Friday, November 18, 2011

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!

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