Dissertation-slaying deadline

[unjapanologist]

Made a timeline for finishing my dissertation. It's twice as tight as I'd been planning for the last three years, because it was recently decided that I'll defend in May 2014 instead of in September. Eek.

And while there are Reasons for that change and I'm not complaining, exactly, having about five months less for writing is quite a blow. I'll have to forego spending another few months in Japan to interview people, and I'm still considering whether or not I'll have time to do an analysis of the metric ton of dojinshi convention flyers that I picked up during my earlier Japan stay. It would be some great extra data, but it's not 100% essential and I'm going to need all my time for writing with the new deadline... Woe.

Anyway, writing now! Big deadlines for finishing chapter drafts are as follows. I'll send each of them off to the appropriate readers as they get finished. Will also post everything online as chapters get written, somewhere that's easy to comment upon (maybe even AO3 depending on whether that's allowed, should poke support there).

1. September 25: Introduction and Chapter 1: How dojinshi exchange works
2. October 31: Chapter 2: Reading dojinshi exchange as a hybrid economy
3. November 30: Chapter 3: Dojinshi as open source goods in a hybrid economy
4. December 15: Conclusions and questions

Then I'll send the whole package off to Very Helpful People who are prepared to give critique, and take two to three weeks off from all brain-intensive work. We have a big slash fangirl retreat planned around Christmas, and I'll be needing that so badly. Will have to make it very clear to both myself and readers on- and offline that I won't be able to get into any discussions about the text during the holidays, or I'll spend the whole two weeks arguing on the internet.

Until halfway through January, nothing but grunt work on the bibliography and glossary (which is threatening to turn into a full-blown encyclopedia). This is kind of boring and repetitive, but I really enjoy making large collections of things and it will be a good way to get back into the grind and discover some fresh ideas in the bargain.

Then I have the last two weeks of January plus all of February and March to whip the monster into shape. Again, not nearly as much as I ideally would have, but this is how it will have to happen. I'm going to have to get some help with the final editing. By March I'll be doing great if I can still spell my own name, so I'll be totally useless for spotting missing commas.

I'm going to be contacting a lot of people in the next few days to ask if they'll have both time and desire during the coming months to read some draft chapters and/or the draft of the full thesis. *fingers crossed*

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

GO YOU!

[unjapanologist]

Thank you :D

[samjohnsson]

Good luck. I wish I left my timeline that open. Though I've had first drafts of each chapter (that I just need to finish completely rewriting), so I dunno.

As for posting it on AO3, you'd have to ask Abuse. Support doesn't interpret that.

[unjapanologist]

Good luck with the rewriting! I'm not great with very detailed timelines, I can barely manage to write anything in order ever so pinning myself down on smaller units than "a chapter" is a recipe for failure. And I'll ask Abuse instead, thank you.