Pleasure to write again

I feel so happy to have spent the day working on my novel. It's sure as hell not Steinbeck or Astley but it is mine. I am so releived to finally give it the attention needed at last. I now understand why so many PhD students begin their three year journey writing the novel. It is a safety blanket, a space where they feel in control. In a way I see that process as an avoidance tactic. A tactic to stave off the insecurity and tumult of the exgetical writing.

We all adore the research process whether it is for the exegesis or the novel, but trying to pull something together when we are painfully aware of our own inadequacies, discovered through the research process. The more we read the less we know so is it any wonder we hide away and feel insecure writing the academic component. Why does the process of creation have to be so damn debilitating at times?

So how can I sum up the last three and a half years? A joy to have time to research and read. A total nightmare to navigate my way through the literary theories, epistemologies and methodologies and a total hatred of academic jargon!

As an aside, in true Shakespearean tradition.... did anyone read today's Higher Ed supplement about the corsetting of undergfrad students... geees I wish there was just such a join the dots template for the exegesis, complete with tutor created notes and clarifiactions. I'm sure even I could pass then. (Drowned by Dr Verbiage column)

What I want to say is what I think and feel about the process, not what others have deemed valuable and acceptable. I am having difficulty putting into plain English what I have learned and am learning about the craft of writing this bloody novel, and I am having great difficulty locating 'proper' sources who actually say the same thing I am trying to. I need the quotes and citations to give weight to my academic writing. Yet I thought all along that my writers journal was the data for the exegesis... apparently not as much as I had hoped.

These two were supposed to speak to each other... the journal and the research. Well in the case of my genre, they have. In the case of how I want to write and what I want to write they have. But in the case of how to write and craft the work, written in academeese... then no way. They appear totally disconnected. I can see linking threads but am unable to get these summarised on paper.

Structure and bones... the one problem assailing me in both written components. At least now for a couple of months I can lose myslef in the joy of writing. I can revel in silencing the critic on my shoulder and forget that I have some very critical friends awaiting, as executioners just down the track.

It is the freedom from stress I have craved for many months now and should go a long way to ensuring mental stability and wellness. Hopefully, I can produce this novel in that time also, and return to the Academy charging in on my white stallion ready to defeat and vanquish the exegetical dragon in the tower.

Does MY LIFE have to be so hard?

What is it about me?

I know I suffer BMD but that can't be the ONLY reason my daily existence is such an emotional roller coaster. I seem to care TOO MUCH about everything ALL THE TIME.

Just let's examine my movement on the moo- scales over the past 48 hours. It would look visually, like a heart monitor screen whilst the heart is undergoing shocks from defibrillation! Up, down, massive ups, massive plummets and then dead straight.... before beginning the patterns again.

Why?

I was very happy with getting down to the business of writing my Exegesis finally. I have stopped procrastinating and am no longer going back to the safety net of 're-reading articles or book chapters'. I have closed the books and am getting out of my head everything that has stuck in the deep recesses of my brain over the last forty months. The Dr Rowena Wallace method of focused writing seems to be just what I need at this moment.

It seems productive and a step in the right direction; forward for a change. I feel that I have actually worked (intellectually) over this period and despite the obvious structural and stylistic omissions at this stage in the draft it is a reasonably strong base to work on in the coming days.

I have also been jotting journal notes on plot additions and deletions for my artefact and am really looking forward to giving this 100% of my attention in the next few weeks.

BUT.... (here comes the but...)

Everytime I begin to feel under control and even healthy... some voice from somewhere (outside my head) comes along to destabilise me.

My supervisor implied last Thursday that when I sat a seat apart from her on the couch I was trying to avoid her. Wrong!

I'm the bloody one who flew home from my holiday in Sydney just to catch up for a meeting about how stuck I actually was. She was the one too busy to fit me into her busy schedule... after all she needed to leave at a certain hour to ensure she could meet her family/mothering responsibilities. What about mine? Let alone the issue of how much I spent to fly down and return back again to Sydney! My money of course, never University funds.

She also had a go at me for wanting to attend an annual Conference where most of my networking occurs and where I just might have a hope of getting some respect from a future employer. This University Which Shall Not be Named...(my alma mater) will not touch me with a proverbial barge pole now that I have seen the insecurities and hidden agendas at play, keeping it disfunctional (at least at my home Campus).

My future at age 54 hangs on this stuff.

I am not privileged enough to have had a husband and supportive family to ensure that I did not need twenty years out of my academic career and subsistence on Welfare.

These were not bad choices or things I regret... just how the cards fell.

I am only pissed off NOW when people refuse to understand or empathise and put their own emotional and career needs first AT MY EXPENSE.

Hence I am angry and this takes so much energy.

I pay a heavy price for this anger. I turn the emotion inside as I cannot vent (apart from here days later), and I end up crying and self-sabotaging my academic (and health) progress.

Need to regain balance and stability... again.

To take my mind off things, I decide that I need to think of someone other than myself to gain some perspective.

So in a very positive frame of mind I take myself off to important academic "Show Cause" (for continuning to be enrolled in a Course of study) Hearings as the Student Consultative Network representative at a different Campus in a different Discipline... see how protective of myself I can actually be?

This was a great learning experience and opportunity to read character... that of the fellow academic panel members and the students presenting.

Without breaching any confidences or professional ethics let's just say that when faced with cultural pressures unknown to us Aussie-born students: wars, political instability in homelands, extreme poverty, employment victimisation, workplace inflexibility, illness and homeless insecurity... my little issues seem like proverbial mole hills.

It was a humbling experience. And a timely one wit a reminder that I need to re-focus and regroup emotionally.

Next, I have to reach out for some beauty somewhere; this time around the leafy Acland Street and bright shiny wet streets of St Kilda and her wintry sea.

Then, up again to normal scale... move on and write again. Good stuff....

Only to be brought crashing down again by a 'friend'/co-scholar. A return of a missed phone call sees me being asked to 'fix' some computer program issues THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE ARISEN if this bloody person had listened in the training classes or re-read the notes. Nor would it be my problem if he had run the expert trainer herself PRIOR TO NOW....

...Why would anyone at this stage of a PhD completion have moved the main document several times, onto several machines and hard drives... I can understand having backups ... but changing the machine that holds the ACTUAL document and attached library files... geee how dumb?

The complete lack of understanding of I.T. by MOST academics is staggering. Why do they assume any computer or program can fix EBEKAC? (error between keyboard and chair!)

Jesus... how is this a problem needing MY TIME or energy?

Our scheduled meeting had been about agreeing on a final draft of a journal article (co-written, then re-written by me to meet referees concerns... which academically were quite startling in their response.... a complete lack of research rigour on the part of my co-author stating blatant factual errors)... not a joint let's problem solve YOUR PhD issues session. This self-centeredness is staggering... and INSULTING to me! This from the PhD candidate of the Year!!!

Now this colleague needs to be sure his second journal article flows and doesn't regurgitate this joint paper. (I too have a paper for final submission also).... yet the next scheduled meeting is to FIX COMPUTER PROGRAM ISSUES.... I think not!

And to fix his citation issues when these could be researched on our own library website or in the Australian Government Publication Stytle Guide 2010.... why me? I guess I am easier to blame when things go wrong than to actually do the blooody work oneself. NO WAY JOSE. Been there had that just last September/October with same individual, and hospitalised again in February by same issues with a trusted superior/employer and male PhD scholar...

Patterns repeating. Can I be strong and do/say what I must?

I am feeling used and abused again... Remember friendly fire?

So again what was to be a really productive writing day has dissintegrated over night with me getting angry, then keeping it inside, then lashing out on the keyboard again. So much for actual academic writing progress... I need to vent again.

This 'dear' scholar also inferred that I am responsible for my supervisors extreme stress and anger at 'my' lack of progress!!! How dare he. And if that is actually what she thinks... how dare she? Her stress is not my issue, nor should it be... that's what her job is and why she is paid at that level... deal with it. I am trying to deal with my stress at $11.80 or whatever an hour... and I am managing to inch forward and stay well.

GRRRRR angry again....or rather, still.

Just when my world seems about to totter right down towards hospitalisation yesterday, my 21 year old son decides to watch a bad movie on the TV with me last night. I can't say "No, too busy", as this request doesn't happen often and has actually been years in coming.

I am so glad I put the bloody PhD on hold for this. We have had an amazingly tough last ten years. He has had to deal with so much trauma, stress and crises for someone his age that I am proud of him actually having survived it.

He decided last night to finally reconnect with me, as a parent and trusted friend.

We were able to re-trace all our emotional injuries to each other and share the innermost fears and insecurities (both of us). The years of fights, assaults, deaths, illnesses, drug use, car crashes, legal problems, financial crises, gangs and guns are finally all out in the metaphorical cold hard light of day.

The pain is not gone but it can be dealt with at last.

My son confessed to not a day going by without some 'nightmare' haunting him for a moment or two or preventing him from sleeping. He understandably has emotionally disconnected (superfically) just to get through at present.

Who can blame him? I now understand where he is at... finally.

I would be in the same place myself.. and probably a worse place were I his age. I am so proud of this young man. He has had to grow up so hard and so fast.

For the first time in years I KNOW he will survive and I can begin to relax. I am so overcome with relief that this also needs capturing on paper/screen.

Now I can move on and roll the dice again for myself. This has been a major movement in my stability.

When people read this, perhaps they can see how my PhD may be the most visibly important thing in my life but really there has always been more important domestic issues that have sapped so much energy, emotional strength and will to succeed on my part.

I am proud of where I am now... for the first time in years.

And F.... anybody else's expectations.

I am going to stay well, keep a strong relationship with my son and finish what I have started in my own time... so everyone else can just deal with that.

Sorry guys... my turn.

The tears are flowing now.. but they are tears of release.

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.