It feels like it’s been a very busy few days. This morning I submitted a workshop proposal for next year’s RWAmerica conference – I’ve had an idea for a while, and it took me a few days to shape the proposal, including a late-night session last night finishing it off, because I’d got dates confused and thought I had a little longer! However, it is safely submitted, and now I just have to wait until early February to find out if it’s been accepted or not.
The workshop proposal has brought my neglected PhD study back into my brain space again, as the proposal explores some ideas that my research and contemplation of the romance genre has highlighted for me – in part, about the difficulties we have as a society in conceptualising and talking about love in a meaningful way, and the ways in which this has impacted on perceptions of the genre. I’ll possibly write a post about that sometime, when I don’t have a book dreadline weighing on me!
I also had a meeting with my PhD supervisor this morning, for which I needed to organise some material – and thoughts! I have a new supervisor this year as my previous supervisor left for another position, but I’m a fairly independent student and with both of them I’ve had a fairly relaxed, unstructured supervision relationship. I’m a part-time student, so we don’t have quite the same pressure of time for completion as full-time candidates do. However, it was really refreshing this morning to have a long discussion with Dugald about progress this year and the way my thinking is shaping as a result of my research. We discussed my proposed thesis outline, and the key apporaches and arguments, and he was happy with that. In our system, a PhD is entirely by thesis, with no course-work involved – so ‘all’ I have to do now is actually write the 80,000 – 100,000 word thesis!
I’ll focus on that more early next year, and will probably post some draft sections/articles here for general comment or discussion. But for now, my priority is finishing book 2, which is moving, but slower than I would like. My publisher emailed me the first cover roughs yesterday, and we talked about timetables and deadlines and other important details which make book 2 seem very real. So, I’d better get back to writing it!
It’s really good that you have a good relationship with your PhD supervisor, good luck on your thesis!
(and good luck on the worship for RWAmerica–are you coming next year to DC? there’s I chance I may go and I would love to look you up!)
I’m hoping to go to DC, but it will depend on a lot of things coming together – including the $$. It’s peak period for flights, and therefore very expensive. So, I probably won’t decide until next year.
However, if I do get there, I’d love to meet up with you!
I’ll keep my fingers crossed—for both of us! 😀