Overcoming Proposal Lethargy

I had all of this great momentum to write from after my comprehensive exams were done at the end of April. I worked hard and wrote my dissertation proposal and now I'm in limbo world. I've been waiting for my committee members schedules to align so that we can meet for the proposal defense. Everyone on my committee is supportive of my topic and excited about the project, but we need to have the official meeting so that I can be truly ABD and get to work on this monster.

Now the wise person would be working on dissertation now, but what am I doing--grading speeches and papers all the time. I'm teaching first session and the class meets every single day of the week--so it is constant grading upon grading. By the time I get done, the last thing I feel like doing is thinking and writing "critically." Fortunately, this week is the last week of class. But I've decided that I'm making excuses and I need to get myself writing again. Part of the reason for starting the blog--to write write write. Couple years ago, I took a seminar in the English department on publishing and professionalism. One of the books for the course was Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day (by Bolker). The title is just a hook, but the premise is that in order to get a dissertation done, you need to write everyday. And a way of getting into that routine is to start with at least 10-15 minutes of freewriting (dissertation log) about your ideas and your process. So that's what I'm trying to do. But since I have a very fixed topic and a good bit of research done on the project, I think I need to start working past this stasis my proposal process has created. Bolker recommends creating a routine where writing is the first thing you do in the day (teaching makes that hard for me--I'm not a morning person and getting up to do anything before class is not going to happen this week) and that you set a goal for the day. You don't do anything else until that goal is met. She recommends several methods, the one I am thinking I will take up is the "certain pages" goal. This involves writing a reasonable number of pages a day--not polished pages--just potentially useable pages. The idea is to create a "zero draft" which you can revise and convert into a "real" first draft. None of this is rocket science--I write zero drafts all the time--and most writers now they should write every day. But knowing and doing are two very different things. So logging this process is a very important step for me in making sure I'm doing what I know. Making sure I'm writing down my goals and sticking to them.

For now, because of teaching and moving, I know that I won't be able to create a real routine, but I need to start back thinking about my project more. I want it to be more of a part of my daily thinking so that I can sharpen my arguments for the diss. So my goal for this week is to start reading again. I plan to spend at least an hour in the library each day this week researching and reading up on Black women politicians. Outside of my dissertation, I have three biographies that I am writing on politicians, so I want to work on those articles this week as a way to get myself thinking more about my project.