Week 7: Oh dear lost some words

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 15,965
Words typed this week: 2,868
Words lost this week: 1,286
Total increase:1,582
Days I managed to write this week: 4

Well I wrote over 2,000 words this week but I went to my supervision and my supervisor rightly pointed out that I was putting in words into sections where they did not belong.

One of these sections was probably about 200 words, the other of these sections was over a thousand, so I had to edit them both out and put them in oddments files incase I wanted to take the words and put them back in later in the right place. I hope I now have the right stuff in the methodology about autoethnography and I think I have most of my ethics written. My section on writing is off with the proof readers. Now all I have to do is decide what to do with the auto-ethnography as most of the section has been to the proof readers already.

Oh one of life's ironies looks like it is going to happen next week. On Wednesday the UCU is on strike. Most students seem to get unhappy about cancelled lectures and such. Me? Well I am a UCU member, so I won't be working, however I will be using the extra day to do more work on my thesis. It would be good to have an extra reading day in the middle of next week, as I should be making in roads into my first theoretical section. Where I stand with respect to the research methodology I am working in.

The tradition is Ethnography, my stuff is really straight down the middle. I have done research in other traditions but the way this worked it just made sense to stick with a single methodology. It is a qualitative tradition and no I have not run away from the quantitative methodology because I can't handle numbers, nobody reading my thesis would think that and anyway I am a Statistician. Rather what I wanted to study was conceptually more amenable to an ethnographic approach. That is not what I am going to argue, rather it is to explain what makes ethnography, ethnography as opposed to any other qualitative technique. Then I have to take a more social constructivist approach rather than a realist but then add into the complexity that I believe that academic tradition actually partially shapes what you find. So I talk about culture because I am doing ethnography.

The other thing I have started doing is creating pen portraits, scenes and so on for the two congregations. These aren't for the thesis directly they are ways of me thinking myself into the congregations.

Oh well it should take me a couple of weeks to do then that is the methodology put to bed until I come to the final review.

November 2011 Supervision

Another month and the supervision was relatively straight forward. The words are still coming, probably too many at times and part of that is delaying the time when I will have to step into the subject in detail. Not as smooth, although the paper I have attached is much in its final state, I think I will prepare a small set of OHPs just to cover the bits that are easier done on OHP but these are not essential. The hymns are probably better done that way, I can add a few extra ones for interest but I suspect I need no more than half a dozen. Actually this is quite a good overview of the thesis, there is one part missing, which I might put into the paper if ever I send it to a journal because it is there but it would have made this paper too long and it was easiest to drop.

The actual writing I have to take a couple of sections out, they belong elsewhere and add about another 30% to one section which I had not written. I am trying to get at, that I have a relationship with the congregations and a relationship with the tradition and what I am trying to work out is what is the relationship of the congregation to the tradition.

I also have the timetable for papers for the conference. The group I am with has another URC student, I just sincerely hope he has not done the sensible thing and asked about my surname and "theology" within the URC as the programme does not give first names. If he is the one minister with that particular surname then he is a New Zealand Presbyterian in origin. However he is known both to friends and acquainted with at least one of my parents. He is talking about practical godliness and how that effects the URC, from my observations I suspect more than most people think so we will have something to talk about.

The conference is popular and there are far more short paper sessions I would like to attend than I can. At two out of the four I have a choice and may volunteer to chair a session in the other which has nothing I am particularly interested in going to. Indeed there are sessions running concurrently with mine that I would be interested in going to especially some of the papers on liturgy and theology.

So back to the grindstone tomorrow and I was just thinking I would have ethics sorted this weekend.

Week 6 - Wondering if methodology is getting out of hand

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 14,383

Words typed this week: 3,368
Days I managed to write this week: 4

Right as you can see from the way the thesis is progressing but I am realising that I am 14,383 and I am not nearing finishing my methodology, I have one section at best a third written and another big section to write, the reason it has been growing so substantially is that I have been needing to defend my decisions to tackle a couple of things in a very specific way. Intriguingly both of these things relate to writing. The fact is that writing up is not a process for me that is tidily separated from the analysis. I do not analyse and then write, but the writing happens as I am analysing and I seem to gain insight through writing, particularly the creative writing of scenes set in the thesis congregations. However I want to say that narrative creates a space that is separate from my voice as a theorectically interested researcher and also that it is the way I have gained a lot of understanding into the functioning of the congregations. Oh well I suppose we will see when I eventually get it to my supervisor, I suspect January time.

It is always difficult to get the time for four days of writing and yet it is so worth it. I should say that the days are days I do generative writing on and the word count is actually the number of words to make it to the first draft. This is mainly because I do the generative writing by hand and I do not fancy counting the words but the first draft is on the computer and Word will count for me.

However two articles have gone missing I know I read them last week and I just can't find them. One article had a quote from Malinowski that I want to include in it, I need to find the article because I need to know where the quote is precisely. The other was someone talking about how they presented their thesis and would have been useful to cite as it was a more interesting approach and I can remember the approach but I can't find an article describing it. Bother, bother, bother!

Meanwhile I have had a query from my one published article that might mean I need to write up a paper for quite a major journal and see if I can get it published. That will be interesting task but I did not intend to write papers while writing my thesis and this will be the second!

Week 5 - back in harness but the writing is getting harder

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 11,015
Words typed this week: 2,134
Days I managed to write this week: 4

Well I am back in harness and added another two thousand words to the thesis. The four days of writing is a real achievement as I had a migraine on one possible day which meant I did not get any writing done and then a cold decided to appear towards the end of the week, so my writing then was through feeling slightly feverish yesterday.

I was glad when that I was past the initial cold stages by the end of the day, as I was also moving my conference talk from first draft to second (i.e. after my two very faithful proof readers had read through it). I also heard that the paper has been accepted and asked whether I want projection. I have decided to go against projection so will expect just to read it. There is enough change in pace and tone I think to get away with that. I could do a projection but that is I think time better spent preparing to read it. So next stage is for my supervisor to give his opinion.

However this weeks the writing is getting harder, its not that I don't know it, it is that I need to check I have my sources correct, check I have understood the issue and so forth. That said I am still on the methodology as I have a couple of hurdle that I need to surmount before I am free to present my results. So it is now dealing with who said what and when of methodology. I know how I want to present my results is legitimate, I know that I can present them that way, but it is experimental enough for me to have to clearly argue for the approach. The thing is that I am clear that although the two congregations I will present in my thesis are based very heavily on my field work, because through editing, because they are based on my experience which is coloured by many things and because of the need to present them in a way a reader can grasp (lived life in all its complexity does not come across well in text, therefore when presenting thing in text certain things are adapted to enable people to understand what is happening, otherwise it is just confusing).

Next weekend I also want to get out Ulverstanes' interviewees permission to record forms. So I need to check I have enough envelopes to send them out. Once I have done that I can start thinking about more indepth analysis of both interviews and fieldnotes.

Week 4 - No progress but at least the conference paper is written

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 8,881
Words typed this week: 0
Days I managed to write this week: 0

All right so no progress this week and yes the triskele is exactly in the same state as last week. However I have actually managed to get the conference paper written and out to proof readers. It is however only 1847 words which would make it the shortest I have written to date. On the other hand I had a personal maximum of 2000 words for the paper as I only have twenty minutes to present and I don't want to go over.

Thesis wise it was an interesting exercise. If I had had a full paper and not a short one I would have made more of the ambivalence the tradition actually has towards theologians. On the one hand the Reformed traditions respects them highly, it is the aim of many to be one. On the other hand it also keeps a very strong belief in its right to ignore them if it so chooses. Some of this is because of the belief that any theology is situated historically both in times and place and is trying to meet the needs of the church at that time and place. So you end up with interesting questions as to what extent Predestination isn't a creation of Calvin's brain but rather a product of Dutch Nationalism in the seventeenth Century. According to scholars Calvin seems to have shown reluctance towards voicing the doctrine only although it is the natural conclusion to his thought.

The other thing is I am pretty sure the idea that doctrine is temporarily related to faith (the only eternally relevant text is the Bible) goes back at least as far as Calvin, now I can find him when he says that the church councils are subject to the judgement of Christians but I want to find where he says that his writing is not final.

Anyway its back to arguing about writing as an analytic tool next week. I am being clear that the churches that appear in my written texts are factions heavily based on real churches but not identical with, at least in part because of the demands of the written text but also because it is my presentation of them, and in creating it I have also misrepresented, there is the "other" between what I write and what reality is.