NaDisWriMo
Nov. 2nd, 2009 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sepdetThe dissertation has been dismal.
I have descended into an endless spiral of note-taking, and when I try to write, I despair. I've lost the thread. When I do get something written out, I'm finding my writing is inadequate, half-assed and unscholarly. I immediately start needing to do more research to refine and back up what I'm saying. At that point I stop, because I'm discouraged.
In an effort to break this cycle, I've started writing-- just WRITING -- and leaving brackets for things that need to be expanded/refined later. The goal is to get the bulk of it written, even if it's half-assed, because then I can work on killing the half-assedness.
Also, I'm writing a dissertation for Pacifica, not Harvard. Lower my bloody standards so as to get the work DONE. I am no longer in classical studies. I am in the realm of Joseph Campbell. The snooty academic in me is not impressed, but what the hell, I am not and never am going to be a great scholar — I left that world in order to do what I can do, instead of reaching for what I can't — so I should stop measuring my work by the standards of a Bryn Mawr classical scholar and apply the standards of a Pacifica scholar.
I'm using NaNoWriMo as a kick in the pants.
I'm not going to keep myself to a strict word count, although I hope I can get to 50K, which should be plenty enough words for a dissertation. More than that is several dissertations.
I'm just using NaDisMo to make myself WRITE. I don't know why it's so hard to do it, but I have to do it.
So: today.
Chapter 2. Orality to literacy, mythos to logos, evocative speech to rational speech. Some background-establishing stuff, setting of self-imposed limits (Semitic and Phoenician-derived writing sytems and literate cultures, not other writing traditions because (a) I'm not qualified to write on non-western, and (b) I'm interested in how our alphabets may have restricted our thinking. Yes, I know, the only way to truly explore that is to step outside it, but I've gotta start somewhere.) Today I cobbled together a brief overview of writing as a synaesthesiac process, how it disengages us from our senses and the natural world. Also a "myth of writing" -- I am emphasizing the idea of studying the transition from preliterate to literate as myth to poke holes in the idea of objectivism, as if one can disengage from one's own experience and biases. My "myth of the origins of writing has gone from cuneiform, Egyptian, and pictographic forms of writing to syllabic and semi-phonetic systems like Linear B, Middle Egyptian, and Semitic/Hebrew where the vowels originally had to be interpolated/interpreted by the reader during the process of reading.
All half-assed rough draft.
I will stop kicking myself for its halfassedness.
KEEP WRITING.
Tomorrow: the effect of recording vowels in the Greek alphabet. Havelock on Greek literacy. Go back and poke at Ong, Abram some more on literacy. hopefully get as far as Ong's studies on memory and orality.
NaDisMo Word Count: 1670
I have descended into an endless spiral of note-taking, and when I try to write, I despair. I've lost the thread. When I do get something written out, I'm finding my writing is inadequate, half-assed and unscholarly. I immediately start needing to do more research to refine and back up what I'm saying. At that point I stop, because I'm discouraged.
In an effort to break this cycle, I've started writing-- just WRITING -- and leaving brackets for things that need to be expanded/refined later. The goal is to get the bulk of it written, even if it's half-assed, because then I can work on killing the half-assedness.
Also, I'm writing a dissertation for Pacifica, not Harvard. Lower my bloody standards so as to get the work DONE. I am no longer in classical studies. I am in the realm of Joseph Campbell. The snooty academic in me is not impressed, but what the hell, I am not and never am going to be a great scholar — I left that world in order to do what I can do, instead of reaching for what I can't — so I should stop measuring my work by the standards of a Bryn Mawr classical scholar and apply the standards of a Pacifica scholar.
I'm using NaNoWriMo as a kick in the pants.
I'm not going to keep myself to a strict word count, although I hope I can get to 50K, which should be plenty enough words for a dissertation. More than that is several dissertations.
I'm just using NaDisMo to make myself WRITE. I don't know why it's so hard to do it, but I have to do it.
So: today.
Chapter 2. Orality to literacy, mythos to logos, evocative speech to rational speech. Some background-establishing stuff, setting of self-imposed limits (Semitic and Phoenician-derived writing sytems and literate cultures, not other writing traditions because (a) I'm not qualified to write on non-western, and (b) I'm interested in how our alphabets may have restricted our thinking. Yes, I know, the only way to truly explore that is to step outside it, but I've gotta start somewhere.) Today I cobbled together a brief overview of writing as a synaesthesiac process, how it disengages us from our senses and the natural world. Also a "myth of writing" -- I am emphasizing the idea of studying the transition from preliterate to literate as myth to poke holes in the idea of objectivism, as if one can disengage from one's own experience and biases. My "myth of the origins of writing has gone from cuneiform, Egyptian, and pictographic forms of writing to syllabic and semi-phonetic systems like Linear B, Middle Egyptian, and Semitic/Hebrew where the vowels originally had to be interpolated/interpreted by the reader during the process of reading.
All half-assed rough draft.
I will stop kicking myself for its halfassedness.
KEEP WRITING.
Tomorrow: the effect of recording vowels in the Greek alphabet. Havelock on Greek literacy. Go back and poke at Ong, Abram some more on literacy. hopefully get as far as Ong's studies on memory and orality.
NaDisMo Word Count: 1670
