Writing journal post for Thursday

It's late. I've been working since 8:30 this morning an I am tired. But I know I won't be able to sleep until I write about writing. I want to write about a few things but I'm not sure if they are related. First, we workshopped a section of the first ten pages of my MA project in class today. I am deeply invested in the ideas but know the paper needs a lot of work. These are ideas I want to continue developing in relation to my PhD work but am anxious about the amount of work the paper needs. I know that to revise the paper for this class I will need to go out on the "sea voyage" Peter Elbow writes about. This is exciting but I am afraid I won't know how to get back to the shore. There is too much going on in the paper for it to work. I was going to write "work well" but now I believe that it's too choked to work. Here are some memories I have about writing it:
-I was absolutely panicked. My committee wasn't giving me any feedback about my writing, despite my repeated requests. Everyone kept saying to just keep writing...the ideas are good. We wouldn't let you proceed if we thought you would fail. I wanted someone to tell me (give me permission?) to scale the thing down. I wanted someone to give me some critical feedback about my writing. I received two helpful comments: 1) the theory was too dense and the reader couldn't understand what I was trying to say and 2) if I was going to make a request of a reader I needed to be clear about it. This was helpful.

-People wanted to see the theory attached to something material or personal. I should open with a story about how these ideas were connected to my life. Some members wanted me to historically situate the piece. Some wanted me to address accents and class. I felt overwhelmed and guilty that I could not attend to all these things. So I sutured things together; it felt very forced and outside of my scope of knowledge. I can now identify places in this text where I was writing to meet the specific requests of my committee.

-I called my chair, crying, "I just can't write! I don't know what to say! I don't know how to do this!" Just keep writing. Keep writing. Write. Unrelated to my project I met with JG. Right. For advice about PhD stuff. I mentioned my writing troubles. She said it was probably because the project was out of control and too large. This was the permission I needed and tried to heed. Well, I think I tried to do this but kept receiving advice from my committee. This analysis is missing, that analysis is missing. Situate yourself. Talk about the historical context. Too abstract. What kind of advise do I really want? I'm clearly not asking the right questions.

This piece has voice problems. It's a paper on voice without one. Or with too many. Who was my audience? I asked myself this question when I was writing it and couldn't answer. I thought it was me. Or my committee. I'm still not sure. I need to realize that I do have something to say. I didn't believe that when I was writing it.

My writing style is a mess! I was taught to write by sociologists and philosophers. Now I am in an English program and there is little "life" in my writing. I am present in my writing only by virtue of the "good ideas" present in the text. That was valuable--voice messed up the ideas. But what a screw if you can't actually resonate with the good ideas! No one mentioned that part--that you must actually write so others can understand you. Also, I think if you somehow internalize that you don't have anything to say it's easier to hide behind bad writing.

How was I rewarded for bad writing? I'm still rewarded for bad writing. This feels unfair and stupid. I feel some anger about this. Like I've been duped! Once I took JG's class on Sedgwick I realized this. It scared me so much I almost talked myself out of coming back for the PhD. There were other things going on (mom's gravely ill) but I saw what I needed to do to make a go at this thing and decided, "to hell with writing anyway." Yet, somehow, I'm in this class. I feel like I'm going to be undone by this process. And that's good and necessary.