Dissertation as jig-saw puzzle

I finished writing the first section of chapter two today, a section that sets up the circularity and flow theme of the rest of the argument. There might be some moving around of sections later and I'm not sure about the last two or three sentences, but I'll leave it for now and come back to it later when my head has cleared.

One reason writing a 40- to 50-page chapter is difficult is the sheer complexity of the argument and the impossibility of keeping it all straight in my mind. It's also difficult because my argument for this chapter can be best described as a jig-saw puzzle, with each concept or idea relating to at least two or three other ideas. However, writing is a linear exercise where I have to take each part of my carefully constructed puzzle and lay them out in a straight line. The theme of this chapter is circularity and flow, so I have been literally thinking in circles. The adjustment to building a linear argument has been tough.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 12

Chapter Two update

Running page count: 9
Total time spent looking through novel, notes, e-texts or Google books for specific quotations: at least 30 minutes
Total pages in Cecilia: 941

It's not quite double digits, which was my goal, but the quality of the last paragraph that I wrote tonight told me that I should stop writing and go to sleep.

Escalation

Or, why I can't do anything by half.

Me on the phone with my sister, thinking about knitting a little hat for an imminent newborn baby:
"If I make it little enough, it shouldn't take that much time. And I can just use whatever yarn I have in my stash."

Sister: "Make sure it's long enough to cover the baby's ears."

Me: "Or... [thinking]... I could add earflaps! Wouldn't that be cute?! A little baby hat with little earflaps?! Oh! If I do that, I could put a heart on each earflap! Wouldn't that be cute? [Pause] Oh my god, that would be more work."

So I knit a baby hat. And added
1. Earflaps
2. A heart on each earflap
3. A pom-pom. (This was a somewhat controversial decision because asking the opinion of knitting and non-knitting friends yielded a 50/50 split on whether the pom-pom was necessary. I compromised by trimming the pom pom to make it smaller. But I think the touch of teal at the top balances out the teal hearts on the earflaps.)

And so...


Ta-da! Baby hat of my own design, knit with Cascade 220 white and leftover Patons Classic Merino Peacock. (The hat is for a girl, incidentally.)


Yeah, I stand by the pom-pom.

Lock-down, terms and conditions of

Writing the chapter means going into a lock-down of sorts—withdrawing socially and being more disciplined and focus. The last few days have not been particularly productive. A reminder of the terms and conditions of dissertation-writing lock down are in order:

Rule 1: No minor socializing
Broken by: attending group meeting*; going to another workshop group meeting where no-one else showed up*

Rule 2: Attend no more than one (1) major social event per week.
Broken by: planning and attending good-bye festivities for a good friend; two days later, attending the department year-end party and then hosting the after-party and then attending the after after-party

Rule 3: Do not allow the previous night's festivities to interfere with ability to be productive the following day
Broken by: Forgetting that red wine+beer=three-advil hangover

Rule 4: Prepare for a seige
Broken by: running out of coffee and fresh fruit; refusing to walk to grocery store in -20C windchill and blowing snow to replenish

Rule 5: Limit length of blog posts
Broken by: you're reading it

Caveats to applying lock-down rules too stringently
a. Leave the house/apartment briefly at least once a day to avoid cabin fever. Coffee runs are an excellent excuse for venturing outside.
b. Have a conversation with a real human being, no matter how short (the conversation, not the human), once a day to remind self of what own voice sounds like. Ordering a coffee and making small talk with barista counts. Talking to self does not.
c. Negative impact of breaking above rules somewhat mitigated if coffee is consumed at some point.

*both meetings occurred in coffee shops. See caveat c.

Running page count: a meagre 5

Private Member, Fencer, Poet

One of the major pillars of my argument in chapter two is the location of one of the houses in Cecilia, Portman Square in London. Much to my delight (well, more like excitement), the major architect whose work is most relevant to my dissertation designed and built a house in Portman Square between 1775-77, making all the historical background on the "circuit" arrangment of rooms incredibly relevant to my argument.

The house in quesiton, No. 20 (aka "Home House"), is, alas, not open to the public, being the current location of a private member's club. The photos on the website (which you can see if you click on the headings on the top menu) indicate that many of the original eighteenth-century architectural features still exist, though I'm currently more interested in the arrangement of the rooms and what it would be like to just walk through the house.

What's post-worthy is the list of activities that members this private club can partake of, a list that reminds me just how much the rich are not like you and I:


What is petanque? How does one play Wine Bingo? Does "Style" refer to oratorial, written, or sartorial style? And what kinds of poems and creative writing do you think comes out of these workshops?

In other news:
Running page count: 3
Number of long block quotes used to pad page count: 1 (10 lines!)
Final Exams marked this weekend: 36

Youtube + Pride and Prejudice

Yes, I should be working. But instead, proof that sometimes it is all in the editing:



And for something even more different...

Eponymous: Or, Eighteenth-century novelists liked using names as titles

Talking to someone at the birthday party this weekend, I was asked which novels I'm writing my dissertation on. The list made me realize just how many eighteenth-century novels are titled after their heroine's names (and how protagonists in eighteenth-century fiction are routinely referred to as "heroes" and "heroines" in the scholarship).

From my dissertation, four out of five:
Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson
Cecilia, Or Memoirs of an Heiress, by Frances Burney
Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth
Emma, by Jane Austen (along with Mansfield Park)

And then...
Moll Flanders and Roxana, by Daniel Defoe
Evelina and Camilla, by Frances Burney
Shamela and Amelia, by Henry Fielding (who is more famous for the likewise eponymous Tom Jones and Joesph Andrews)
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, by Eliza Haywood
Adeline Mowbray, by Amelia Opie
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson
Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, by Frances Sheridan
The History of Miss Emily Montagu, by Frances Brooke

The above list was compiled from my bookshelf alone. There are plenty more, but I think I've made my point.

There are also many novels named after their heroes, such as Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Sterne's wonderfully titled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. But it turns out that a dissertation about domestic interiors leads me to write about novels about women. I wonder why that is.

Speaking of writing and eponymous novels, I have started chapter two, which is on Frances Burney's Cecilia. However, I'm experiencing a weird brain fart where, as I type, I think "Clarissa" (the topic of my first chapter), but then I type "Cecilia". It's like my brain is eight months behind my fingers.

Chapter Two:
Pages written: 1
Pages written and then deleted and then rewritten: 1

Taking stock: the yarn stash

I have finally organized my yarn stash into a handy plastic drawer unit:

Click to embiggen the following:


To be honest, I thought there would be more yarn than this, so I guess I'm doing okay. Frankly, organizing the stash reminded me of how little I've been knitting recently, what with trying to work on the chapter and finishing up the teaching. (And knitting three R2D-toques in a month kind of necessitated a bit of a break.) If it wasn't for our semi-regular Stitch and Bitches, I don't think I would ever pick up the needles.

Or, in other words...

I can stop any time I want to. No, really.