Goal! Sort of.

Well, if I count my two footnotes, I'm at 5,000 words. If I don't count those footnotes (and Word isn't counting them), I'm at 4902. My goal for the day was 5,000 but I hit a natural stopping point and, to be honest, my back HURTS, so I'm done for the day. But I think I'll hit my 10,000 word goal by the end of the month and will, then, have if not a full chapter draft, at least something very close to it. That puts me at three out of four major chapters drafted. Not too shabby.

How're the rest of you doing?

Avoidance

Truth time: I've been avoiding this blog because I haven't been writing. In my defense, I've been reading (slowly), and thinking, and job searching, but not writing. Today, though, I hit nearly 3,000 words. I wanted to keep pushing just to hit 3,000 (I'm at 2938 or something), but I need to reread a section of Burke before I can go on. So it was pointless. At this rate, I'll hit my target by the end of the month, but I'll need to make sure I push. If I can do another 2,000 words tomorrow, which I think is possible, then I'll be half way there. I have a lot more to say in this chapter, so that's no problem, but organizing and writing is.

I'm working right now off two Don Murray lines. The first is pretty much synonymous with Don Murray, at least at UNH: Never a day without a line. I'm trying to stick to that. The other was taped to the top of his monitor: Let it be shit.

Good advice from the man in the red suspenders.

InaDWriMo Checkin

After my conference weekend, I'm starting up diss month. I'm not actively writing anything new, but I'm pledging to revise three chapters this month (out of four!), making me basically done with revisions. This week, I've been working on Chapter 4; I'm about halfway through at the moment. Ch 3 and then 1 will follow. I finished one of my jobs so I'm only working part-time this month, though the job applications don't quit. This is all complicated, though, by the month of November itself. Since it's the anniversary of my mom's death this week, I'm anticipating being pretty unproductive on the diss front. Then it's my birthday, too, in a fortnight. So I'll do what I can.

Looking at the InaDWriMo acronym more critically, I realize that it can be read as 'in-a-dream-o,' which I will take as a challenge rather than discouragement. How are you all doing?

Following Billie's lead with InaDWriMo 2007

I have to say that November began with a bang. A short bang. And I wrote lots of words on Nov. 1. But, almost nothing since then. Not only is revising, and revising, and revising the revisions hard, but, how do you count words at this point? lol. I had to turn my attentions to job applications, and will for a lot of the week, and I'm sending yet another revision to to the full committee this week. And I caught a cold, and with it, some self-pity. That sounds especially pathetic to be complaining to a group where everyone's in the same boat, and maybe even busier than I am. But I'm back on the wagon today.

On the other hand, I'm finding the idea of InaDWriMo 2007 really wonderful in terms of motivation and community. Knowing that there are lots of others busily writing to meet goals is wonderful, and while I'm not really a competetive person, trying to reach a goal I set in terms of words is cool. I've added a second counter to my blog that goes towards the overall dissertation--100,000 words.

Here's my question though, my dissertation is about multimodality, and includes multimodal components, I wonder how the intellectual equivalent to words could be calculated. (This is a similar conversation going on in my English dept. among writing instructors.)

Back to the salt mines. Hope everyone is making good intellectual progress--even if there aren't word count equivalents. :-)

Checking in with InaDWriMo 2007

I've been writing, but the writing has been slow. So far, I've written about 3,000 words . . . I know that's not bad, but it's painful writing. I wish that InaDWriMo counted TIME as well as WORDS. For example, I spent three hours working out the statistics in a table yesterday, a table that still isn't finished (I'm not much of a math person . . . and this is simple math, percentages, but this is a whole other post). But that table only has about 250 words. It's all good, though, right?

How are you coming along?

Dissertation Writing Month

Okay, given the four inch scar down my back, I'm not sure I can commit to 20,000 words. I would like to commit to 10,000 with the option of blowing that out of the water (not something I'm convinced I can do, but something I would like to do). I'm only allowed to sit for ten minutes, so most of my writing has to be done standing, which isn't my favorite thing. But I'm working on it.

I have all but two of my job applications done (hopefully there will be follow-up work there, but the initial applications are out). I will of course keep checking the job list and the chronicle, etc, but I feel as though I can turn most of my attention to my dissertation. I have some reading to do before the writing, but that's okay. I'm shooting for AT LEAST a full draft of my rhetorical listening chapter.

So, good luck to all!