Friday, August 1, 2008

Extradiegetic

I'm wondering if my lack of motivation to blog goes hand in hand with my current focus on critical rather than creative work. It's a different head-space, and while I'm sure some people can get them working in tandem, I'm not finding that it works great for me.

Yesterday, I hurt my brain considering "otherness," and "the hyperreal," and looking up terms like "extradiegetic," all from an article on The White Darkness. YA lit: it's for kids, but also for people with PhD's. I'm sort of enjoying my critical thesis, but I'm definitely feeling the creative tug and missing that writing.

Finished White Magic: Spells to Hold You by Kelly Easton today, and I'm still working on Minister's Daughter. Through no fault of its own, it lost some of my interest when it turned out to be unhelpful to my paper.

The research side of things is making me feel a bit like a spy, or at least like an adventuring scholar, something like the heroines of A.S. Byatt's Possession or Kostova's The Historian. I've got books on hold, a forthcoming alumni card for access to the Northwestern library, and a university in Liverpool is shipping a book to me free of charge, which made me feel very fancy.

My reading list gets longer every day, while my paper stubbornly refuses to grow.

4 comments:

Jessica Leader said...

I always wonder if Master's programs in literature saw a great spike in enrollment after the publication of POSSESSION. It's all -- so -- sexy!

Rachel Wilson said...

Absolutely! I think you're onto something!

TWIG said...

although really, it's the idea of research just FALLING into your lap that's sexiest about Possession. (I mean, the steamy bits too, but anyone closing in on the end of a big project knows that sometimes you just don't find the convenient correspondence that proves what you've always believed)

TWIG said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.