Defense day

Oh boy. Here we go.

The document got a lot of attention since my last post. It's still not done, but it's done enough for the defense. And I'm starting that in 75 minutes.

Fingers crossed.

Day 17: Barreling toward the finsh

The mission today was Chapter 6. I took the chapter from 5552 words up to 6868. But that obfuscates the rewriting I did all along the way. It was much more work than 1316 new words over 4 hours. (Although that is a fairly typical writing pace for me, now that I think about it.)

This chapter had a lot of previous writing done already. In fact, it's the only study in this arc that has actually been published. That was an abridged version, though, and so this one has a lot more sausage filling included.

But we're just trying to get everything drafted. It doesn't have to be good yet! One thing at a time.

I'm just hoping against hope I can draft the newest chapter tomorrow and then move into fixing stuff and preparing the talk. Ugh. It gives me a headache to think about, but it will be done soon.

Day "16" ...We're back.

It's been a big month and a half since my last post. Yes I did stop writing. I had planned to spend 4 days looking at data and then getting back to writing. It turned out I needed 3 weeks to do the data, and then I got busy having a baby. Things been nuts.

But today I'm back at it and killing it. Between outlining findings for Chapter 7 and drafting Chapter 4 I put down a record 5376 words today over about 4 hours. It helped that I've submitted the study from Chapter 4 many times since early 2016. I lifted a bunch of text from my last rejected CHI submission. But hey it was my work in the first place.

Anyway, things are up against insane deadlines now. I'm not even going to review it right now. I'll just say that I need a hard first draft of Chapters 6 and 7 by Monday or else things are not looking good for finishing on time.

Send good vibes.

And here's the kid.

Day 15: One-third complete

Pretty good progress for one day of work today. I drafted Chapter 3, titled "Study 1: Field observations and problem identification ." I managed 3724 words. I have some worry that it's going to take significant re-write. This is the oldest study in the book, conducted in the fall of 2014. I've written this work more than any other. I ended up free-styling the first half of the chapter before I pulled up some old versions of it and started copy-pasting. The freelance stuff has a potential value, because I wanted to make the chapter fit well in the book. But it could also be full of flaws that I didn't see.

I won't be doing any writing tomorrow. The day will be spent deep in data.

Days 13 and 14: Things are blurring now

On paper, what I've done over the past two days seems straight forward. Yesterday I outline my new study for 622 words, and today I added 395 more. That part is going slow because it requires a lot of spot analysis of data. Also today I produced 1915 words drafting Chapter 6, which is the study from last year. It is also the study that was accepted to the ICLS/AIED crossover conference coming up soon in London. I won't be there because I got me a baby coming. I like London, but not that much.

Anyway, yeah. It all seems clear when I put it down. I'm making good progress. But subjectively I feel like I've been jumping around like crazy and working constantly and I don't have a clear idea of what I've been doing. It's a good thing I'm writing this reflection, updating my planning calendar, and tracking my progress. How does anyone get a big writing project like this done without so much meta analysis?

Well, they probably do it by being much better at writing than I am. But hey, whatever it takes. I'm going to finish this thing one way or another.

Now, for no reason, is a small bunny in a wagon:

Image link: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/236650155403075606/

Days 11 and 12: A framework roughed

It's been a busy week with lots of things cropping up and interrupting the writing process. But in the three "days" worth of writing I managed to complete over the past 5 days, I put down 2834 words and finally finished the framework chapter. Here's a picture of what it looks like.



It took nearly 6000 words to explain. And I'm not actually sure that will be enough.

But at any rate, that diagram is one of the most significant results of the past 6 years of my work.

Heh.

Day 10: Slogging through the framework

So 1362 new words on Chapter 5 today, but far, far below the goal of wrapping this chapter and moving on to outline the next. After resetting my plan only 2 days ago, I did not expect to hit a snag of this size quite so soon. I think I got through the troubling part of the chapter today, but I'm anxious about when I'll come back to it and whether I'll hit similar challenges going forward.

Well, I guess they don't just hand out degrees for nothing.

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off. We have a baby shower to attend (thanks Bobby!), and a movie to see (oh boy it's Solo!).

It will be a welcome and happy break.