Mondayitis...or mania?

Am I the only person who looks on the beginning of a new week with dread? Yet, again after a seemingly stable week and quiet weekend attending to domestic duties and my own headspace (reading papers, watching my beloved Magpies play AFL football, one chick flick movie in the evening when alone in the house), I do not want to rise from bed and greet the new day.

Today I have begun with a leisurely lie-in which I justified by reading a hard back on Wikinomics. Yep, it is interesting in a dry academic way but it was not really a priority task. Next procrastination was my own and my son's washing (yep, he could do it himself after TAFE) but why waste all these sunny daylight hours? Then on to that wonderfully riveting household duty bathroom cleaning. Yep, even that appears better than sitting at the keyboard embarking on my final write up of my PhD.

Oh, look lunchtime. Now I MUST prepare yoghurt, hummus and vegetarian lasagne for dinner.

Next the email sort through and on to this blog.

Funny how the hours are rapidly dwindling and I have achieved NOTHING of substance.

If I stop and reflect, and am honest with myself I really do know why I feel this way each Monday.

By the end of June the Exegesis must be completed so that means only three more weeks to go. I have the material I need. I have all the reading completed, to read more is just going to make it all less 'controllale". I have written the Preface structural summary and main points. I have drafted the Chapter structural layout with thesis argument and hypothesis development through to outcomes.

So why won't I write it?

I have been trying very hard to distance myself from my candidature and look towards life after the PhD, knwoing it is common for people to face a void. For me I fear that void. My self-perception for so many years now has been that I am a PhD candidate and trainee academic.

When the Exegesis is done and dusted the Artefact remains, and I have never been comfortable identifying as a writer. I am not. I am simply a writing craftsperson on a journey of discovery, playing with the 'real writing', a novel.

And I am scared.

I am scared I cannot do it, no matterhow much research and analysis I have done into the process and practice of professional authors.

The big question remains do I have that ability to commune with the Muse? To reach out and grasp that very essence of creation?

Also to do this, mobilise my creative desires and abilities, how safe am I going to be?

Now I have worked my way down to the crux of the matter.

Do I really want to embark on that marvellous, addictive manic phase I need to be generative and productive?

Having spent so many weeks trying to consolidate my wellness routines, and stabilise my moods, am I ready to (or willing to) put it all 'on the line' just to achieve at my highest level of creativity?

It's what I have grieved for that beautific state for over twenty-one years.
I have been atempting to control it via medication ever since I accepted the need to be medicated for life. It had to be fought for my role as mother, but what about now?

Surely, as an author, I must go there.
I cannot see how to do it without mania. Is it any wonder, I put it off.

I just wish my supervisor could realise how much I am thinking of sacrificing for this last foray into my artistic self.

I am scared.

Come, hold my hand Calliope.

A need to stop procrastination...

It's a new day; and I have managed a morning reading the newspaper and listening to talk radio and the pc is now up and running. AND OFF FACEBOOK! I have also delayed doing the bloody email sorting.

I have had one of those breakthrough thoughs in the shower about my PhD progress or lack thereof. Every Monday night I have been watching the new Arts Channel on Foxtel which is allocated to books, literature and writing. Cumulatively, I realise that all the interviews listened to over the past Monday evenings have been percolating somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain. I have been reflecting on the whole creative process and how I go about learning and practicing the craft of novel writing.

And once again like a typical Libran, my thoughts and opinions (scales) counterbalance depending on who is speaking and how well they articulate their processes.

Looking back over the past many months of the PhD I realise I have vasillated between all approches spoken about:

Plot linear notes and plot chronology
Character bios and chronologies
Thematic foci
Scenic reconstructions
Dialogue driven story telling
Structural analysis of plot and story arcs
Character voice and narrative voice

So whilst attending to my personal ablutions I see that over the past three years I have actually done a lot of work! Not nothing as I had recently been feeling!

It's just not cohesive and completely pulled together in a one-piece typed document or manuscript.

I have sequences of false starts and grinding halts all documented and piled heaven-wards on my desk:

electronic file format (and retrievable)word documents,
old library-style system cards,
multi-coloured (and thematically determined(post-it notes,
pictutre images and visual motifs,
hand-written mind maps,
typed MS word flow charts (and other such project-management tools)...

Months and months of intellectual and creative processes on display, right at my fingertips. Ah, the very bones of the Exegesis I believe.

I have had a crack at every method articulated by the published authors from programs like Writers on Writing, The Book Show, and the various Writers' Festivals.

I have been actually working. I have been researching my own creative practice.

Derr, how dumb to see this all as time wasting?

The lows are obviously going to be a generative process also. I just needed to re-frame my own view of it all.

So what if there is only 150 or so pages of typed-novel-manuscript with huge gaps? I have on-hand my cards, memos, notes and dot points, ideas mapped, plots graphed all ready to fill those holes. The book is writing itself although not forthcoming whilst I am waging war on the theory piece editing.

This is the hard part, the sense of nothing being 'finished' as two coponents of the PhD seem at war with each other, like small children fighting for their mother's attention. The stress and feeling of being overwhelmed is immense and should not be underestimated. The impact of this tension cannot simply be ignored or seen as irrelevant. It isn't. It is the PhD process itself. How could I have been so blind?

See 'light bulb' moment of illumination (from earlier mentioned shower stall).

It is envy which has primarily influenced my emotional reactions in the past 24 hours. One author/biographer stated in his interview that he had spent 6 months simply rearranging his system cards until satisfied with the linearity, drama and logic of his text. He then began to write the story.

Envious of this time?
How strange?
That is exactly what I have had...
...time to re-arrange all my creative attempts and thoughts.

What he didn't have was the looming sense of an impending 'Sword of Damocles' that a PhD timeline imposes (over and above) . A knowledge production process which constantly re-iterates via progress reviews and publications a perceived lack of both.

The PhD is a pressure cooker environment. In one sense, it comes down to straight research organisational issues, as in traditional mode PhDs.

Where it differs however is the actual creative artefact production and process that makes it distinctive and unique.

By third year the analogy needs to shift from the realm of the Academy and literary.
It is now one of practice alone.
That the craft has been explored.
Experimentation has occured.
The ingredients laid out ready for the recipe.

Now, in the latter months of the PhD candidature it is like the "Master Chef Pressure Test" (UK version please) .... do it now.

Call it all up,
master your techniques,
hone the craft,
present in the time frame.

"Step back from your benches".

Just before the clock ticks over, stand back and take 'stock' (pardon the pun). What pieces of the dish are already sitting in place?

How about a 900 plus article file covering theoretical, methodologicald and practice discussions and arguments? How about pages of self-reflection in the writers' journal? And ALL the above artefact components?

Is not the success of the PhD down now to documenting the research findings and calling a halt to the research gathering?

So I am actually facing my ususal learned behgaviour pattern - facing down my personal demon; the 'fear of success'? I have all I need just not the motivation/inclination to lay myself on the line - or to 'walk the talk' (in common parlance).

Just take one baby step each day, Carol. Stop looking at the whole picture... it is paralysing.

The failure is not in the moving forward and writing poor quality work it is not writing at all.