Birth by transporter

An old friend of mine recently gave birth, and my sister and I had the following MSN conversation as a result:

A: Alina has squeezed a human being out of her.

A: I don't think I ever want to do that.

M: Yeah, like I've said before, Star Trek transporter...

M: Which makes me wonder why the babies on Star Trek are never born that way...

A: Uh, yeah...

A: me, too?

M: "Beam it out, Doctor! BEAM! IT! OUT!"

A: Or, Give me the drugs!!!
Good, now beam it out.

M: But that would take longer...

M: Honestly, why would they even let it get as far as contractions? Once the water breaks, you know it's ready to come out.

A: uh...

A: so, we're really going to have this super hypothetical conversation?

M: No.

M: But I do think that of all the medical miracles the show espoused, they could have clued in to making birth less painful for the women.

A: this is true...

M: And I think that some of that has to do with either a) lack of women on writing staff or b) lack of attention paid to women's issues in a notoriously male-centric genre.

M: Or c) a need to retain some concept of the "natural" in a representation of an advanced technological time and falling back on the cliché of "motherhood" as the most natural thing women are capable of.

M: And THAT makes this MSN conversation more analytical than anything I've written in my actual dissertation today.

A: change your topic?


I have since written a couple of pages, so there shall be no topic change in the future. Boo. (not really)

Running page count: 38
Days left before leaving for a conference in Vancouver: 0

The Long s

This is what happens when a computer e-text program scans an "f" as an "s" and vice versa:

And again he flew out of the house, leaving Dr. Lyster unassectedly concerned for him, and too kind-hearted and too wife to be offended at the injustice of immoderate sorrow.

Which should read:
And again he flew out of the house, leaving Dr. Lyster unaffectedly concerned for him, and too kind-hearted and too wise to be offended at the injustice of immoderate sorrow.

And there's also this:

"My name, fir?"

This humorous example is a result of old typeface where the lowercase letter 's' (ſ) resembled the letter 'f'. The letter is specifically known as the Long s.

I can't really fault anyone at the Chadwyck Nineteenth-Century Fiction database for not wanting to proofread Cecilia. It is, after all, over 950 pages long. That said, you can spell an e-text.

On a roll?

Finally had a good writing night for the first time in the entire dissertation. Trying very hard to finish by Tuesday.

Pages written tonight: 5
Running page count: 34
Page goal: 40, but it might take more than that to finish the argument

Words added to spellcheck: Panopticon

Writing aids/crutches of the week: Radiohead and Rice Krispie treats

Breaking the heroine

I realized tonight that my Cecilia chapter is about plot, that is, the heroine and the narrative move in similar ways and that the novel ends because the novel breaks the heroine (really—she goes mad). This good, because this will all go into the chapter posthaste.

Words added to MS Word dictionary today: misconstruction, spectre

Pages written today: 2
Running page count: 23

Off tomorrow for some Calgary stuff, so won't be back to work until Sunday.

Dissertation metaphors

Being in English, I like using metaphors to describe things. Right now, I've been thinking about my dissertation, specifically my chapter, in metaphorical terms. Ironically, even though my dissertation is about architectural, domestic spaces, I have not yet thought about the dissertation itself as any kind of structure. That is, until today, when I wrote a couple of important "set up" paragraphs that frame my argument and realized that I was essentially adding scaffolding to my chapter. And the chapter has been structurally very difficult, so hopefully I've laid the foundation enough that I can build on what I've written and complete the project without going too overtime or overbudget. At the very least, I doubt I'll have to call in a structural engineer, though that it what revisions are for.

Okay, okay. I'll stop now.

Running page count: 21

Another dissertation metaphor

Earlier this week, one of my professors suggested that the process of writing a dissertation is like having a jar of paperclips on your desk, and there's one paperclip that you can pull out so that all the other paperclips come out in one chain. Unfortunately, writing a dissertation (or any big, long project) is a trial-and-error process, meaning that you'll end up pulling out many wrong paper clips before you hit on the correct one.

The opposite view: Why can't a dissertation be more like a beer? You pour it out and even if it's a bad pour, you just wait a few minutes for everything settle and then it's fine. Plus, it's beer.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 18.5
(Yes, I know it doesn't quite add up from my previous post. I was too tired to update last night.)

P.S. My counting half pages is not an attempt to aggrandize the page count. Unless I actually write a full page, I refuse to count it (no cheating by rounding up), but as a compromise I allow myself to include half pages.

Blocked

and multitasking—am also working on a major project due in June.

Pages written today: 2.5
Running page count: 14.5

Goals for tomorrow: leave the apartment, write at least two pages

Laying down the needles

There are advantages to having a knitting project on the needles while writing. I find knitting, especially a relatively repetitive pattern, therapeutic. It helps me clear my mind and is a good way to unwind at the end of a long day.

On the other hand, I also find it kind of addictive. I'll get going on a project one afternoon and want to keep knitting well into the evening. This is not good for my productivity in all other aspects of my life. It is also not good for my wrists.

I'm starting to think that I need to lay down the needles for at least the next four weeks and focus on my academic work instead. Thankfully, I've recently just finished one knitting project and almost completed a second, meaning that there is currently no backlog of Christmas presents or new babies to knit for. So as long as a certain married couple are too busy playing GTA IV to procreate, I think I'll be fine.