So I'm deep in the zone right now, working on my dissertation, and frozen by terror in a way that surpasses all my school-related freakouts in recent memory. For those of you among my five readers who have done this before, any tips for pushing through the terror that comes with the first piece of writing you give your advisor?
On top of my general malaise, I've somehow misplaced the central theoretical text I'm using. I can only take comfort in the fact that the same thing happened to my blushing bride, and she managed to finish her prospectus. Thank god we don't have a baby, we'd probably just leave it on the T.
So here's my hope, put out into the wide, wide worldwide web:
I will be motivated by my love of serial reading, not my fear of failure;
I will commit myself wholeheartedly to the play of language;
I will refrain from making Grand Pronouncements;
I will treat my fellow writers and readers with respect;
I will remember always that the object of all interpretation is the process.
Wish me luck, friends.
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I think your mantra will take you far. With it, you already have a much better handle on things than I ever did.
There are only two ways that I found to "push through the terror": first, you have to remember that there's a lot more of the mundane just-sit-down-and-type work with this than anything you've done before (along with much more time spent thinking and reading and not actually producing written text), and second, that the whole experience is about, as you say, the process -- not just the process of interpretation, but also the writing process. It's a little annoying, but one actually has to start believing all that stuff we tell our students about how it's going to take time, it's going to take several drafts, and the feedback your readers give you are to help take the work to another level.
As one of my advisors once told me, "It's supposed to be hard. It's a dissertation."
You're going to be awesome!!
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