Here we go...

I don't really know where to start, so I've just started typing. Here's the deal: I am writing my master's thesis, and I really have no idea what I'm doing - except that I know I'm not giving myself enough credit by saying that. I actually have a pretty good idea what I'm doing, obviously, otherwise my adviser would not have agreed to supervise me. I've decided to do this online because I'm hoping to force myself to write more, to get my ideas down on paper, to stay organized and on task and all that, so we'll see how it goes.

Here's my title: "Making (Non)Sense: The Logic of Superimposed Causality in the Early Cold War American Novel."

And the proposal I turned in, which sort of doubles as my abstract at the moment, is: "This analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle explores how the narrators’ tendency, in the wake of catastrophe, to reorganize the past by superimposing causality onto it reflects a wider cultural politics in early Cold War America." Not too shabby, right?

We'll see how it goes. Oh, and my first due date, the day I have to turn in this 50-page monster to my advisor for her first read-through - February 28th. Which, as my friend and fellow-thesis-writer kept reminding me last night over beers, is Really Soon. Yes. Yes, it is. How soon? we ask. 53 days. Less than, really, because I'm sure I won't be giving the thing to her at 9pm. I need a countdown... Which is now to the right there.

And already I'm at the point where if one more person asks me how "the paper" is coming, I'm going to scream. It's not "a paper." And calling it "a paper" makes it sound like nothing, like it's some frivolous thing I'm doing, this going to grad school. Like this being a writer thing. That really hurts my feelings and makes me not want to talk to certain people, to be perfectly honest. This is really important to me. It's the longest thing I will have written up to this point, and it is the thing that will get me into a PhD program. (Hopefully.) And a good one! Because it will be brilliant. ;)