I completed the thesis edit.
Here are some telling stats:
First Draft: 263 pages, 77,498 words
Edited Draft: 244 pages, 69, 243 words
That's a 19 page, 8,255 word difference. The kicker? I didn't delete any sections wholesale. This was bolt-tightening. I had over 8,000 worthless words that had to go. Yeah, I did have a pacing, Victorian problem you could say.
Anyway, today I finish writing my critical introduction, get the front matter in order. Tomorrow, if Diana & Terry are willing, I'll be getting signatures and hopefully Appleknockers will finally be put to bed, for a little while, before I go back and retinker.
The more I think about this thesis, the more I think I'm trying to tell a 150,000 word story in under half the time. At least in respects to my protaganist because he has a depressing backstory that I give mostly in summary here, but if I were, say, Richard Russo, I'd summarize nothing and I'd write chapter after italicized chapter detailing each step of his life, on top of other additions I think I need to really round this out to be an award winning thing. But it'll be nice to work on something else for a while.
viva el mustache
May 14, 2008
Thesis (Mostly) Conquered
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6 comments:
Um, did you get an extension, or something? Wasn't all of that due a few weeks ago?
It was. I'm doing a little something called "summer graduation." It's a new thing. May not have heard about it. It's mostly for, you know, the cool kids.
Oh, yeah. ...Hmm, I wonder if trying to finish a thesis AFTER my wedding would be any less-stressful than trying to finish it BEFORE my wedding. Pfft. Either way = stress.
Bryan,
I saved a ton of money by switching to Geico!
I had an idea the other day. I would be interested in reading people's theses... but they are so damn big that they can't really be printed off. Perhaps we could make them available for download (or even email them) or something so we could all check out each other's work. I'll be honest, I'm pretty damn curious as to what happens to Hoss and Tegan.
I wouldn't be adverse to e-mailing copies of Appleknockers around, or any of the theses for that matter. Like with your short stories Luke, I'm really interested in what you did...and Melcher's screenplay was great, so I'd like to see how that ends.
Looks like Emily's going to be doing some interlibrary loan for me in Madison.
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