I only had a couple of hours today before checking out. I worked on revising chapter 5, and although I didn't get as far as I would have liked on the Giza section, I did make a bunch of corrections through out and added an important section to the conclusion where I try to contextualize these new religious readings of Peer Gynt within contemporary Norwegian society. It isn't fully worked out yet, but I think I'm on the right track. I cut 99 words and added 377.
Along the way, as I was consulting some of the Giza sources I actually found a couple of references that strengthen my argument in chapter four, so I added them there, for another 104 words.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 481
That brings my grand total for the retreat to 5293 words. Not too shabby! I managed my thirty pages and more in only twenty-two days, and so I guess that means the end of daily reports on this blog. I'll take some days off for Christmas. There's still some final revisions that need to be done (including translating quotes and making a bibliography) before I can submit the manuscript, and I also need to craft a book proposal for publishers, so I'll check in sporadically with updates on those fronts. This has been an exciting and challenging process. I'm sure I'll look back on these entries with some amusement at a later date. It has been fun to document the thought process for such a complex project. I'm not totally sure whether the blog has helped or hindered me. My suspicion is that it helped in the sense that it motivated me to get something done many times when I otherwise wouldn't have, just so that I would have something (anything!) positive to report. Cheers!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Day 21/retreat day 2
Første økt: I woke up with a fever and felt really terrible, but some ibuprofen, juice and warm tea seem to have helped. I started out by reading Tveterås's article, then read through my own chapter two. There were quite a few things that stood out as needing revision, and it also became clear where I could insert a longish paragraph on Botten-Hansen's Huldrebrylluppet and why I have chosen not to discuss it at length in the chapter. It was a relief to figure out what to do about Botten-Hansen, and especially that I didn't have to revise chapter two in a major way. I then spent the next couple of hours revising the chapter, and am now calling it done. I tallied an increase of 534 words. I also discovered that I have repeated the same long quote from Witoszek in chapters two and four, so I took it out of chapter four, which is the longest chapter any way. It's now down to 10,247 words. I'm going to take a little break now and then start preparing for my next økt, which will be adding new material to chapter three.
Andre økt: Well that was weird! I took Tore Rem's article on the 2006 "Ibsen Year" with me to lunch hoping that he would have written something good about Ivo de Figueiredo's Slipp meg: En bok om Henrik Ibsen, but he only mentioned it in passing. I did find some good stuff that works really well for my introduction, however. I had known that I was going to have to do some major cutting in the intro, so I just went ahead and started in on that after lunch. I started out with 3364 words and cut out a long section of 879 words. I replaced it with a new section linking cultural studies, politics and parody. I wrote 577 words, for a net loss of 320, and a net gain of a much stronger introduction to my book! I'm now going to say that it's done and move on to rereading de Figueiredo and Nærum for chapter three.
Tredje økt: For the last two hours or so I have totally cranked on chapter three. I added an additional 1518 words, and have cleaned it up a lot. I think all the analysis is in place now, so from here on out it's just polishing. My plan now is to do some polishing of the last remaining chapter (five) after dinner, get a good night's sleep, and get up early in order to bang out a rough conclusion to the book before I have to leave here at 10:30. If I can do that I will have accomplished everything I set out to do on this retreat. But I'm already further along than I had hoped for. This is definitely an outstanding way to get complicated work done. I'm already excited to get home and start celebrating the Christmas season with my family undistracted by this book!
Siste økt: Right before going to dinner I got a bee in my bonnet and laid down about 180 words of ... gasp... conclusion. I can't believe it. I broke the ice on the part of the book that has been haunting me for months. It was a relief just to get something on paper. In doing so it occurred to me that it might be worth taking a second look at Asbjørn Aarseth's 1978 article, "Peer Gynt som tolkningsproblem," so I started skimming it over dinner. I couldn't even finish it because so many bells started going off in my head. I also got a good idea for a brief paragraph to add to the introduction, in which I make a clear case for including non-literary material in my analysis. That's done, and now I'm about to start in on the conclusion, leaving chapter five for tomorrow morning. My goal is to work until "Storbynatt" at 10:30, if I can stay awake that late, that is.
Siste økt, part two: Phew. I can't believe I made it onto the fifth page of the conclusion. I wrote the paragraph on Aarseth and roughed out each of the paragraphs summarizing the five chapters. And since I was closing in on 4000 words total for the day, I tried to come up with something sweeping to say about the whole book. It's probably gibberish, but I made it to a huge milestone, and who knows, it might actually be usable. Now I'm really mentally exhausted, and am throwing in the towel for the night. Even if I don't get anything written tomorrow, this retreat has been phenomenally useful (and if I can squeeze out 200 words tomorrow I will have broken 5000 words total for the retreat)!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 4081 words!
Andre økt: Well that was weird! I took Tore Rem's article on the 2006 "Ibsen Year" with me to lunch hoping that he would have written something good about Ivo de Figueiredo's Slipp meg: En bok om Henrik Ibsen, but he only mentioned it in passing. I did find some good stuff that works really well for my introduction, however. I had known that I was going to have to do some major cutting in the intro, so I just went ahead and started in on that after lunch. I started out with 3364 words and cut out a long section of 879 words. I replaced it with a new section linking cultural studies, politics and parody. I wrote 577 words, for a net loss of 320, and a net gain of a much stronger introduction to my book! I'm now going to say that it's done and move on to rereading de Figueiredo and Nærum for chapter three.
Tredje økt: For the last two hours or so I have totally cranked on chapter three. I added an additional 1518 words, and have cleaned it up a lot. I think all the analysis is in place now, so from here on out it's just polishing. My plan now is to do some polishing of the last remaining chapter (five) after dinner, get a good night's sleep, and get up early in order to bang out a rough conclusion to the book before I have to leave here at 10:30. If I can do that I will have accomplished everything I set out to do on this retreat. But I'm already further along than I had hoped for. This is definitely an outstanding way to get complicated work done. I'm already excited to get home and start celebrating the Christmas season with my family undistracted by this book!
Siste økt: Right before going to dinner I got a bee in my bonnet and laid down about 180 words of ... gasp... conclusion. I can't believe it. I broke the ice on the part of the book that has been haunting me for months. It was a relief just to get something on paper. In doing so it occurred to me that it might be worth taking a second look at Asbjørn Aarseth's 1978 article, "Peer Gynt som tolkningsproblem," so I started skimming it over dinner. I couldn't even finish it because so many bells started going off in my head. I also got a good idea for a brief paragraph to add to the introduction, in which I make a clear case for including non-literary material in my analysis. That's done, and now I'm about to start in on the conclusion, leaving chapter five for tomorrow morning. My goal is to work until "Storbynatt" at 10:30, if I can stay awake that late, that is.
Siste økt, part two: Phew. I can't believe I made it onto the fifth page of the conclusion. I wrote the paragraph on Aarseth and roughed out each of the paragraphs summarizing the five chapters. And since I was closing in on 4000 words total for the day, I tried to come up with something sweeping to say about the whole book. It's probably gibberish, but I made it to a huge milestone, and who knows, it might actually be usable. Now I'm really mentally exhausted, and am throwing in the towel for the night. Even if I don't get anything written tomorrow, this retreat has been phenomenally useful (and if I can squeeze out 200 words tomorrow I will have broken 5000 words total for the retreat)!
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 4081 words!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Day 20/retreat day 1
It almost killed me to get here (I have a horrible and debilitating cold), but I'm up high above the city of Oslo at the Voksenåsen conference center. It feels like I'm the only guest here, and the conditions are perfect for getting a lot of work done. I arrived about 1:30 and by 4 o'clock it was starting to get dark. Here's the view from my window:
The building to the left is the rest of the conference center, and you can just see the lights of Oslo beyond the trees. And this is what I've been looking at for most of the afternoon:
I can make faces at myself in the mirror as I'm writing. It's a comfy little work space, and actually my room is quite spacious, with two single beds and a fairly large bathroom. And best of all it's perfectly quiet.
I thought I would report on my "økter," which is to say work periods. My first one today was from arrival to dinner time, and I hope to get in another økt after dinner.
Første økt: I finished reading Øvrelid's book on the Per Gynt festival, and revised chapter four. It ended up growing a bit. I added 473 words, so the total for the chapter is now 10,338 words. I think I'm going to leave it at that. Now in the 45 minutes before dinner I'm going to start reading Botten-Hansen's Huldrebrylluppet, and will probably spend the rest of the evening doing that. If I get through it, I may start revising chapter 2, otherwise that's first up for tomorrow morning.
Andre økt: I got through the first 50 pages of Huldrebrylluppet before dinner, but it was too unwieldy to take with me to the dining room, so I picked up Gisle Selnes's article on Ibsen's Hegelianism to read instead. Boy am I glad I did! A bunch of things pertaining to chapter 1 became clearer to me, so after eating I came back and started revising the chapter. I added 258 words, and I'm going to call it done for now. I'm now going to crawl in bed and read the remaining 100 pages of Huldrebrylluppet.
ETA: Finished Huldrebrylluppet with 20 minutes to spare before an episode of Lewis. I think I've earned the right to watch it. The play made pretty much no sense at all to me. I'll need to re-read Tveterås's article tomorrow at breakfast and hope for divine inspiration as to how I'm going to integrate a discussion of Huldrebrylluppet into chapter 2. Gulp.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 731
I can make faces at myself in the mirror as I'm writing. It's a comfy little work space, and actually my room is quite spacious, with two single beds and a fairly large bathroom. And best of all it's perfectly quiet.
I thought I would report on my "økter," which is to say work periods. My first one today was from arrival to dinner time, and I hope to get in another økt after dinner.
Første økt: I finished reading Øvrelid's book on the Per Gynt festival, and revised chapter four. It ended up growing a bit. I added 473 words, so the total for the chapter is now 10,338 words. I think I'm going to leave it at that. Now in the 45 minutes before dinner I'm going to start reading Botten-Hansen's Huldrebrylluppet, and will probably spend the rest of the evening doing that. If I get through it, I may start revising chapter 2, otherwise that's first up for tomorrow morning.
Andre økt: I got through the first 50 pages of Huldrebrylluppet before dinner, but it was too unwieldy to take with me to the dining room, so I picked up Gisle Selnes's article on Ibsen's Hegelianism to read instead. Boy am I glad I did! A bunch of things pertaining to chapter 1 became clearer to me, so after eating I came back and started revising the chapter. I added 258 words, and I'm going to call it done for now. I'm now going to crawl in bed and read the remaining 100 pages of Huldrebrylluppet.
ETA: Finished Huldrebrylluppet with 20 minutes to spare before an episode of Lewis. I think I've earned the right to watch it. The play made pretty much no sense at all to me. I'll need to re-read Tveterås's article tomorrow at breakfast and hope for divine inspiration as to how I'm going to integrate a discussion of Huldrebrylluppet into chapter 2. Gulp.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 731
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Day 19
Flatline. Woke up with the cold I have been fearing. No energy to read anything. The only thing I did was assemble article notebook number two. It was all I could do to punch holes in the articles.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Day 18
The only thing book related that I've done today is some sporadic reading in Ragnar Øvrelid's history of Per Gynt-stemnet. It is useful and is a good supplement to Sverre Mørkhagen's book on the historical Per Gynt. The best factoid so far is that an advertising guru named Robert Millar published a book in 1945 pointing out the potential market for Peer Gynt tourism in Gudbrandsdal. I'd love to get my hands on that book!
ETA: The title of the book is Norges tredje turistattraksjon (Oslo: Tanum, 1945) and it's only 44 pages long. I've ordered it from the National Library.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
ETA: The title of the book is Norges tredje turistattraksjon (Oslo: Tanum, 1945) and it's only 44 pages long. I've ordered it from the National Library.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
Friday, December 17, 2010
Day 17
Today I had to run around like a madwoman gathering everything together that I'm going to need for my retreat on Monday. Thankfully, two necessary books came in through ILL:
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
Øvrelid, Ragnar. Per Gynt-stemnet 1928-2003. Lillehammer: Dølaringen Boklag, 2003.
Figueiredo, Ivo de. Slipp meg: En bok om Henrik Ibsen. Oslo: Aschehoug, 2006.And then I went ahead and bought a copy of:
Runde, Øystein and Geir Moen. De fire store: bukk fra luften, bukk fra bunnen, Obstfelder er forsvunnen. Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2010.I've got all the articles in two binders, a selection of key books, a CD of the latest version of every chapter, a print out of the whole manuscript, volume five of Henrik Ibsens Skrifter, and the Oxford English translation. It will be heavy (I'll probably have to pack a wheeled suitcase) but do-able. I'm stoked, but it will have to wait, since I won't really be able to do any work over the weekend.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: zero
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Day 16
The clock just hit 7 am and I am the proud new owner of a thousand words. I woke up with an opening sentence for the section on modern parody in chapter three. Just as I sat down to gloat over this here I heard my son with his daily morning bellowing "mamma." Phew. Sqeezed those three pages in just in time!
I hope there's more to come today!
By the way, I meant to mention yesterday that I got a tip on this comic book from the fabulous librarian at the Ibsen Center. I'm getting it asap, and will included it in my chapter on literary parodies. Yes indeed!
Closing in on 11:30 am and I've racked up another thousand words on chapter three. I was beginning to feel desperate that I'd never get anything done this week. This feels really good!
Shazam! Closing in on 2:00 pm and I squeezed out yet another 1000 words.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 9 pages
I hope there's more to come today!
By the way, I meant to mention yesterday that I got a tip on this comic book from the fabulous librarian at the Ibsen Center. I'm getting it asap, and will included it in my chapter on literary parodies. Yes indeed!
Closing in on 11:30 am and I've racked up another thousand words on chapter three. I was beginning to feel desperate that I'd never get anything done this week. This feels really good!
Shazam! Closing in on 2:00 pm and I squeezed out yet another 1000 words.
PAGES/WORDS WRITTEN: 9 pages
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)