Day in the Life of a Bronte Scholar
I have received some mail asking for updates on how my thesis is progressing. A few weeks ago I submitted a proposal to the graduate committee at Dalhousie University, and received the approval letter and comments today. So far everything seems to be going well.
I am very nearly finished the coursework section of the master's degree, then I will spend the next few months writing the thesis, and probably watching Jane Eyre many many times.
In other news, my novel is very near completion. Using my rough plan, there ought to be five to six more chapters. It will not be following the plan. There could be another ten but we will see how the plot unfolds and go from there. I'm very excited because this is the section I have been looking forward to since I started. This would be my Jane Eyre experiment. A few of my readers will remember that I set out last year to explore a question about the novel by writing one of my own. I will soon have results. I hope that I have proved myself wrong!
I am also preparing a poetry manuscript, hopefully, for publication (if you are wondering when I sleep, the answer is that I don't. It's difficult to sleep when a hoard of drunken teenagers charge past your door at three in the morning so one might as well be productive. At the moment I am going on four hour's sleep!). I have been published before but only in anthologies. I hope this will be my first 'real' work.
I neglected to mention, last night I wrote two chapters of my novel which explains the four hours' sleep. I can't sleep when I am inspired. If I don't write, I will just lie there visualising or hearing it until it is all worked out anyway.
Lastly, my good friend Thisbeciel has again supplied me with an adaptation of Jane Eyre. It says something about the state of my collections when I could not tell if I had heard this one before. Hopefully I can provide a review this evening or tomorrow. She tells me that it is horrible but fun to listen to. I like that almost better than a work of art.
5 comments:
Excellent! good luck with it all.
I would love to see some of your poetry. I myself write "a poem a day" - just as a discipline, or for fun - or for no reason - but if I didn't do it, I couldn't call myself a poet, 'eh?
And your book, a novel? or what? I am anxious to hear more - good luck with all your endeavors -
and sleep is so overrated.
law
Thank you, liz! Good to hear from you again. :)
to law:
I agree absolutely. In fact, I have a friend who is a dedicated poet. He writes several poems a day, mostly about nothing. I can't say that I appreciate all of them, but when he sets himself to writing for a particular effect or theme his work is quite good. Maybe there's something to the daily routine!
Oh, it's a novel. I'm at...about 40 000 words at the moment, but there's more in manuscript. ;) I started with the idea that some of the criticism I had read about Mr Rochester was absurd, and that the story would not work if certain elements were absent from his character. Accordingly, I set out to prove this by writing a short story- it failed, as expected. But then I came across a few other ideas, and I thought that together it might work. I won't know until I've written the entire thing, and smoothed out the rough edges.
I hope all is well with you?
It all sounds so exciting! Keep up the updates. And a horrible but fun version of JE...do tell us more...
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