Something I thought about:

  • Structure mostly. Once again, I restructured a dissertation chapter, this time breaking it into a short introduction and longer chapter. I think I have half a dissertation now? Well, a bit more — another chapter is underway, and my research is done for the rest of it. Now it’s a matter of organizing materials and writing it all up.

Something I did:

  • Revised, restructured, revised
  • Took down the Christmas tree and put away Christmas things.

Something I read:

  • I DNF’ed two books this week. They were fine. They just weren’t for me.
  • I’ve been enjoying George Saunders’s newsletter. He has so many great little nuggets, like:

(1) https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/a-cat-in-the-rain-100

When revising, try to make the decision points in the story crisper and more pronounced.

(2) https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/cat-in-the-rain

As discussed in the last post, that’s one wonderful thing literature does – it confuses us right out of our lazy, judging stance, by way of energetic ambiguity.

(3) https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/on-worry

If you are worrying that your ending is bad, or your prose is too slow, accept that diagnosis and then…don’t do that. That is: don’t cling to that ending, or to the current pace of your prose, or...anything. Don’t cling to any of it.
If we know what’s wrong, we can (start to) fix it.