Category: Writing

Anything on the process or results of writing as an activity and a passion

The target was arbitrary, self-imposed and still fairly effective

I didn’t hit my self-imposed goal of producing 50 page versions of my four core chapters by the end of January, with all comments from two committee members taken into account.

Nonetheless, the idea of the deadline served its purpose. Two of the four chapters are now done (except for a last check-through of length and successful incorporation of all committee comments as the last step before sending it back to them). I have hand-annotated the third and need about half a day to incorporate those comments into the Word version. Then I just need to hand annotate the final chapter, incorporate those changes, and check over the whole set for flow, length, and full adherence to committee member comments.

Between major progress on 3/4 core chapters and the American Political Science Association publishing my counter-repertoires section as a pre-print, this has been a good week for dissertation completion.

Target: January 31st

I can’t recall ever feeling as stuck with anything as I do with the dissertation. There are so many ‘to do’ items, so many of them depend on others being finished in order to be possible to complete themselves, and there isn’t any day-to-day or week-to-week pressure to keep me focused.

To rekindle the terror which is so often the basis of writing projects being completed, I have promised a 200 page version of my four core chapters edited down by the end of the month. That should address my committee’s most significant comments, and at least leave a text of the write length for any future changes.

Always tired

I don’t know exactly why, but the insomnia which has been my normal state of life for as long as I can remember has given over to what’s more like never-ending tiredness: going to bed tired, waking up tired, spending all day tired.

It may be from the loss of academic and social non-dissertation activities that give structure and variety to life, or just from the exhaustion of watching wave after pandemic wave crest and break while we collectively flounder. No doubt it comes partly from the rage of seeing the way in which we’re destroying our world, and yet our politics simply side-steps the issue as voters and lobbyists wedded to the status quo keep us cycling between political parties and leaders that match up their inadequate ambition with unserious implementation.

Maybe more than anything my own exhaustion reflects how everyone else seems to have been eroded and abraded: turning inward, turning silent. Maintaining any kind of social connection has jumped in difficulty, even though I suspect that most people could work to reduce their feelings of isolation and hopelessness by cultivating community in the ways which are possible without close physical presence.

I feel like I need something to lay down a boundary in time — or make one day or week seem different from another — to get back to a tempo of thesis work that will let me get the thing done before the university cuts me off irretrievably at the end of the year. And yet nothing of the sort is possible. I can’t reset the location, content, or cast of characters in my days, and so life feels like April 2020 made eternal.

I know it’s one of our worst human habits to develop the pattern of entitlement and resentment: growing to feel entitled to whatever good things we have happened to get, internalizing the notion that we have them as the result of merit or a just universe, and then cursing the injustice of losing it. The habit of mind we need to cultivate is that “nothing here is promised, not one day.” If we’ve ever had the good luck to experience something positive, we should see it as an unwarranted boon from a universe that is indifferent to all our notions of deserving or fairness, and if we should lose it we should hang on to the gratitude for having ever had it.

We’re all going to lose more than we can guess — maybe everything — as the full consequences of our fossil fuel civilization work their way through the planetary system. If our collective response to loss continues to be anger, resentment, and turning against each other, it’s hard to see how we will achieve the cooperation that has the sole prospect of saving us.

Related:

Wooster’s greatest perils: the eligibly unwed

Jeeves: And if, in consequence, Mr. Winship should lose the election…

Wooster: I imagine democracy would survive the blow Jeeves.

J: The talk in the servants’ hall Sir is that Lady Florence has informed Mr. Winship that if he does not win the electon their engagement will be at an end.

W: Good God! You mean, Florence will once again be roaming the land thirsting for confetti and a three-tiered cake.

J: Indeed Sir.

W: And she may once more turn her attention to faithful old Wooster.

From Jeeves and Wooster season 4 episode 6 “The Ties that Bind” starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.

Michael Bliss on writing books

Students who weren’t too overawed by the reputations and accomplishments of the college’s senior members could find them useful in more practical ways. At one High Table, Jane Freeman, who was just beginning to write her thesis and feeling daunted at the prospect of tackling what was essentially the writing of her first book, found herself sitting next to the historian Michael Bliss. Knowing that he had by then (1994–5) published eight full-length books, she thought, “Somebody who has written this much really must have a method. He must know how to do it.” So she asked him “whether he had a structure when he was writing a book, whether there was any particular way he went about it.” What he said in reply was “a revelation” to her. He said, “Well, when you’re writing professionally, which you have to do as an academic, it’s your job. And so I sit down a 9 o’clock and I finish at 5, and I write every day.” And he went on, “If you’re cramming as you do for an undergraduate course paper, you can’t maintain that over time. If you’re going to be writing every day for months and years, if you’re going to stay at it and do other books, you have to find a rhythm you can maintain.” That advice helped her, she said, “to have a paradigm shift between the cramming student who stays up half the night and tries to meet a deadline and someone who sees writing as her profession.”

Grant, Judith Skelton. A Meeting of Minds: The Massey College Story. University of Toronto Press, 2015. p. 406–7

Related:

Podcasts and audiobooks

Because the spoken word content on Spotify is so-so most of the time (aside from podcasts like Ologies and the Spycast), I have been trying Audible to provide better quality listening material during walks.

So far I have finished James Donovan’s book “Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel” about the espionage trials and eventual prisoner exchange of a KGB colonel living as an illegal in New York (also depicted in the excellent film Bridge of Spies) and Lyndsay Faye’s “Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson” which I learned about from an interview with the author on the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast and then finished in two days.

Donovan’s book was quite interesting, if read a bit mechanically. Faye’s book is a great pastiche, interestingly written with both deep knowledge of the canon and a willingness to innovate, and very well read in this edition.

Over several weeks I have listened to the first half of “Anna Karenina” read by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which is superb. She brings a great saucy enthusiasm to the text and language, and it’s easy to imagine that one is being read to by her character from the film Secretary.

Finally, in the hope of better understanding American conservatism in order to better strategize about climate change, I have been listening to Geoffrey Kabaservice’s “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” I’m still working through the 1960s, which is still fairly little-known history to me. The book is a bit challenging both because a lot of the names and events are unfamiliar and because the narrator is a bit monotone in a way that tends to enhance the difficulty of paying attention.

I found that such narration was commonplace in the books and spoken word content on Spotify, so generally I have been very happy about how Audible has shifted my listening toward fully accomplished published works with enduring social importance, rather than just the (sometimes excellent) present-focused podcast and news content.

Hand editing chapter drafts in U of T libraries

To advance the aim of getting down to four 50-page chapters, I have been bringing printouts to review on campus for the last couple of days. The change of scenery has certainly been accompanied by a change in feeling and thinking, and I am starting to feel the emotional distance from the text which is necessary for effective editing.

The big tasks ongoing are to cut out or move away any sections not important for the scholarly argument in the dissertation; to split out my own normative conclusions from empirical and analytical arguments, to be moved into a chapter of their own at the end; and to cut out passages that are too theoretical or speculative, trying to stick more closely to what can be anchored and justified with reference to the campus fossil fuel divestment movement specifically.

The political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and repertoires chapters are all getting this treatment now, and it feels more like progress forward than continuing with my recent efforts to grind through micro-level changes from my own comments and those of committee members.

It may be that the long section which I wrote on counter-repertoires against divestment developed by university administrations can be pulled out and self-published soon. I did ideally want to find an academic journal for it to get it more attention, but with all the rounds of revision and editing that would require it’s probably best to get it out as a personal draft and focus on getting the actual dissertation out as soon as can be managed.

Cohen historical theory

Avner Cohen provides a great summary of writing history (here under the particular limitations of studying Israel’s nuclear arsenal):

The narrative I offer, then, is by nature incomplete and interpretative. Like all narratives, it is not written from God’s-eye view; rather, it is a story told through incomplete human and archival sources.

Cohen, Avner. “Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel’s Nuclear Project (1948–1954).” Israel Studies 3.1 (1998): 112-139.

Summarizing and prioritizing

I got an insight on dissertation writing from the Spycast podcast’s interview with former vice presidential daily intelligence briefer Dave Terry:

This isn’t a be-all-end-all book. It’s a tailored 300-page briefing for senior faculty members. That perspective should help lessen the pain of cutting carefully researched content. It’s not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t belong in a briefing of this length and purpose.