Vindauga

I have a deadline on Friday. I expect to make it though, at the moment, I don’t really see how.

Hurricane season starts Friday but that is not my immediate concern, turning in a chapter of my dissertation is. I wrote this chapter once, got about 30 pages done and then decided I had no idea where it was going, what is was saying, how it was going to say it, or how it should be organized. So, I started over with a blank sheet of paper and tried to focus my discussion. 15 pages later I felt I had a really good 3 pages but that the rest of it was out of control, running of the rails and had no clue how it was going to get anywhere. Then I tried to combine the two discussions. Sure, they had some stuff in common but I was surprised to find how different the discussions were. Interesting though, it showed how my thinking had changed.

Here I am, with 40 pages of material and no good concept of organization. I have a hard time reorganizing something that is already written into a new form; I think its because my style is such that I write the whole thing as a unity. I know that some people can write individual pieces, little arguments and then stitch them together. Whenever I do that, it feels stitched together. So, I have started a third version of this chapter, one in which I am trying to solidify the organization from the outset. What is weird about this is that, in reviewing the other two, I notice how many things I had initially intended to put in this chapter haven’t actually made it, stuff that I think is important to the position, stuff like the concept “risk”. Which is what leads me to wonder how I am going to get it all done. I mean, its one thing to fully reorganize a chapter in 48 hours quite another to reorganize and write a chapter in 48 hours.

Not that this procrastination is helping any, but it is making me feel as if I am accomplishing something; at least I am getting some writing done.