After yesterday’s teaching stuff work, today is primarily about the ongoing work to be done on my PhD to turn it into a book MS. (I had terrible inertia getting going with this, but I think I’m moving along much better now.) Mostly wearing out the delete key at the moment because it needs to be substantially shorter. It is not going to be revised any more than is necessary, however. (It will need some work on the introduction and conclusion, I think. Not so keen on how those work.) Publisher likes the synopsis; I’m just praying they will like the actual manuscript too.
A year and a half after the viva, I can still read most of it and think, well that’s not too bad, I’m not about to die of embarrassment at the idea of people seeing this stuff. (In any case, apparently they already have; our interlibrary loan person told me a while ago that there had already been some requests for it. Huzza! So it’s not going to be seen by just me, the supervisor and the examiners, whatever else happens.)
In fact, I’m still quite proud of it. There it is, damn great thing, 300 pages of A4, 100,000 words, and it’s mine. I made that. To those of you slogging over writing up right now (Hi, Claire! :) ), this is something you’ll always have at the end of it, a permanent slab of a personal achievement. (It’s quite good as a large paperweight or a doorstop, too. And lifting it is a nice wrist-strengthening exercise. See, multi-functional. Never let anyone tell you that a history PhD is useless.)
Early Modern Notes 
If you need some cheerleading on the conversion to a book, I have pom poms, will travel!
I could get two copies bound and them use them to improve my biceps. :)
Ralph, got any pictures of that?
Claire, :) I hope it’s going well.
Aww, my sister IS useful to this world after all *bless* :P
Many’s the time when I was writing mine up that I’d hold all the half-decent bits at arms length, and think to myself ‘It might be thin, but at least it’s heavy’. It helps here to be very weedy (not a problem if you’ve just spent 3 years in a library) and/or to use 110-gramme paper.
If only Neal Stephenson didn’t think the same way…
“… I’d hold all the half-decent bits at arms length, and think to myself ‘It might be thin, but at least it’s heavy’. It helps here to be very weedy (not a problem if you’ve just spent 3 years in a library) and/or to use 110-gramme paper.”
have you been spying on me?
It’s making progress. :) When I’m not panicking that is. . .
Very cool. You and I are working on the same kind of project right now. Let mine sit 3 years … but now it is time. So interesting to revisit the work after a period of time away.