I'm creeping towards the edge of the pool that is writing. That is to say, if writing is complete submersion in water, I'm in the room (my writing pool is an indoor pool), I've changed into my bathing suit, I've got my swimming cap on (because this girl is not ruining her highlights with chlorine) and I'm preparing to walk towards the pool and get in. But I'm not there yet; I don't even have a toe in the water yet.
What I am doing is reading. Reading, reading, reading, reading. I'm going back and dipping into the books and concepts that I couldn't touch when my project was a dissertation. But now I'm ready for them. And it looks like my project is ready for them. The theoretical concept that I tried to use to read my neglected author during the dissertation just didn't work. I spent all my time--at conferences, in meetings with my committee, in my dissertation defense--defending my theoretical lens, which left my neglected author even more neglected. But the theory/movment I really wanted to use, I found/became enchanted with too far into the diss. to let go of my initial reading. The really beautiful thing here is that a lot of what I ended up writing didn't quite make sense precisely BECAUSE it was crying out for the reading I'm ready to give it now. So, not only are there many close readings of primary works that I'll be able to salvage from the diss, I think I'm going to get to return to some of the primary works I was dying to write about while dissertating, and kept circling around, but never quite got to.
And after a year in a women's studies department I feel a HUGE need to indulge my literary critic and stay the hell away from contemporary politics in my writing.
So that's all good, and I spent the morning reading for my project. Why, then, do I feel so blah? Is it because it's in the 90s outside and humid? Is it because Nate Fisher died? Or more importantly, because there are only two episodes left of Six Feet Under? Is it because, after kind of sucking for 5 years, Queer as Folk actually got really topical and relevant and then ended on Sunday with a STUPID denoument? Or is it because my GF is going over the copy edits of her book while listening to The Magnetic Fields, who totally depress me.
What I am doing is reading. Reading, reading, reading, reading. I'm going back and dipping into the books and concepts that I couldn't touch when my project was a dissertation. But now I'm ready for them. And it looks like my project is ready for them. The theoretical concept that I tried to use to read my neglected author during the dissertation just didn't work. I spent all my time--at conferences, in meetings with my committee, in my dissertation defense--defending my theoretical lens, which left my neglected author even more neglected. But the theory/movment I really wanted to use, I found/became enchanted with too far into the diss. to let go of my initial reading. The really beautiful thing here is that a lot of what I ended up writing didn't quite make sense precisely BECAUSE it was crying out for the reading I'm ready to give it now. So, not only are there many close readings of primary works that I'll be able to salvage from the diss, I think I'm going to get to return to some of the primary works I was dying to write about while dissertating, and kept circling around, but never quite got to.
And after a year in a women's studies department I feel a HUGE need to indulge my literary critic and stay the hell away from contemporary politics in my writing.
So that's all good, and I spent the morning reading for my project. Why, then, do I feel so blah? Is it because it's in the 90s outside and humid? Is it because Nate Fisher died? Or more importantly, because there are only two episodes left of Six Feet Under? Is it because, after kind of sucking for 5 years, Queer as Folk actually got really topical and relevant and then ended on Sunday with a STUPID denoument? Or is it because my GF is going over the copy edits of her book while listening to The Magnetic Fields, who totally depress me.
posted by Margo, darling at 7:53 PM
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