February Report

Oh yes, I'm still working on my dissertation. In fact I had quite a streak going—spending at least a little time every day working on it at the library—until the 28th of February, when I took a Mr. Flossie–mandated day off. (Perhaps he thought I was getting a little too obsessive.)

Result: an introduction that makes a lot more sense.

In other news, I met with my advisor on Friday, and she told me I can either defend during the last week of April, or not until September—she has a house in Canada and plans to be there for the next six months, barring a trip home in April. This was crushing, because in my head, the perfect defense time would be in early June, or at the soonest mid-May. It's hard to imagine waiting until September to have all this behind me, but it is also hard to imagine getting everything done by the end of the month (when my committee would have to have the whole dissertation in hand to have time to read it by April).

However, despite my disappointment at this turn of events, it's starting to seem like the dissertation may get done—whether sooner or later—and that is very, very good.

Backsliding

I'm supposed to have 45,000 words written by now, according to The Schedule. Instead of that, I have 42,141 words written—fewer than last week. I blame the fact that I had to cut some verbiage from the introduction that was left over from my prospectus and thus way vague.

Still, this anti-progress is a bit...troubling. We may have to declare another Evenings in the Library Study Carrel Season of Doom like the good old days when I was studying for comps—but one hopes without the accompanying ulcer this time.

Quantity, Not Quality

I'm here at the coffee shop with Deb on Labor Day, on a dissertation date. Deb is reading phenomenology; I am blogging and doing word counts, having given up on Lukács's Theory of the Novel fifteen minutes ago. I am supposed to be at 43,000 words by this week, according to the Big Schedule for Getting 60,000 Words Written by December 31, and am currently at 42,380. I'm attempting to draft the introduction, bringing in the heavy hitters of theory like Lukács. The idea is that this will help me go back and revise each chapter, bringing them into line with my overall argument—since in the process of writing the intro, I hope to arrive at said argument.