Winter writing must begin

Posted by in Academix

Wow, two months since I posted here. Swamped as usual. Suffering from a total writer’s block and unable to really dive into my dissertation-writing. I keep reading and reading and when I sit down to write I feel like I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. But some things were working against me – summer, a big move to a new apartment (with my own office finally!), the ongoing distraction known as Cinema Politica, and most recently, teaching a fourth year undergraduate course at Carleton University on alternative media. With those things behind me (Cinema Politica is finished for the semester and the course is over, save for the huge stack of papers I have to mark by the end of this weekend), I should be ready.

I’m really trying to knock out a rough chapter before I take a short holiday break, beginning December 20th. That gives me ten days. If I can do an average of four pages per day, I can do it. But there’s nothing up there (in my head)!! Argh!! I keep hearing everyone goes through this, but I really feel like there’s no way I’ll ever get this dissertation written. Really. Let’s hope my next post on this blog will be one celebrating a chapter (or two) under my belt.

The picture above is from a special academic forum/workshop I attended this past spring called NYLON (New York-London). It’s a network of super smart people. You have to have a PhD to be a member so most are profs, but they invite the odd graduate student to attend some of their workshops and I was lucky enough to take part and have my paper discussed by this secret cabal of braniacs from the US and UK. I’m over on the left side and to my immediate left is my awesome supervisor Ira Wagman. To my immediate right is the insanely prolific academic Craig Calhoun, who, aside from founding NYLON, is a very pleasant individual. Two intense days of intellectual discussion and boy was I exhausted but also exhilarated. I could use one of those right about now. I’ll have to instead settle for the inspirational effect of snow falling out my window…