1 clean bathroom
2 big bags of trash
1 loaf of bread
12 muffins that taste like donuts
12 biscuits
16 snickerdoodles
1 pan of chocolate chip blondies
1 big bunch of kale
1 big pot of soup
12 cups of veg stock
3 big rounds of seitan
4 cups of tomato-cilantro hummus
2 plane tickets
1 conference registration
1 pair of little sneakers soaked from splashing in puddles
AND, after 1,767 words of outlining and 1 meeting with my advisor...
1 diss-writing mojo recovered
Bring on Monday morning.
2 hours tutoring
1 clean bathroom
2 big bags of trash
1 loaf of bread
12 muffins that taste like donuts
12 biscuits
16 snickerdoodles
1 pan of chocolate chip blondies
1 big bunch of kale
1 big pot of soup
12 cups of veg stock
3 big rounds of seitan
4 cups of tomato-cilantro hummus
2 plane tickets
1 conference registration
1 pair of little sneakers soaked from splashing in puddles
AND, after 1,767 words of outlining and 1 meeting with my advisor...
1 diss-writing mojo recovered
Bring on Monday morning.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Yesterday's meeting with one of my advisors went well, and I now have greater confidence in my ideas and my approach. However, he did find several intriguing, new ideas to add into the mix. I am drowning in ideas here, folks!
My greatest struggle as an academic has always been that I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. That is, I can readily lose sight of the broad outlines, the big picture, under a welter of details. Happily, this has also become my greatest strength. My method of working is to take all the details into my awareness, bit by bit, until my mental image of the material expands enough that the big picture emerges from it. To put it another way, I come to know the forest by first learning every tree. The patterns that I am able to perceive, using this method, are rich, complex, and nuanced. To boast a little (just a little): this is a valuable ability.
But it has its downsides. I can flail for a long time at the threshold between whole-lotta-trees and gosh-look-a-forest. I do not like models that only work if one ignores a pesky counter-example here and there. And I am drawn to elegant solutions as much as anybody else, so even when I begin to first see patterns, it may still take a fair bit of work to perceive the best one, the right one. This method is not quick or easy, and it lends itself all too readily to perfectionism.
That's where I'm stuck right now: sifting through the details, finding and testing and discarding patterns, writing in circles as I search for the One True Interpretation.
I have only a little over a week left before I must put aside my work on this chapter and attend to writing a couple of papers for talks. And once the second talk is over, I only have another two weeks to convert my work on this chapter into another talk. I need to move quickly, and to do that, I need to find a sense of certainty in my analysis, perhaps even a sense of finality.
My hope is to get back underway with my writing today. The past two weeks haven't been very productive, and it is time for that to end. My working day is short today, to allow my husband to get a turn at his own work. The bright side: I get to go home to my sweet little son all the sooner! But I had better get down to work now.
My greatest struggle as an academic has always been that I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. That is, I can readily lose sight of the broad outlines, the big picture, under a welter of details. Happily, this has also become my greatest strength. My method of working is to take all the details into my awareness, bit by bit, until my mental image of the material expands enough that the big picture emerges from it. To put it another way, I come to know the forest by first learning every tree. The patterns that I am able to perceive, using this method, are rich, complex, and nuanced. To boast a little (just a little): this is a valuable ability.
But it has its downsides. I can flail for a long time at the threshold between whole-lotta-trees and gosh-look-a-forest. I do not like models that only work if one ignores a pesky counter-example here and there. And I am drawn to elegant solutions as much as anybody else, so even when I begin to first see patterns, it may still take a fair bit of work to perceive the best one, the right one. This method is not quick or easy, and it lends itself all too readily to perfectionism.
That's where I'm stuck right now: sifting through the details, finding and testing and discarding patterns, writing in circles as I search for the One True Interpretation.
I have only a little over a week left before I must put aside my work on this chapter and attend to writing a couple of papers for talks. And once the second talk is over, I only have another two weeks to convert my work on this chapter into another talk. I need to move quickly, and to do that, I need to find a sense of certainty in my analysis, perhaps even a sense of finality.
My hope is to get back underway with my writing today. The past two weeks haven't been very productive, and it is time for that to end. My working day is short today, to allow my husband to get a turn at his own work. The bright side: I get to go home to my sweet little son all the sooner! But I had better get down to work now.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
I am continuing to work through my outline, pushing myself to deal here, now, upfront, with the peskier problems and confusions that keep tripping me up when I set to actually write. I have also scheduled a meeting with one of my advisors for tomorrow, to go over my outline and make sure it is sound. Well...the main point of having this meeting is perhaps nothing more than to force me to finish this outline. I am so sick of this section of my chapter, I would like to stay home for a week and do nothing but bake cookies. (Something I probably shouldn't say on my blog, as my husband reads my blog sometimes, and I am not sure he wouldn't encourage Project Cookies-Out-the-Wazoo.)
In other news:
* Financial crisis in the Snail household! Wait, family to the rescue and we are temporarily saved! Or are we??? Snails busy themselves locating financial documents and setting up meetings and such. Eventual outcome? Still unknown.
* Computer equipment failure! But wait, new equipment purchased! But wait again, new equipment might still not be working right! Will Snail have to suck it up and finally buy a new battery for her poor little machine?
* I have a new tutoring gig, which I am enjoying. Also, I got past the first round of eliminations for a certain job next year. Next week I will have to pass an interview. In the meantime, I no longer have any interview-worthy clothes that fit me. (Somewhere between nursing and switching to a near-vegan diet I have dropped a couple clothes sizes.) Fret fret fret.
* Hey, if I do get this job, it could readily turn into a really nifty teaching position by the end of next year! Except not! Because I would have to be ABD by the end of the spring quarter, and, uh, yeah, NO, I don't think that will happen. By the end of the summer? Sure. Easily. Not by the end of the spring.
* At the end of next week, I must stop working on this diss chapter and instead turn my attention to writing two conference papers. Can I get past this nasty section of my chapter before then? Can I get close? Can I relocate my dissertation mojo?
OK, time to pack up and return to the House of the Whining Son. It's been the ruin of many a poor mom, and believe me, I know. I'm one.
In other news:
* Financial crisis in the Snail household! Wait, family to the rescue and we are temporarily saved! Or are we??? Snails busy themselves locating financial documents and setting up meetings and such. Eventual outcome? Still unknown.
* Computer equipment failure! But wait, new equipment purchased! But wait again, new equipment might still not be working right! Will Snail have to suck it up and finally buy a new battery for her poor little machine?
* I have a new tutoring gig, which I am enjoying. Also, I got past the first round of eliminations for a certain job next year. Next week I will have to pass an interview. In the meantime, I no longer have any interview-worthy clothes that fit me. (Somewhere between nursing and switching to a near-vegan diet I have dropped a couple clothes sizes.) Fret fret fret.
* Hey, if I do get this job, it could readily turn into a really nifty teaching position by the end of next year! Except not! Because I would have to be ABD by the end of the spring quarter, and, uh, yeah, NO, I don't think that will happen. By the end of the summer? Sure. Easily. Not by the end of the spring.
* At the end of next week, I must stop working on this diss chapter and instead turn my attention to writing two conference papers. Can I get past this nasty section of my chapter before then? Can I get close? Can I relocate my dissertation mojo?
OK, time to pack up and return to the House of the Whining Son. It's been the ruin of many a poor mom, and believe me, I know. I'm one.
Monday, March 2, 2009
In case it wasn't clear from my last post: I'm stuck in endless rewriting hell. Again. How do I keep winding up here? How???
Two reasons leap to mind: first, this is just the toughest, densest, most complex part of my chapter. It is hard. Second, I have all these little bits of stuff--ideas, observations, claims, counter-claims, etc.--and not only is it hard to organize them in a sensible fashion, but it is hard to keep them all in my head at once, to make sure they are coherent and do not contradict one another.
In response to the latter issue, I have decided to pause in my writing and to work through a detailed outline before I go back. Usually my outlines are rather rough-and-ready affairs, but this one needs to be more ramified. Son is napping now, so I'm going to dig right in, I guess.
If only I knew just where to grab this whole mess first, though! And that obnoxious Do-Re-Mi song keeps playing in my head like a taunt: "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."
Two reasons leap to mind: first, this is just the toughest, densest, most complex part of my chapter. It is hard. Second, I have all these little bits of stuff--ideas, observations, claims, counter-claims, etc.--and not only is it hard to organize them in a sensible fashion, but it is hard to keep them all in my head at once, to make sure they are coherent and do not contradict one another.
In response to the latter issue, I have decided to pause in my writing and to work through a detailed outline before I go back. Usually my outlines are rather rough-and-ready affairs, but this one needs to be more ramified. Son is napping now, so I'm going to dig right in, I guess.
If only I knew just where to grab this whole mess first, though! And that obnoxious Do-Re-Mi song keeps playing in my head like a taunt: "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."
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