Early onset satisfaction – a bad thing for writing and writers

Here is a great post from Pat Thompson on early onset satisfaction.

This is the feeling I have when I get up to write something in the middle of the night, and then go back to bed with a little smirk of satisfaction; but it only ever last until I read my ‘genius’ work the next day, to find that, without the foggy lens of sleeplessness, it really ain’t that pretty close up.

Pat’s post is great for all the writer’s out there who, like me, struggle to be satisfied with their work, ever. That goes for theoretical, as well as, creative work. It also has some cool links to other posts by writers with some very wise writing tips.

Enjoy!

Too many words is never enough

When you are working on your PhD it is easy to get caught up with your word count.

How many words are you supposed to write everyday?

How long should each chapter be?

How can I possibly fit all this in only 80,000 words?

I like to tally word counts. It makes me feel like I am doing something useful when I am avoiding writing.

I just worked out that I have written more than 40,000 words this year; and that is just the stuff I have submitted or presented. I have thrown away at least that again.

Here are the pluses and minuses of this maths:

- Minus – I can probably only use about 10,000 words of what I have written so far in my final thesis (and even that still need serious editing). For those playing at home, that leaves 70,000+ still to write.

- Plus – I should feel happy that I am capable of writing so much in a year, but I tend to judge my work by the finished product not by all the steps it took to get there.

- Plus/Minus – I now know how easy/hard it is to write this much.

When I am in writing mode, I average between 500 and 2000 words a day. For the theoretical writing, this varies depending on whether what I am writing is research heavy or not; if there is a lot of fact checking involved as I write. For the creative, it depends mostly on my mood and the ‘creative flow’. Remember, this is only on the days I am writing. Which is, maximum, 3 days a week. The rest of the time I am working, sleeping, eating, etc, as well as, reading and note taking.

That doesn’t sound so bad. When I do a bit more maths and work out it means I could potentially write between 1500 and 6000 words a week, multiplied by, say, 45 weeks (when you take out leave and other distractions), which means I could write anywhere between 70,000 and 200,000 words a year. I don’t get any where near that latter figure. Why?

Well, I can do all the maths I want and it won’t change the fact that for every word I write, I delete at least 2/3rds. Not surprisingly, I am a writer, I think as I write. I use writing to clarify my research to myself. So, a large portion of my theoretical writing is not useful to a finished thesis. Also, writing is really hard. Have you ever spent a whole day going back to one sentence that just isn’t right, exactly? - then you know what I mean.

What is the take away message here? I think the maths, while fun, is a distraction.

Don’t beat yourself up if you are not where the maths tells you should be. I don’t know how much I should be writing each day, but I should write as much as I can, as often as I can, even if that is just a few words a day. I think my chapters should be as long as they need to be to make my argument – even though this may mean some structural adjustments later on. And how will I fit all this into 80,000 words? – not sure yet, but I’ve got a much better idea than I did a year ago.

For some other perspectives on thesis writing see: Why writing from day one is nuts.

Or another post from the Thesis Whisperer, this time on how to write 1000 words a day… 

Happy writing.

Emerging Writers’ Festival 2013

It is that time of the year again, and the Emerging Writers’ Festival is on in Melbourne in just a few short weeks.

Check out there website for all their event details.

See you in 4 weeks!

I’m on holidays.

So there will be no new posts for the next four weeks.

Getting started with your PhD

I know there are plenty of you just starting your PhD journeys, and now the orientation days and the free lunches are over, you are probably wondering where to exactly start with this PhD thingamebob.

I’m sure you have a rough idea of what you are interested in researching, you may even be super organised and have your research questions ready (I thought I did, but they keep shifting), but you have looked at anything in such great detail before.

I started out the year with the basics, some database and internet searches, on what I initially thought was a pretty obscure topic, only to find that there is a plethora of theorists out there, calling my area of research all sorts of titles – cognitive literary theory, evolutionary literary theory, cognitive narratology, cognitive poetics, cognitive aesthetics, biopoetics, etc, etc, etc – and arguing among themselves which is the right way to be doing things. So, I have spent this first year trawling through all these theorist, as well as filling in my own background knowledge, to try and figure out which one is saying what I want them to say, and so far it has been close, but no cigar. I am still not sure if this is good news or bad news. But I finally feel ready to write a proper literature review, which is unfortunate, because I was actually asked to write one about 10 months ago.

My guess is that you will be asked to write a lit review soon too, so it might be a good time to think about how to organise your reading and note taking with this in mind.

There is a good post from Pat Thompson (the first of four she has written on lit reviews), on how to think about your goals before you start reading.

There is also a good one from the Thesis Whisperer on notetaking.

And, if you haven’t discovered it already, I recommend Evernote. It is free and so easy to use, and a great way to store those webpages and articles, that you want to keep, just in case.

Confirmation – not as big a deal as you think it is?

 

For those of you still getting ready for your confirmation, who may be a little put off by my recent posts, here is a helpful post from The Thesis Whisperer which offers some practical advice.

What is a creative thesis?

What is a creative thesis?

This is a question that probably I thought of when I applied to do a PhD, but surprisingly haven’t given much thought to since.

Starting a thesis is like opening Pandora’s Box (childish giggle). I have done a lot of reading and writing based around my need to get a firm grasp on the science that informs the theoretical section of my thesis. One answer led to more questions, and then more questions, all leading me further away from my actual topic. While, it is lucky that I find all this stuff infinitely fascinating, as I will need to be reading and writing about it for the next few years, it has also been distracting.

Doing a half theoretical, half creative thesis can be problematic, because it can seem that the theoretical aspect is more academically important than the creative. It is not.

I have been writing creatively this year, but it has been haphazard. And I have not grasped the concept that: Writing a creative PhD is not the same as writing a novel that fulfills some personal need for self expression. I need to start thinking about this creative writing more as a thesis. It has a specific purpose. That is not to say that I can’t still have fun with it.

To help me work out how to do this, I found the examiners’ guide for creative doctorates, which has a checklist of what to expect from a creative thesis. The points that stood out for me were:

1. “Does it offer an original contribution to knowledge in the field?”
2. “Does the thesis as a whole satisfy external needs as well as personal outcomes (that is, advances knowledge and not just practice)?”
3. “Is the work as a whole scholarly, coherent and rigorous?”
4. “Does the artwork show innovation, a line of argument, technical expertise?”

Let’s start at the bottom, with point 4. I am writing a collection of short stories, and I think my stories are written fairly well, however they do not have a line of argument. The challenge here, for me, is to imbue them with a line of argument, but not to become preachy, or overly educational. I need to find ways to weave my theoretical ideas into the stories so they are naturally a part of them.

This links with point 3. Being scholarly is critically questioning what you are reading and also what you are writing. I think this also covers being rigorous. Creative writing can do this by offering a challenge to your reader, for example: a bit of ambiguity, or a twisting of perspective; something that avoids them reading passively and causes them to question what they are reading. Obviously, non-scholarly writing does this too but, with my non-scholarly stories, I just want to send them out into the world and let the reader make of them what they will. The scholarly creative writer, however, needs to acknowledge where their ideas are coming from and how they are challenging those ideas. I plan to do this by clearly discussing them in the theoretical section, and noting there how these ideas are expressed in the creative works. The creative works will then address them in a more subtle way. I hope this will make for a whole, coherent thesis.

Which leads to point 2. I am not doing this thesis just for me. I think that has been my major issue up to now and one I didn’t even realise was an issue until this week. A thesis is, in a large part, a personal journey, but it needs to be directed toward an externally quantifiable result. I knew this, but wasn’t doing this. I might feel I have came a long way this year, and I can show you a reading list to prove I have been working; but so far it is mainly internal. No one else can see it. I need to make my work more visible than I might otherwise do.

I dream of my perfect reader, who picks up that great story (which I haven’t yet written,
but no doubt one day will), and they get the significance, the resonance, of all my pop-culture references I have hidden in the deceptively simple story; they see the depth of my family in-jokes, how they have greater social and cultural implications. Etc, etc, etc. This is not a thesis reader. The thesis reader is an examiner. If this stuff does exist in my story, the examiner needs me to make this clear. Not boringly obvious, but visible. Again, a thesis is written for a specific purpose. It does not need to represent everything that I stand for. I need to focus on thoroughly tackling just this one hurdle, for now.

Which leads to point 1. The point I have the least confidence in addressing. At times I feel like I am restating what others have already said. Even after a year, I do not feel confident that what I am saying is actually new. I worry that I what I am saying has already been said, and I just haven’t found that article yet. Or that I am just accessorizing, rather than designing a new ideas.

I will need to get back to you on this one. But I hope the rest helps those thinking about their creative PhD.

Confirmation Day – Well, at least I didn’t cry.

Confirmation happens for Australian PhD candidates at about the 1 year mark. For me, that was today.

It involves writing a report that outlines the direction your thesis is taking, your research so far, and draft chapters (in my case, a draft theoretical chapter and a few short stories); amounting to about 15,000 words. The panel (consisting of your supervisor, associate supervisor, and a chair) reads your report, and the supervisors write their own reports on your report. And then, a few days later, you have your confirmation day. They have a chat first and then you can go in. They go over the pertinent points of their reports and ask you to respond to those.

Sounds simple? Unfortunately, it didn’t go entirely smoothly.

Let me start by saying that, in my case, all these people were very nice to me. It seemed like they genuinely found my work interesting and that they want to help me get this thesis to a doctoral standard. This, however, does not alter the fact that I DID NOT PASS CONFIRMATION.

I am trying to remain calm.

The first thing I did when I left the room was go to my office and write down a plan of attack. Much to my surprise, I did not cry.

There are different ways to fail confirmation. In comparison to those I had dreamed up in my fatalistic mind, the way I failed doesn’t seem too bad. I have been given three months to submit some further writing. Thankfully, I do not have to write an entire 15,000 word report again.

They said my thesis is too big (I knew that already). I have clearly done a lot of research, but what is not clear is how this research is going to be turned into a thesis—an argument that is all my own.

I have heard, and read, that a PhD needs to be an “original and substantial contribution to knowledge”, over and over (I heard it again today) and, for some reason, this is a really hard concept for me to get my head around. It is not enough to say that I am looking at texts the way I am because it is interesting; I have to have an argument– an hypothesis that I am testing. So, for the resubmission, I need to narrow my focus and have an hypothesis.

Another criticism I need to address is that the creative work I presented was inadequate, and inadequate in several ways. Firstly, there wasn’t enough of it (this was partly because there was a word limit imposed on the report, and partly because I have haven’t actually finished all the drafts of my stories so far). Secondly, it was unclear how the creative work related to the theoretical work. And thirdly, and I quote, my stories ”don’t do much that is interesting, original, or complex with the material.” Ouch! In other words, I need to pick up my creative game and I need an overall cohesive concept for my thesis, that acknowledges that the theoretical and creative sections are equally important.

I will conquer this thesis, even if it’s the last thing I do.

For those out there embarking on a creative thesis, don’t let comments like these put you off. The number one reason I am doing this PhD is to improve my creative writing. Despite these comments, I don’t think my writing stinks, well not completely. It is easy to overlook the creative when your head gets stuck in the theory, but the creative section need to show as much academic rigor and originality as the theoretical section.

Today, I have learnt that my PhD thesis does not need reflect everything that I know and think. It is just my own little slice of the knowledge pie*. And it is up to me to make it academically edible.

I’ll keep you posted on how the re-submission goes and I’d love to hear how everyone else is going with their thesis so far.

*I tossed up whether to say cake, or even some other more nutrition food group, but I do love a good pie.