Today I added one tiny quote from the Hult book, which bumped me onto the fortieth page of chapter 1. I really can't believe it, so I'll let it stew for a while while I move on to other things.
My main task today was to get started on my Trolljegeren paper for the upcoming SASS conference. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to get much done because a good friend who is in town wanted to have a writing boot camp together. I booked a meeting room for the day, and since we get kind of wound up and chatty when we're together I didn't think it would actually be productive. Much to my delight, I did get a good solid start on the paper, and also spent some time going through the film looking for stills to show in the presentation.
I'll be working from home tomorrow for the first time in a long time and I'm really excited to do that. All my commuting has been wearing me out. If I'm lucky I won't be out of my PJs at all. I still think I do my best work that way.
WORDS WRITTEN: 1054 on the conference paper, and maybe 50-75 on the chapter (I forgot to check).
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Chapter draft
I'm calling the first full draft of chapter 1 done! I was able to go through and make all the corrections and changes I had scribbled down on my chapter print out a few days ago, and, moreover, was able to add a significant amount to the section on Asbjørnsen. I know I need to add some secondary literature there (specifically Marte Hvam Hult's book, which I'm off to borrow again), but basically the chapter is done. I am ecstatic!
I now have to turn my attention to a conference paper, which I'm giving myself about 10 days to write up, then it's on to chapter two and Maurits Hansen, Henrik Wergeland, Asbjørnsen (again), Collett (again), and possibly Vinje, though I really need to read Ferdaminni fraa Sumaren 1860 first in order to make a decision about whether to include it!! I can already feel that many of those bits are going to fall into place pretty easily, so I'm quite excited about it. My self-imposed deadline for this chapter is 1 June.
WORDS WRITTEN: 1407 for a grand chapter draft total of 11,867 words or 39 pages.
I now have to turn my attention to a conference paper, which I'm giving myself about 10 days to write up, then it's on to chapter two and Maurits Hansen, Henrik Wergeland, Asbjørnsen (again), Collett (again), and possibly Vinje, though I really need to read Ferdaminni fraa Sumaren 1860 first in order to make a decision about whether to include it!! I can already feel that many of those bits are going to fall into place pretty easily, so I'm quite excited about it. My self-imposed deadline for this chapter is 1 June.
WORDS WRITTEN: 1407 for a grand chapter draft total of 11,867 words or 39 pages.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Minimal
I did minimal work on the book today because I was distracted by three other things: a grade complaint, some theory reading for my upcoming conference paper, and my job application cover letter. The latter got me pretty revved up.
I did some minimal editing of chapter 1, printed out the whole chapter, and read it through for flow and transitions and order. There were a lot of things that need changing, but most of what needs to be there is in place, and the rest is pretty cut and dried. It will be fun to sit down tomorrow and start doing the final stage editing.
But even minimal work is better than no work, right?
WORDS WRITTEN: probably about 20, but I didn't check since I was mostly just doing copy editing...
I did some minimal editing of chapter 1, printed out the whole chapter, and read it through for flow and transitions and order. There were a lot of things that need changing, but most of what needs to be there is in place, and the rest is pretty cut and dried. It will be fun to sit down tomorrow and start doing the final stage editing.
But even minimal work is better than no work, right?
WORDS WRITTEN: probably about 20, but I didn't check since I was mostly just doing copy editing...
Saturday, March 26, 2011
A burst
I had a little burst of work today and came up with the beginnings of a conclusion. I started out really simply with the task of translating the Bjørnson section, and then the summarizing thoughts just kind of appeared. Who knows if it will be worth keeping, but at least it's a start.
WORDS WRITTEN: 1003
WORDS WRITTEN: 1003
Friday, March 25, 2011
Molasses
Working today was like molasses. I had such a hard time getting motivated, but ended up getting in a productive push after all. My problem was that I had a lot of reading to do, which I basically just had to give up on and start writing instead. Once I was writing I could be a little more surgical in my reading, and stopped dozing off.
I started out easy by translating the Asbjørnsen section (which was really short) and ended up deleting a bunch of it, since it didn't really fit. Then once I'd done that I went back to one of the texts I'm working on and then found some really relevant passages that I could analyze. I'm excited about how it's coming together, especially because of how strongly the gender aspect comes through. It finally dawned on me that all the folktales collected in the frame narrative (and the frame narrative itself!) are all about negotiating marriages, which of course is the main point of this chapter on "national romances." It sounds painfully obvious when I write it out here, but really I just hadn't seen the connection previously. D'oh.
I also added a tiny conclusion to the section on Fjeldeventyret which I think sums up that section in a strong way. It was only one or two sentences about the possibilities that the play's open ending suggests, but I think it makes a big difference because it connects the analysis more directly to the rest of the chapter.
The cabin project lecture last night ended up being an amazingly positive experience. I had expected an audience of foreign students, but nearly everyone was Norwegian. There was a group of three graduate students who asked brilliant questions afterward and even invited me along for a beer (I had tea instead, since my throat is still hurting) and a really enthusiastic and enlightening conversation about all kinds of things. It was so much fun, and also a huge relief that the Norwegian lay audience didn't think my theories were full of shit.
WORDS WRITTEN: hard to say since I deleted a bunch, but this draft now has 450 more words than the last one.
I started out easy by translating the Asbjørnsen section (which was really short) and ended up deleting a bunch of it, since it didn't really fit. Then once I'd done that I went back to one of the texts I'm working on and then found some really relevant passages that I could analyze. I'm excited about how it's coming together, especially because of how strongly the gender aspect comes through. It finally dawned on me that all the folktales collected in the frame narrative (and the frame narrative itself!) are all about negotiating marriages, which of course is the main point of this chapter on "national romances." It sounds painfully obvious when I write it out here, but really I just hadn't seen the connection previously. D'oh.
I also added a tiny conclusion to the section on Fjeldeventyret which I think sums up that section in a strong way. It was only one or two sentences about the possibilities that the play's open ending suggests, but I think it makes a big difference because it connects the analysis more directly to the rest of the chapter.
The cabin project lecture last night ended up being an amazingly positive experience. I had expected an audience of foreign students, but nearly everyone was Norwegian. There was a group of three graduate students who asked brilliant questions afterward and even invited me along for a beer (I had tea instead, since my throat is still hurting) and a really enthusiastic and enlightening conversation about all kinds of things. It was so much fun, and also a huge relief that the Norwegian lay audience didn't think my theories were full of shit.
WORDS WRITTEN: hard to say since I deleted a bunch, but this draft now has 450 more words than the last one.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Catching up
I've been out of town for a wedding, then sick, then preoccupied with a bunch of other stuff. I did get a tiny bit of work done on chapter one on Tuesday, but I forgot to post about it. I did both some rewriting, adding, and cutting and pasting.
Tonight I'm giving a public lecture on the cabin project, so I spent the entire day putting together my slides for it. I think it was a useful exercise to go through my arguments and try to formulate them for a general audience. I think I was able to articulate one or two of the points I have been trying to make in a useful way, so that's something at least. Also, I realized that the term "epiphanic culture," which I've been throwing around in my film course because of an article by Mette Hjort, actually relates really well to the cabin project.
I pretty much have all of next week to work uninterrupted, so I'm really hopeful about getting the chapter draft done. Here's what I have left to do:
WORDS WRITTEN/ADDED: 721
Tonight I'm giving a public lecture on the cabin project, so I spent the entire day putting together my slides for it. I think it was a useful exercise to go through my arguments and try to formulate them for a general audience. I think I was able to articulate one or two of the points I have been trying to make in a useful way, so that's something at least. Also, I realized that the term "epiphanic culture," which I've been throwing around in my film course because of an article by Mette Hjort, actually relates really well to the cabin project.
I pretty much have all of next week to work uninterrupted, so I'm really hopeful about getting the chapter draft done. Here's what I have left to do:
- translate Bjørnson section
- translate Asbjørsen section
- re-read Asbjørsen's Huldreeventyr
- add more material to Asbjørnsen section
- revise full chapter for logic and flow
- consider adding discussions of "Et farligt Frieri" and Daglannet to Bjørnson section
WORDS WRITTEN/ADDED: 721
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Cheating?
Today was another day of cutting and pasting, and I feel kind of like I'm cheating when I do it. I jumped from 19 to 28 pages today, partly by writing new material, but also from adding some chunks of writing taken from two other papers. Both of them were written in Norwegian, so they'll have to be reformulated. I started working on that, but I realized that I'm feeling really tired (I was up at 5 this morning), so I think I'm going to call it quits for now. The important thing is that all the major pieces of this chapter are now in place, except for a conclusion. Of course there's a ton of work left to be done beyond the conclusion. Each section needs to be rewritten and expanded, and transitions and linkages need to be strengthened. But at least now I can start to look at it as one cohesive unit. Eventually, I'd like it to come in at around forty pages, so I've still got lots of room to expand. I'm going to print it out now, let it sit for a day or so, and then give it a careful read-through before diving back in to revise. But for now, I'm super happy with how this has progressed, and I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to tell myself I have a complete chapter draft by April first, which has been my goal all along. After that I have to write a quick conference paper, and then my next major milestone is getting a complete draft of chapter two by June first.
WORDS ADDED/WRITTEN: 2734
WORDS ADDED/WRITTEN: 2734
Monday, March 14, 2011
A good day
Today was another productive day. I woke up with some good ideas that I was able to jot down before the day started, I finished reading Amtmandens Døttre and picked up a bunch of additional secondary literature at the library. And I had a good stretch of uninterrupted writing time to pull things together in.
WORDS WRITTEN: 1490 (darn it, had I known I was only 10 words shy of 1500 I'm sure I could have come up with something else to say...)
WORDS WRITTEN: 1490 (darn it, had I known I was only 10 words shy of 1500 I'm sure I could have come up with something else to say...)
Sunday, March 13, 2011
A little flurry
I've been reading Amtmandens Døttre in between weekend activities, and I realized that I really needed to gather together my thoughts in some notes, even though I'm not done with the novel (which of course I've read a bunch of times before). I was able to get down almost two pages, and saw some interesting connections.
This week is going to be hectic with all kinds of non-research activities lined up, so I'm glad to be able to squeeze a little flurry of writing in before the storm of other things hits.
WORDS WRITTEN: 652
This week is going to be hectic with all kinds of non-research activities lined up, so I'm glad to be able to squeeze a little flurry of writing in before the storm of other things hits.
WORDS WRITTEN: 652
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Gratifying
Today was one of those days that scholars live for. I woke up with some clear ideas for the chapter I'm working on, and got some uninterrupted time before everyone else got up to sketch them out in some notes. When I got into work I had a three hour stretch of time to work on the chapter before other commitments kicked in.
I did the fun job of cutting and pasting material from other projects (conference papers and an article) into the chapter, instantly increasing my word count by ten fold. Then I started working further on the ideas I had had earlier in the day, which all related to Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre, a novel I haven't written about before, though I've taught it and read it many times. It's all too vague to discuss here, but I started to suspect that my approach might just possibly have the potential to contribute something entirely original to the scholarship on that novel. I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm optimistic.
I also had some ideas relating to the rest of the chapter. Originally I thought that each of the six texts would receive equal weight, but now I'm wondering if I should divide it into four, with the first section devoted to the first three texts (all of which I've published on elsewhere) and then the latter three sections to Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn, Amtmandens Døttre and Synnøve Solbakken respectively. I'm thinking of all of the texts as examples (to a greater or lesser extent) of national romances in the sense described by Doris Sommer.
The chapter would break down to something like:
Whoops, that looks kind of boring when I outline it like that. I'll have to think about it. Another idea that came up was to contextualize the budeie or seterjente in relation to theories of the female national icon (like Britannia or Marianne), which I learned about recently from a WIP exchange with a colleague. It strikes me that this is almost the only way to make sense of the budeie, Aagot, in Fjeldeventyret, since she serves no purpose in the dramatic action of the play.
Tomorrow I have to go to an all day seminar, and I feel like I need to re-read the novel and the secondary literature again before I can pick up from here, but at least I got a solid chunk of the chapter worked out conceptually and on the page today.
WORDS ADDED/WRITTEN: a whopping 3,521!
I did the fun job of cutting and pasting material from other projects (conference papers and an article) into the chapter, instantly increasing my word count by ten fold. Then I started working further on the ideas I had had earlier in the day, which all related to Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre, a novel I haven't written about before, though I've taught it and read it many times. It's all too vague to discuss here, but I started to suspect that my approach might just possibly have the potential to contribute something entirely original to the scholarship on that novel. I'm not quite sure yet, but I'm optimistic.
I also had some ideas relating to the rest of the chapter. Originally I thought that each of the six texts would receive equal weight, but now I'm wondering if I should divide it into four, with the first section devoted to the first three texts (all of which I've published on elsewhere) and then the latter three sections to Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn, Amtmandens Døttre and Synnøve Solbakken respectively. I'm thinking of all of the texts as examples (to a greater or lesser extent) of national romances in the sense described by Doris Sommer.
The chapter would break down to something like:
- no more than 5 pages of introduction and theory
- 10 pages of analysis of the seter motif in the early texts (Storm, Bjerregaard, Riis)
- 10 pages of analysis of the seter motif in Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn
- 10 pages of analysis of the seter motif in Amtmandens Døttre
- 10 pages of analysis of the seter motif in Synnøve Solbakken
Whoops, that looks kind of boring when I outline it like that. I'll have to think about it. Another idea that came up was to contextualize the budeie or seterjente in relation to theories of the female national icon (like Britannia or Marianne), which I learned about recently from a WIP exchange with a colleague. It strikes me that this is almost the only way to make sense of the budeie, Aagot, in Fjeldeventyret, since she serves no purpose in the dramatic action of the play.
Tomorrow I have to go to an all day seminar, and I feel like I need to re-read the novel and the secondary literature again before I can pick up from here, but at least I got a solid chunk of the chapter worked out conceptually and on the page today.
WORDS ADDED/WRITTEN: a whopping 3,521!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
365 pages in 365 days?
And we're off! Today, March 8th, on the International Woman's Day I wrote the first page of my book on literary cabins. I've been thinking and talking about this project since 2006, and I'm finally sitting down to do the writing. Kind of amazing that it has taken me this long to settle down and just do it, but for some reason I've built up a whole bunch of neuroses about it that I have had to work through. But now, officially, the writer's block has been forced, and I'm underway!!!
I just jumped right in at the beginning of chapter one, and will take it from there. The chapter deals with six literary texts, five of which I've already done preliminary work on (conference papers and one published article). Surely I can pull this off, right?
WORDS WRITTEN: 374
I just jumped right in at the beginning of chapter one, and will take it from there. The chapter deals with six literary texts, five of which I've already done preliminary work on (conference papers and one published article). Surely I can pull this off, right?
WORDS WRITTEN: 374
Friday, March 4, 2011
Space cadet
Today was supposed to be the day that I completely finished fixing all the quotations and providing translations. I was foiled, in part by a library mystery and in part by my own absentmindedness. The university library didn't have a single English translation of Fruen fra havet, and what I though was my copy of the English translation of Nokon kjem til å komme turned out to be a different Fosse book (d'oh!).
I did go through and add translations of all the quotes from the secondary literature, and converted all the Norwegian quotes from Fruen fra havet from the school edition I'd been working from to the official HIS edition of the play. I also did a little tinkering with what I had written along the way, so it's starting to shape up a bit. My colleague and I decided that we're both ready to send off our work to each other today, and we'll meet on Monday for a critique session. I'm really jazzed about that! They're always so fun and so incredibly helpful.
The article still doesn't have a decent title, which kind of bothers me. I'm worried that it's an indication that the article doesn't really have a clear point...
I did go through and add translations of all the quotes from the secondary literature, and converted all the Norwegian quotes from Fruen fra havet from the school edition I'd been working from to the official HIS edition of the play. I also did a little tinkering with what I had written along the way, so it's starting to shape up a bit. My colleague and I decided that we're both ready to send off our work to each other today, and we'll meet on Monday for a critique session. I'm really jazzed about that! They're always so fun and so incredibly helpful.
The article still doesn't have a decent title, which kind of bothers me. I'm worried that it's an indication that the article doesn't really have a clear point...
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Crank
Okay, it took a whole package of Pringles to do it, but I think I finished a decent draft of the article today. My stomach feels gross, but I have 20 pages of text that appears through my saturated fats-induced haze to function as a coherent argument. I can't wait to do the WIP exchange next week to find out how I can make it better.
I'm off to the library to pick up an English translation of Fruen fra Havet and the Henrik Ibsens Skrifter version of the original so that I can spend the day tomorrow on the niggly work of making sure all the quotations are right. This translation-less draft is 6912 words, including the bibliography. That means that I wrote a smidge over 1000 words today. Yay! I'm so relieved, and am anxious to clear the decks and dive into the cabin book, fi-na-lly!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 1178.
I'm off to the library to pick up an English translation of Fruen fra Havet and the Henrik Ibsens Skrifter version of the original so that I can spend the day tomorrow on the niggly work of making sure all the quotations are right. This translation-less draft is 6912 words, including the bibliography. That means that I wrote a smidge over 1000 words today. Yay! I'm so relieved, and am anxious to clear the decks and dive into the cabin book, fi-na-lly!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 1178.
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