Week 21: Only slight increase as redrafting starts

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far:38,629
Words typed this week: 2088
Words lost this week: 1545
Total increase: 543
Days I managed to write this week: 4

Well the progress is still slow, but I feel a lot more positive about it than I did last week. My supervisor was able to put into words some of my vague wanderings and get me to relate them to my thesis. That was a major achievement. Now I need to re-write the location chapter to reflect this.

The stuff that is wrong with chapter on location is structural i.e. actual organisation of the writing so that I can link it effectively with the theory. My initial solution was to completely muddle up but that would mean ruining the theory part that was close on finished.  What my supervisor suggested was removing a large clunky bit of description and putting it into an appendix. That I have done. I will have another two appendices dealing with two other chain of events that could take over the thesis.

There are interesting things coming out. I am I would have thought fairly typical of many members and suspicious of how much lip service is given to church meeting so finding that when I actually look at people's behaviour it shows that people tend to "get it" even without lots of front and also tend to value it, even if they don't attend. This is even amongst people who might have reason for not getting it. Now I am not suggesting that church meeting were usually exciting well attended events. On the whole they weren't. However the evidence suggests despite being the same old poorly attended business meetings they do speak to people of a church that is governed by the whole people of God.

Next week I am going to try and write the next appendix so as to give myself chance over the weekend to work through the previous chapter and start seriously reorganising. Oh the other thing is I have found a reference to a text that I have sought for a long time. The only challenge now is to find a library that has a copy of the text. It was printed in 1851 according to the reference. As it is a transcript of a text given in 1620 you begin to see the problem. However it is one text that quite a few URC members are able to paraphrase. It is interesting to put it in context and try and understand what it is actually saying.