Death of the Author

Someone once said, “Writing is Hard”.

They were unequivocally right.

But do you know what’s harder?

Trying to write something you don’t 100% understand or are sure of.

It also doesn’t help if you aren’t exactly 100% clear in the head department either.
I’ve just become so numb to everything I can’t focus properly to get what I need to get done.

And to make matters worse, I’ve discovered to things I have to change in terms of my thesis because I’M NOT USING THE RIGHT DEFINITIONS TO EXPLAIN MYSELF BECAUSE GOD FORBID ANYONE SIT DOWN AND EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME.

And I know that if I never ask I shall never receive, but at this point, I feel like someone should have told me, “hey, you know this isn’t quite right” when I fucking explained it the first time around.

I just…

It’s hard. It’s upsetting, and I want to die.

Actually, I want to bring “death to the author”, go into a witness protection program, and live life like Willy Wonka. That seems like the best goal.
It reminds me of an episode of Castle I caught a bit of last night–Castle had to finish a book but was called away to help investigate a murder with Beckett. This was like, season 3, pre-them hooking up.

That’s how I feel. I need to get this done, but I don’t have all of the clues yet. I’m still finding out more, better, relevant information that will ultimately lead me back to what I started with in the first place. And when I get there, everyone will say, “ohh, why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” and I will be, “well, I did, but you said it was this other guy that did it so I went down that path”. And then they’ll feel stupid because I am Beckett and Castle and they are… they’re not even Ryan and Esposito. At least Ryan and Esposito get. shit. Done. Right.

Anyway, I should probably stop ranting so much and get to the point of this post.

And that is:

I am no longer working with Convergence Culture or “The Book as Object”.

Instead, it’s more Transgenre/media and Transmodal as well as Interactive books.

I really really REALLY wish I had found this shit out earlier, but whatever. It is what it is.
And I know it’s going to bite me in the ass, HARD, but what can I do now? Yeah, I can cry. I probably need to cry. But afterwards I need to pick up the pieces and glue them together. Sometimes it helps. You build up tension and you just need to cry before you can fix something.

And boy, do I have a lot of tension built up.

But, anyway…

How did I come to this conclusion, you ask?

Well, it started with my meeting with Annette today. In which she told me, once again, that I need to “simmer down” what I’m writing.

And I know this is a terrible habit of mine, I really do. I half wanted to cry in her office about it, but I am a brick wall and nothing gets past me.

So, yes. She calmly, but effectively, told me that I can’t take on the world as what I’m looking at could cover thousands of books.

But, here’s the thing: I want to take on the world and make it simple for others. That’s what I want to do. I’m condensing it into understandable chunks because that’s what I as a person and scholar, actively want. That’s how I was taught to write, so that’s how I want to work out my own scholarly work.

Which doesn’t exactly fit in with scholarly writing. Which I fucking hate now; I can see why people dislike writing. Because it’s not like what I’m writing now–or even like writing a piece of fiction. No, it’s different and it’s hard.

But, luckily she [metaphorically] took off the bits I didn’t need, cleaned it up, and sent me on my way with what I did need and could use. So I’m grateful.

Not looking forward to scraping basically everything that I have, and taking out my passion of bigger, better, but I guess I just have to do what needs to get done to please them.

Then conquer the world.

ANYWAY, so, back to my thesis.

So, like I said, getting rid of CC and BaO, and moving on to:

Transgenre–which is what it originally was
SLASH
Transmodal

And

Interactive narrative.

 

Ugh. This is so fucking frustrating.

BUT:

Now that I have a better grasp of it, it should be a little easier for me.

For instance,

My 3 parts are:

1. Magical Creatures
2. Transgenre/media/modal and Jouissance
3. Interactive Narrative (Book as Object)

I hope that makes more sense that it looks right now.

I’ve also found out that the Jouissance I’m using it Roland Barthes’s Jouissance–who also came up with “Death of the Author”. So, super excited that I’ve narrowed that down.

I think I’ve also come to terms with the 3 creatures I’m going to be writing about as well:

1. Fairies
2. Witches
3. Windegos

Well, that 3rd one is up for debate, but the other two are solid.

I really want to do Windegos mostly because of the fact that they are directly North American, but I feel like I need to pick something more like the Jersey Devil or Big Foot or Aliens, you know? I guess I’ll have to talk to Amanda about it.

Speaking of, I’ve got a meeting with her on Wednesday where I said I’d have a rough draft of my paper ready.

A hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

No.

I think the best I’m going to get to her is bullet points.

Lots of bullet points.

Of mainly quotes.

So, like an annotated bib.

But I am glad that I got that copy of Carol’s proposal–even if it is 17 pages long. It’s a good way to see how things are going to look for my paper.

I just have to remember that my paper can and will look like that when I’m finished with it.

I’m also going to ask Amanda if there’s a possibility I can extend when my proposal is due as well, given the fact that I’ve had to change what I’m writing about AND because of Annette’s paper as well. And by extend, I mean at least another week. End. Weekend.

Here’s hoping.

Well, I should probably post this by now; I just needed to vent and clear my head.

It also helped that I could watch Castle, so 🙂

Until Next Time,

Sami