I think I'm divorcing a chapter from my dissertation. Or, at the bare minimum, initiating a legal separation. You see, I think what I really have is two dissertations. It's not a bad problem to have. It means I have a whole lot of material that I will be able to spin off into articles and the like. It also means that I should have a relatively easy time of culling from the diss in order ot make a more manageable "book-length" narrative. But it's also left me feeling overwhelmed and rather schizophrenic while trying to write the damn thing. (did you notice the sheer number of cooking posts? And there's another one coming after this post...)
I've written plenty. I have a 110 page "image section" that will be divided into 2-3 chapters and expanded, likely to 130 or 140 pages. I have the world's worst and largest background chapter on the history of print in England from THE beginning until THE end, or 1695, which ever comes first. I think it's 50 pages of awful. I have about 15 pages of a background to ballads and the ballad trade, maybe 15 pages of a shitty intro. Now I'm 25,844 words into a "chapter" on women and crime, and I still have a final section to write. None of this counts the footnotes or appendices.
Originally, I had plans to write a chapter on men and crime in ballads, in addition to a chapter on crime illustrations, and finish up with a chapter on ballads in the 18th century. I've realized that I don't really have anything new to say about men and crime (unlike the chapter on women and crime that I am writing), and it doesn't really add to my argument other than to show that I've done the research slog with the material. I can always add it back in if my diss committee wants it, and I've already done the research prep, but I'm not going to waste time writing 20, 30, 50 pages that don't add anything and no one is going to want to read.
I guess like any break up, it's sort of sad and liberating. You think about all of the things that might have been, but also all of the really hard work it would have taken to get there.
Dissertations do weird things to one's mind. I can't stop thinking about prostitutes. A colleague says she regularly has "microcosmical testicles" (so cool, right?) on the brain. I woke up this morning with an image of being trapped in the Malkovich-world of Being John Malkovich, but the only word people used was "gender", instead of "Malkovich".
And now, the song that's been running in the background while I've been working on a section about prostitutes. Clearly I have something wrong with me:
Hey, sounds like you're making good progress! I wouldn't worry about the extra chapter... maybe it'll even turn out to be an article in the future. At this point it's good that you're at the stage of needing editing and not tons of new writing, I'd celebrate in that and make some more brownies - on second thought, how about cake or cookies instead... :D
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