28 Days of Thesis Updates: Day Four

So yesterday was the most solid day of work on the exegesis I’ve had, clocking up over a thousand words and setting up something that actually resembles a segment rather than random ideas that I’m struggling to link together. Basically I’ve been doing in the exegesis a more detailed version of what I did in the first two days here (pull apart the idea of the exegesis itself) and things just started falling into place; huzzah for blogging, without which I’d have never realised that this is what was interesting me and stopping me from going forward.

And while I’m still dreadfully behind based on when I started the process, I’m now on-par as far as wordcount goes (assuming a January 31st finish for the draft), even with the massive cuts of day 3. This is calming news.

I’m due a trip to the library to grab a bunch of books, since the haul I’ve got here was grabbed haphazardly in the hours before the university library’s closed down over the holidays (long story). Realised today that I don’t have the books on Bahktin that I wanted, but they’re local to Nathan campus so it’s not a huge problem; also looking at grabbing some secondary texts while I’m there, since there’s a bunch of interesting genre theory being utilized in some of the research I revisited today and I’m interested enough to go seek it out and give it a once-over. This visiting the library thing is looking more and more difficult to handle, since the university library’s are only open at weird times until classes start again in March. I may have to bite the bullet and go visit them during weekday business hours, horrendous parking costs be damned. Today wasn’t anywhere near as productive as yesterday as a result of the constant looking for references I didn’t really have, but the latest issue of the Gothic Studies journal showed up and it was full of awesome stuff that reminded of exactly why I love academia.

I still, however, want to be working on a story instead of doing this (and I’m still antsy enough to snap any smart-alec who says “hurry up and finish then”).