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I'm stuck, again

I keep overthinking things and getting stuck. I really want to get this done this year, however, at this rate it’s not going to happen. I keep second-guessing what I should be writing. Granted, moving hasn’t helped this past month. I don’t think I’ve touched it since I started writing. I know what I want to make chapter 1 about, but I feel like I have to start over. I’m horrible at taking what…

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Overediting

Tonight I was writing up some notes and something inspired me, so I pulled up the dissertation and wrote. It led to pulling from another article, giving me a good paragraph. I then realized that it ties into something I want to discuss in chapter 2 and switched to that and wrote up another paragraph since it was fresh on my mind. I wondered why I had never done this before. I realized something…

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Struck gold!

Recently I’ve been reorganizing my secondary source files, mostly articles, to make it easier to find what I need and to better organize notes when I take them. I was going through my reviews of the show and found something awesome. It turns out I have two pairs of reviews written by the same reviewer. They reviewed the show after seeing it at The Public Theater and again after seeing at the…

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Overfocused on hip-hop

I’ve been stuck when it comes to writing chapter 2. I feel like I have a solid start on chapter 1, so I want to move forward instead of dwelling on it. But I’ve been having trouble figuring out exactly how to approach chapter 2. I’ve got a couple of thoughts, but things keep fizzling out. Today I realized why: I’ve been focusing more on hip-hop than on theater. This dissertation is about both!…

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Intersectionality

I’m currently reading Participatory Culture in a Networked Era by Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd. They make a lot of great points that is definitely going to help my dissertation and future research on Hamilton and a lot of other things. But they made a point that while I realize is there, I didn’t think about it as much as I probably should have. Fandom often doesn’t intentionally…

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Cleveland, December 30, 2022

Cleveland, December 30, 2022

That was a great way to end the year! Not just getting to see Hamilton again, but WINNING THE TICKET LOTTERY!!!!! I woke up on the 22nd with just enough time to claim my tickets! I immediately contacted a friend to see if she was able to come, and she was! I have been entering the lotto for as long as it’s been around in the app. So that means years of not winning tickets. FINALLY!! I checked…

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Moving on

Last week I hit a milestone. A very early one, but a milestone nonetheless. I finally e-mailed my chair the very rough draft of my first chapter. As I was compiling it, I was going “This isn’t in there!” and “That isn’t in there!” But that is exactly why I’m sending this to him. I want to know what he thinks is missing and what is there that isn’t needed. I’ve been second-guessing myself for a…

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Just keep swimming...

Just keep swimming…

Slowly but surely I’m making progress. I’m going over chapter 1, one section at a time, making revisions and tweaks to it all flows as well as it can at this point. I’m almost through! Once I’m through, I’m going to finally send it to my chair as my first draft. I know there’s going to be a lot more revising to do after that, including adding in supporting information from interviews once I…

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Cue the "Halleluiah" chorus!

Cue the “Halleluiah” chorus!

I was on a panel tonight about how theater is popular culture. It is. Trust me. One word kept coming up among my fellow panelists: access. 99% of the time access referred to money. But I kept thinking that accessible theater is more than about being able to go see it. And it just hit me: this is chapter 2 of my dissertation! As a entertainment form that is part of popular culture, theater often…

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This week....ugh

This week….ugh

My hubby and I share the car. Usually he works from home, so I can drive to and from campus for class with no problem. But this week was his week to go in to work. That means Monday and Wednesday I had to get up early so he could drop me off on campus before heading on to work and picking me up after he was done. It has screwed up my sleep and left me without the desire to work on anything more…

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No more NaNoWriMo

For the last few years I’ve been using NaNoWriMo as a way to get me writing more. At least this year, I’m avoiding it. I’m at a point in my dissertation where forcing myself to sit down and write is not going to result in anything productive. Last year there were points where it was stressing me out. I was forcing myself to sit down and add so many words to my dissertation. Yeah, it upped how…

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Chronic overthinker

I know I’ve said this before: I overthink a lot of things. Including how to structure my dissertation. I feel like this whole thing is four steps forward, three steps back. But I think I’ve made another step that will stick. Yesterday I presented at the Midwest PCA/ACA conference in Chicago. Writing it helped me realize a few key things about the dissertation as a whole. First, Hamilton sits at…

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Reengaging with my work

Reengaging with my work

Since I got my awesome part-time job back in February, I have had trouble making time to engage with my dissertation. I’ve gone many weeks at a time without even looking at it, which has hurt me. I recently made the commitment to engage with it every day. It’s slowly working. I had a meeting today where the person mentioned that even if I simply read over what I’ve written to keep in touch with…

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Lumps of Clay

I sat down at my computer to get some writing done and immediately felt overwhelmed. “Where do I start?” Which is a common thing for me. Which is why I don’t get more writing done. And I know I’ve talked about this before, but I like to keep talking about it if only to remind myself of how I break out of that line of thinking for future me. Today, I found myself using a different simile than I…

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Thank you, Jonathan Larson

Thank you, Jonathan Larson

Dear Jonathan Larson, Thank you. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for pushing past all the rejections and the discouragement to give the world your work. Thank you for knowing that your work was important and needed to be out there on the stage and change how musical theater would be thought of by both creators and audiences. You knew that musical theater could be more diverse than it was.…

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In the weeds

Yesterday I had a meeting with my program’s director and my dissertation was a part of the discussion. She reminded me of one important thing that I had lost sight of: the only audience I need to be concerned with on this is my dissertation committee. All this needs to do is show them what I have learned, how thoroughly I understand it, and that I have earned my doctorate. Later I can come back…

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Daily writing habits

Inspired by my progress during November due to NaNoWriMo, I tried to focus on getting my second chapter up to 10,000 words over the course of December. I got quite close. Then I realized a couple of thousand words fit better in a different chapter, knocking me back. That’s when I realized that simply getting up to 10,000 words isn’t the best goal. It did work for chapter one, I needed that kick…