Week 47: Writing up cut short due to holiday

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	77,350
Words typed this week:	1082
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	1082
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Well just over a thousand words is not good progress but the fact I was writing every day made a difference. It did not produce words but it did get me to go in specific directions. The first draft is awfully bitty and I expect to have to do some serious organising of the theory section when I get back but I think I have down all I want to say even if it is not a smoothly created argument yet. I still have one theorist to put in but there is space for him.

The really good news is that I think I have sorted out what social constructionism actually is and therefore I can argue that it looks specifically at the work that is done by members of the congregation in order to create the tradition/discourse/flow that is the identity of the congregation. I am therefore in a position to go on holiday and do the work abstracting the stuff from my descriptive sections with which to organise around the central arguments of this chapter. I am going to be a lot more explicit about my interpretation in this chapter and see if that works better. I have about 5000 words to do it in and I am still trying to organise my thoughts about how best to tackle it. I suspect in three pieces. The first that looks at the types of behaviour that are associated with belonging. The second which looks at the ways people actually signal their belonging and the third that looks at the ways the community invites people to belong and marks boundaries.

Now I really do need to think about doing something about getting organised for holiday properly!

Week 46: Small count hides quite a bit of work

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	76,268
Words typed this week:	372
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	372
Days I managed to write this week:	1

There are exactly four more green bits of tissue paper on the triskele this week. The increase is quite small this week and I know I should be writing more but it has been a real struggle to get this far. That said I did read a whole book yesterday and I spent quite a bit of time during the week actually working on something else in the tradition chapter plus there has been a lot of organising bits and pieces I need to do so that I can keep working while I am on holiday.

One of the reasons it is so slow is that I am having to put together the theory as I go, this is stuff I know but that I have not spent time reading around and I need it now because I have to give another angle to my argument about belonging. This is taking me to theorists who are normally used in subjects like social psychology, conversational analysis and so on. These are very different theorists to the big social theorists that I have spent most of my time with and yet to portray belonging we need to look at these.  That means this week I really need to get my head around social constructionism and the difference between English and American Schools of this. I suspect I will go with the English who are not so optimistic about the role an individual can play in creating reality.

It should also be noted that I had a cold during the week and was definitely below par.

Week 45: Summer cold slows progress

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	75,896
Words typed this week:	1715
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	0

This week the words have been slow, that is in some ways not surprising it has been the start of a new chapter and that is always slow and I have also had a cold. I failed to realise I had a cold when I started writing and so I was getting rather down about the amount of work I was managing to do and how limited my concentration was. In fact I am slightly further on than this but this was as far as I got last night.

This chapter is about belonging and looks at the connection between the individual and the congregation. It needs to look at this both from the perspective of the congregation and the perspective of the individual. Sociology tends to be a big to small dynamic and so I am hoping that Social Constructivism which is technically part of Social Psychology may produce a better understanding of the work the individual is doing.

The other thing is that I am beginning to realise that writing theory is very different from writing data description and I am much slower at writing theory as I need to go back and forward between the literature and the writing as I need to be careful I get it right. This means that I can spend an hour or two for just 200 words because most of the time is spent reading and writing. The good news is that since my supervision mid week I know what I was missing from my theory section that was making it so short, I was forgetting to show how others had used the theorist I was using. I will need to put that in but it does mean with this chapter that I am putting that in right from the start.

I have a second go at theory this week, needing to put together something on the "work" an individual does to maintain an identity of a group and then something on power between the individual and the group. I also would like to get registered this week with the University of Birmingham, they still have not got me sorted.

September Supervision and Tradition chapter in draft

Break at New Street to write this blog

Well just five weeks after the last supervision and I am back with another chapter in draft! Yes really written between two supervisions. What is more with this chapter I am far happier as the argument of the whole thesis is beginning to take form. Oh there have been ideas before but they have been implicit and not explicit. Last time I actually sat down and started writing something on theory behind it all and with chapter which is the first of the theory chapters I have been making the transition from writing mainly description to focusing on the theory. 

This chapter was shorter than previous chapters coming in around 10,000 word mark. That also was illuminating; I write 10,000 words better than I write 15,000. I seem to sprawl with 15,000 and get lost in creating the quantity, which results in overwrites, too much detail and not enough focus. The arguments get relegated to side portion. 10,000 I can sustain an argument for (or almost can, there were signs of the sprawl coming in but I was able to nip those before they got out of control). That said the middle two sections need integrating in to each other rather than being separate. I think I may have to look at how I do this. 

 

There are other caveats, I need to show a knowledge of the critiques of my theorists. I am unusual in that I have gone back to the big names, not relied on secondary opinion but I also need to show I am aware of the debate. This means more reading I am afraid but it can wait for the finalising edit form. As I suspect that one of the members at one of the placements churches wants to read this chapter in particular I may still send it to my proof readers to look through.

Other than that, before the next supervision I need to have a draft of my chapter on belonging, my cunning plan is to do the theory over the coming two weekends and then while I am away take my three descriptive chapters and basically try and work through them to see what I have relevant to the two themes that are running through it. It will be returning again and again to two themes and working them through from each of the chapters.

Two irritants I am still not registered for next year although my supervisor has filled in the relevant paper work twice. I will check again tonight when I get in and see if anything has happened and if not chase the person who was dealing with the query. Secondly I could not log in due to the login servers not being available. This was irritating as it meant I could not check for papers but I suspect there really is not going to be anything major.

Week 44: Productive non writing week

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	74,181
Words typed this week:	0
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	0

I have not been writing this week because I needed time to do other bits of my thesis. So I have done the post proof reading edit on the worship chapter and that meant it was also time to send that out to my placement churches. The editing was fairly straightforward. I worked through one on Thursday and one on Friday and combined them to check that I had sorted things. I think I have. However if anyone has a verb that explains what a minister does when they adapt a piece of liturgy for use in their own setting and yet the piece remains distinctly related to the original, then please let me know. It is a bit like hearing a piece of music that is titled "variations on a theme by XXX". I used "riffs" neither of my proof readers like it but the other verbs suggested imply quite strongly doing this within worship.

The getting the chapters out was also more work and more expense than I had expected. A full toner was used (costing over £8 pounds) partly at least because my machine does not automatically do double sided so I was making mistakes in trying to get it too. Secondly I need to get them bound £4 each and then there is postage and I will have to send them recorded delivery as this is the only paper copy. There is of course paper as well.

This week I have a supervision and I start the chapter on belonging. It is going to be fun at least in part because it does not have the same story piece that the chapter on Tradition happened but rather I have to make the effort to draw more on the data from the first three chapters and probably a bit of the tradition I also have a supervision on Tuesday so we shall see how things are going.