Planning, writing, editing.

Well, drafting Chapter 1 was a bigger pain than I ever imagined it might be. I'm drafting Chapter 2 and that is even more difficult. I've only worked on 2 sections of it so far, but the concentration required is phenomenal. I have commenced a very rough draft of the 3rd section of Chapter 2 too.

I think part of the problem is that I am writing for the reader, which is quite hard to do. Next week I am doing a training course on editing your thesis, so that may help a bit.

I'm actually pretty manic, which would be tolerable if the highs lasted longer than they do. I'm lucky though, I have a mate who has just qualified for his PhD and he provides support every time I ask for it. It must be hard for him, but I feel I need it, so I'm not offering to stop emailing him :P We catch up every now and again too, but we are both based at separate campuses.

I never realised how important it is to this process that I not only know where the current version of everything is but also that I know things exist at all (like old work). This is more difficult than anything I have ever done before.

I also need to update my web page badly, but it is so hard to find the time. I guess I'll make the time soon, maybe between drafts, as I did with this entry.

I'd love the luxury of going away to read for a while, but if I stay away from the thesis too long, I forget things. Weekends are enough time off.

There is just so much to do.

I also need to tell my Supervisors about the stuff I'm doing with Walt. I want to tell them that it won't take long, maybe a half an hour to mark the survey up and a day or two when the project winds up. I know the time is a fairly minor committeeman but I'm scared to talk to them about it. Once ethics is through and the survey is marked up on the WWW, I'm going to have to though. Actually, its probably better done before I mark the survey up. Eeew.

Oh well, that's enough time out. I had better return to drafting the third section of my thesis while I wait for feedback on the first 2 sections. And then there is the scholarship stuff... but that can wait for another blog entry.  ¶ 3:14 pm