advisor links

UTD useful sites:

http://provost.utdallas.edu/coursebook
(UTD courselisting - for previous semesters syllabi and textbook info)

http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/courses/
(A&H Graduate and undergraduate course offerings for the upcoming semester)

http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/programs/graduate/index.html
(most of the information you need about the program, degree plan, etc)

http://www.utdallas.edu/student/registrar/calendar/
(the Academic Calendar)

http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/graddean/
(information about dissertation mechanics, graduation, and other useful stuff)

http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/how-to/email_launch.html
(most students should have zmail)

Grad school survival:

http://www.phdcomics.com/
http://www.h-net.org/~grad/

Language courses and support:

http://www.virginia.edu/summer/SLI/
http://www.studyinsweden.se/Learn-Swedish/University-courses-in-Sweden/

Teaching links:
Teaching portfolio at UT Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/ctl/teaching/PrepTeachPortfolio.pdf

and again

I am actually reading - for the first time in six months. A book on the Women of the Raj that is very good and by a professional historian so it is not quite leisure reading but it is good, and interesting, and I am sitting down with it (or I was until my computer decided to have a heart attack (I performed cpr and heroically saved its life). Adding five hours later - - - maybe not. Computer is not happy, not sure why/how/bleah. At least I think I got a full back up out of it.

Writing I am not, haven't been, but need to. So many thoughts dashing like pinballs through my brain, constantly being redirected by impact (brain matter, other thoughts, experiences). Some scattered notes will follow, and as I try to sort through how to organize them I realize they are all about identity - or how fragile identity is.

Traditions - Women of the Raj - "What will I lose next" or "aging on crack".

We were talking about traditions at a lunch with a group of women. I told them how messed up I get every Christmas as I try to figure out what to do and what to let go of and how important it was to me to have my stepson and parts of his family come along to the traditional Lucia celebration in Dallas. We talked about why traditions are so important (and why they become more important as you age - and why they have to be MY traditions and not someone elses - why things that connect us to our childhood have such a grip ... and I think it has to do with identity - the things we did as children, whether good or bad, are reliable in a way that nothing we do as adults is. It is real, because we were more real, more immediately present. The adult critical mind that helps us understand things also creates distance, because it is aware of the contingent nature of our processing and the alternate ways in which we might experience things. So, doing what we did as children has a tinge of that magic immediacy, lets us feel the wonder and the dread we felt then.

What is interesting here is that as we get older and in one sense better know who we are our identities are also in some way more fragile ..there is also a difference between my identity as an individual and as a member of a society. I am me on the inside, but I am also a person situated in society and rituals and traditions verify where I belong, where I am situated and how I relate to that.

The women of the Raj - there is lots here about gender and colonial history and stuff - but there is, again, also the matter of identity. The women of the Raj could not be only themselves, their social situation demanded of them more and different things than they might have chosen for themselves. They are always also Britain. They have to be more independent than women at Home because nothing can be trusted, but they have to be more British (and therefor traditional) because the environment doesn't do any of the work for them. Indeed, the environment in some ways subverts their identity - not British, but British-in-India.

Finally, my friend who has had so much surgery, stents after a heart attack and then a double bypass and then when the remaining veins did not feed enough oxygen and more tissue died, a partial mastectomy on both breasts and of course she has diabetes type two so she has neuropathy and has little feeling in her fingertips, mostly in her palms now and they have removed several toes on each foot so she has altogether about six toes and she is getting very tired and scared sometimes even though she is doing much better now and she told me she never feels safe - always wonders "what will I lose next" ... I explained that I feel aging works a bit like that - you know something will disappear or change or mess with your sense of self, you just don't know where it will come from and how fast or far it will go. The universe - and identity - is not reliable and not predictable. At this point in my life I am also realizing that it never will be reliable or predictable - I will not figure that one out. My identity is not stable somewhere out there waiting for me to find it - my identity is always only what I can scramble together at any given moment.

A bit like a computer grabbing bits from all over the place to make up the screen I look at ...

Old beginnings

It is probably impossible to start over from scratch when you have so much baggage, but then on the other hand it means you don't have to start over from the very beginning, but can make use of some of the skills you have picked up along the way.
I read a friend's blog and realized I have not written anything but lectures since the March of this year. I do not do any research, I do not write, and I am not even reading much right now, except the handouts on how to use the computer software I need for work. SO this might be a good time to start writing again, and start reflecting on life, current and past, in longer stretches than the random thought popping through my head now and then.
So - write - think - grow.

Quotes on world travel

Bacon's *New Atlantis,*
the denizens of Solomon's House reveal that they too have undertaken global voyages of discovery, only in the search for pure knowledge, and not for the acquisition of wealth and dominions: ""But thus, you see, we maintain a trade, not for gold, silver or jewels.. nor for any other commodity of matter, but only for God's first creature which was light"

Boyer's model of education

Type of Scholarship
Purpose
Measures of Performance

Discovery
Build new knowledge through traditional research.
• Publishing in peer-reviewed forums.
• Producing and/or performing creative work within established field.
• Creating infrastructure for future studies.

Integration
Interpret the use of knowledge across disciplines.
• Preparing a comprehensive literature review
• Writing a textbook for use in multiple disciplines.
• Collaborating with colleagues to design and deliver a core course.

Application
Aid society and professions in addressing problems.
• Serving industry or government as an external consultant.
• Assuming leadership roles in professional organizations.
• Advising student leaders, thereby fostering their professional growth.

Teaching
Study teaching models and practices to achieve optimal
learning.
• Advancing learning theory through classroom research.
• Developing and testing instructional materials
• Mentoring graduate students.
• Designing and implementing a program level assessment system.

Faculty development info by Martha Nibert at U Idaho

Humanism - in England

Some useful titles here seem to be

Frederick Seebohm. The Oxford Reformers. Oxford, 1867.

James McConica. English Humanism and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.

Maria Dowling. Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII. N.H.: Croom Helm,
Ltd. 1986

Gordon Zeeveld. Foundations of Tudor Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: , 1948. (went to manuscripts - not just printed materials, found the second tier people).

F Caspari. Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England. Chicago: , 1954.

R Weiss. Humanism in England During the Fifteenth Century. Oxford: , 1957.

Chambers. Thomas More. 1935.(said humanism died with the reformation in Britain - 1535).

G.R. Elton. Reform and Renewal. 71-75. (talks about Cromwell's reforms but is later shown to be wrong.)

G.R Elton. Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government. Vol. 4 Papers and Reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. (great overview)

The English Housewife

Written by Gervaise Markham in 1615. A handbook for housewives containing "all the virtuous knowledges and actions both of the mind and body, which ought to be in any complete housewife." Markham reveals the "pretty and curious secrets" of preparing everything from simple foods to such elaborate meals as a "humble feast" - an undertaking which entails preparing "no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can stand on one table." He instructs the housewife on brewing beer and caring for wine, growing flax and hemp for thread, and spinning and dyeing. As a housewife was also responsible for the health and "soundness of body" of her family, he includes advice on the prevention of everything from the plague to baldness and bad breath.


About GM:
Pudsey, a retainer on the Shrewsbury Worksop side, bit his thumb at Orme, a retainer on the Holles Haughton side; was called out with drawn rapier, was slain on the spot like fiery Tybalt, and never bit his thumb more. Orme, poor man, was tried for murder; but of course the Holleses and the Stanhopes could not let him be hanged; they made interest, they feed law-counsel,—they smuggled him away to Ireland, and he could not be hanged. Whereupon Gervase Markham, a passably loose-tongued, loose-living gentleman, sworn squire-of dames to the Dowager of Shrewsbury, took upon himself to say publicly, That John Holles was himself privy to Pudsey’s murder, “That John Holles himself, if justice were done——!”

Holles and Markham have a duel where GM is pierced in the genitals - he survives but is incapable of having sex. This is 1497 or some such.

English Renaissance

The renaissance is generally considered to have started in Italy with a renewed interest in antiquity. (Dante used Virgil as his guide). Italian humanists visited Byzantium in order to learn Greek and to buy old manuscripts, saved from pillages, conflagrations, and devastation of the invaded country. Many Greek texts were brought from Constantinople. Europe was ransacked for copies of the long unused Latin classics and copyists multiplied them. With the fall of Constantinople eastern scholars moved to Rome and brought ideas and texts with them.

Some of these ideas migrated north although some say renaissance in Italy and England are unrelated. Clearly Henry VII and his mother Margaret Beaumont took inspiration from the new ideas about education and scholarship, particularly from Erasmus. Margaret met John Fisher in 1494. He was a friend and collaborator of Erasmus, who was to be her lifelong confidant, counselor, and companion. Fisher became the Bishop of Winchester, and Cancellor of Cambridge University.
Margaret translated Thomas A Kempis to English and founded two colleges at Cambridge - Jesus College in 1497, and St. John's College after her death in 1509, through a grant in her will.
She promoted the printing of books, and was a leading patron of the first English printer, William Caxton, and his successor. Finally, she belived in education for everybody

Scholars went to Italy to be educated and returned with new ideas. Thomas Linacre, for example, was hired by Henry upon his return from Italy around 1500, first as a tutor to his oldest son Arthur, and then as the King's personal physician. Linacre later became the first president of the Royal College of Physicians, which was incorporated in 1518. William Grocyn travelled to Italy to be educated, and on his return initiated the teaching of Greek at Oxford.

Two other important proponents of education in general and new kinds of learning in particular were Thomas More and John Colet. Colet traveled to Italy, where he became a fervent promoter of Platonism. More (1478-1535) was the son of a London lawyer. He studied Greek and Platonic philosophy at Oxford.


Henry VII surrounded himself with men who promoted the Renaissance's ``New Learning.'' The King himself was clearly fascinated by the political and cultural life of the main Italian states, and during his reign, the English court was a more interesting and cosmopolitan place, than it was to be in the time of his successor. Foreign scholars were likely to receive a warm welcome, and Henry was also the leading patron of English writers and poets.



Henry's interest in the arts was widely recognized, and a knowledge of the Classics was regarded as an avenue to royal favor, encouraging others to master the Renaissance learning. Erasmus reported in 1505, that London had eclipsed both Oxford and Cambridge, and had become the country's most important educational center, where ``there are ... five or six men who are accurate scholars in both tongues [Greek and Latin], such as I think even Italy itself does not at present possess.''



After studying in England, most of these scholars travelled to Italy, to master the new Platonic learning. Thomas Linacre, for example, was hired by Henry upon his return from Italy around 1500, first as a tutor to his oldest son Arthur, and then as the King's personal physician. Linacre later became the first president of the Royal College of Physicians, which was incorporated in 1518. William Grocyn travelled to Italy to be educated, and on his return initiated the teaching of Greek at Oxford.



One leading royal patron of education was Lady Margaret Beaufort, the King's mother. She has been described as ``more nearly the typical `man of the Renaissance' than her son,'' and that, even though her ``influence and endowments were ... religious rather than secular, they were outward looking and humanist, never scholastic.'' Lady Margaret was the only woman whose advice the King ever sought or heeded.



Margaret was only fourteen when her son Henry was born. She died in 1509, outliving her son by several months. As a child, she was taught reading, writing, and French. Her tutors remarked on her intelligence. She desired to learn Greek and Latin, but her mother refused to hire a tutor to educate her in the languages that were reserved for men who joined the clergy. As an adult, she completed an English translation of Thomas a@ag Kempis's {The Imitation of Christ,} which had been begun by William Atkinson, as well as translating another religious work.



Lady Margaret promoted the education of the entire population. She was a devout Christian, who championed the preaching of simple but eloquent sermons, which would uplift even the lowliest churchgoer. She promoted the printing of books, and was a leading patron of the first English printer, William Caxton, and his successor.



In 1494, Margaret met John Fisher, a friend and collaborator of Erasmus, who was to be her lifelong confidant, counselor, and companion. Fisher became the Bishop of Winchester, and Cancellor of Cambridge University. He encouraged Margaret to patronize projects that promoted the New Learning. As a result, she supported the founding of two colleges at Cambridge, Jesus College in 1497, and St. John's College after her death in 1509, through a grant in her will. St. John's, which opened in 1516, became the leading college at Cambridge for the next thirty years.



Another patron of education was Bishop Richard Fox, the man who played a key role in Henry VII's foreign policy. In 1517, Fox and Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, founded Corpus Christi College, whose statutes set out in detail a humanist curriculum. Initially, Fox had wished to found a college to educate clergy in the New Learning, but ultimately, the college accepted students destined for secular employment.



Although Henry and his circle favored the New Learning, the universities remained dominated by medieval scholasticism. The efforts of Henry and his circle were ultimately successful, however, as they opened the door for a circle of scholars associated with Erasmus of Rotterdam to create a revolution in education, which led to the great flowering of culture and the English economy during the next hundred years.



The Erasmus Circle



The central figure in the circle that launched the English Renaissance was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Born to poor parents in Holland in 1467, Erasmus was educated by the Brotherhood of the Common Life, a teaching order modeled on a Kempis's {Imitation of Christ,} that took in poor, but promising children. Several of his teachers inspired him to take dedicate his life to the promotion of Platonist Classical learning.



Erasmus became the leading humanist thinker of his age, and his name was a household word throughout educated Europe. He published his first work, the {Adages,} in 1500. Works such as {In Praise of Folly} and {The Handbook of the Militant Christian} become enormously popular, precisely at the moment when printing was coming into vogue. His works spread far and wide, and played an important role in promoting literacy throughout Europe.



Among Erasmus's key collaborators in England were Thomas More (1478-1535) and John Colet (1467-1519). They were the nucleus of a small group of Classically educated scholars, formed during the reign of Henry VII, who dedicated themselves to creating a Renaissance that would usher in an age where society would be governed by reason. Colet was the son of a London mercer, who was Lord Mayor in 1486 and 1495. He traveled to Italy, where he became a fervent promoter of Platonism. More (1478-1535) was the son of a London lawyer. He studied Greek and Platonic philosophy at Oxford, and became a key leader of the English Renaissance during the reign of Henry VIII.

These scholars proceeded from the idea that, since man's nature was in the image of God, he could comprehend God's nature through reason. They rejected the stultifying, Aristotelian logic of the scholastics, whose commentaries dominated theology, and sought instead to reintroduce the writings of the early Church Fathers and the New Testament itself, in which they recognized an outlook coherent with Platonic philosophy.

Erasmus first traveled to England during the reign of Henry VII, in 1499. The circle around Erasmus, More, and Colet began to establish schools which became models for the transformation of the educational system. Around 1510, More set up a school in his home, where he taught his own and other children. In 1510, Henry VIII granted a license to establish St. Paul's school, which became the model for the reorganization of the English grammar schools throughout the country. When Erasmus turned down the job as the headmaster of the new school Colet asked William Lily, who had studied at Oxford and in Italy. Lily had also travelled to Rhodes to learn Greek. Erasmus did write the curriculum.
Lily, Colet, and Erasmus jointly collaborated in drafting a grammar textbook. By 1542, this text had been adopted as the official Latin Grammar used throughout the schools in England. Its use continued up through the Eighteenth century, and, in a modified form, in many schools even into the Twentieth.



- there WAS also something doing in England during Henry VIII (the first English Renaissance Monarch) and even more Elizabeth - but perhaps pushed more by political stability (possibly breaking with pope motivated people to find other authorities?). England less focused on visual art and more on literature, esp. drama.

Timing different? Italy 1400 - 1550, England 1485 - 1603 (or 1616)?

Religion:
Thomas More, Richard Hoooker

Science:

Politics:

Theater:
Shakespeare, Marlowe,

Poetry:
Roger Ascham, Edmund Spenser, Lady Mary Herbert, John Lyly, Wyatt, Surrey

Architecture:

Questions:
How to follow the trail of Boccacio, Dante, and others writing in the vernacular to Chaucer - and how does writing in the vernacular square with reading latin and greek texts? Is looking for pre-christian writing the common goal?
Are John Donne (1573-1631) and Ben Johnson (1573-1637) renaissance or later? And where the hell does Francis Bacon (1561-1621) fit?

Links at:
http://east_west_dialogue.tripod.com/europe/id5.html
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/renaissanceinfo.htm

Thesaurus

Examine

Explore

Consider

Study

Investigate

Inquire

Probe

Great Chain of Being

One of the big ideas that remained in force from the classical period was the concept of the Great Chain of Being. Its major premise was that everything in the universe had its position in a divinely planned order, a hierarchy that looked like a vertical chain going from the most important and perfect - God - on top to the least important and imperfect - innanimate things like rocks - at the bottom.
came from ...

DETAILS
note that people thought all links had to be represented - the most perfect world contains the whole chain, and so imperfection is part of perfection ..
Literary ramifications - metaphors indicate something about status
political ramificiations - your social position is divinely ordained, obey or else
moral ramifications - upsetting the cart is a sin
Theological - the cause is more perfect than what it causes - there must be a cause for everything - the first cause can not be caused - hence God

Illustrations:

Bibliography:
E.M.W. Tillyard "The Elizabethan World Picture"
Arthur Lovejoy "The Great Chain of Being"

other sources
http://e.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/Tillyard01.html

Newtonianism and Pope and Descartes n stuff

So, it appears that the worldviews of Descartes and Newton were fighting for power over the period. Not sure what belonged where, but generally I think the idea is a world that can be explained and a world that is less about god than man.

Newton: Math, experiment, mechanistic - but also with fluids and invisible gases, Gravity really was a big deal, and ideas about how things had density and pull
Descartes: Reason, induction, mechanistic with no invisible stuff

Pope epitaph on Newton ... "Nature and Nature's Law, lay hid in night / God said 'Let Newton be!' and all was light", Pope was also interested in gravity and gravitas - and he and Swift were unhappy with the dull pedantry of minor scientists. Fight between ancients and moderns and between prose and poetry writers. (See www.ourcivilization.com/smartboard/shop/hornecj/litsci.htm for more). So is wit and poetry an attempt to balance prosaic study of nature - art against science?

EME classes

Early Modern England
    Tudor to Hannover
 

Women in Early Modern Europe
   the Saint, the Witch, the Wife, and the Widow

Women in the Era of Revolutions


Women in public 18th culture class

John Styles. The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven Yale University Press, 2007. Illustrations. xi + 432 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-300-12119-3.
 Clare Crowston, “The Queen and her ‘Minister of Fashion’: Gender, Credit, and
Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France” Gender and History 14, 1 (April 2002).

Early Modern Families
“Early Modern Perspectives on the Long History of Domestic
Violence: The Case of Seventeenth-Century France,” Journal of Modern History (March 2006)
“Sex and the (seventeenth-century) century city: a research note
towards the long history of leisure,” Leisure Studies (October, 2008).
Amy Erikson, “Coverture and Capitalism,” History Workshop Journal (59) 2005

Enlightenment in the North

Religion in Early Modern Europe

Reform and Reformation

Post-PhD blues

http://www.english-blog.com/archives/2007/12/the_post_phd_blues.php

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,37694.0.html

http://phdblue.blogspot.com/

http://anya.blogsome.com/2005/03/19/from-the-post-phd-blues-to-publication-bliss/

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_index.php?idx=119&d=1&w=5&e=333

Dissertation writing advice part II

The dissertation doctor: has good stuff on the PROCESS.
http://www.dissertationdoctor.com/index.html

The dissertation journey - breaking down the pieces:
http://www.dissertationdoctor.com/journey.html

About the lit. review, why it is important and how to do it.
http://www.deakin.edu.au/library/findout/research/litrev.php

Procrastination

Website:
http://procrastinus.com/

ABD websites:
These are sites helping people finish their doctoral dissertations.

Academic Research Group
American Psychological Association
Dissertation Doctor
Eddie's Anti-Procrastination Site

Tips:

Goal Setting

This is one of the most established ways of moving forward on your plans. Take any project you are presently procrastinating and break it down into individual steps. Each of these steps should have the following three aspects. First, they should be somewhat challenging though achievable for you. It is more satisfying to accomplish a challenge. Second, they should be proximal, that is you can achieve them fairly soon, preferable today or over the next few days. Third, they should be specific, that is you know exactly when you have accomplished them. If you can visualize in your mind what you should do, even better.

Stimulus Control

This method has also been well tested and is very successful. What you need is a single place that you do your work and nothing else. Essentially, you need an office, though many students have a favorite desk at a library. For stimulus control to work best, the office or desk should be free of any signs of temptation or easily available distractions that might pull you away (e.g., no games, no chit-chat, no web-surfing). If you need a break, that is fine, but make sure you have it someplace at least a few minutes distant, preferably outside of the building itself. If you are unwilling to take the time to get there, acknowledge that you likely don’t need the break.

Routines

Routines are difficult to get into but in the end, this is often our aim. Things are much easier to do when we get into a habit of them, whether it is work, exercise, or errands. If you schedule some of those tasks you are presently procrastinating upon so that they occur on a regular schedule, they become easier. Start your routine slowly, something to which you can easily commit. Eventually, like brushing your teeth, it will likely become something you just do, not taking much effort at all. At this point, you might add to your routine, again always keeping your overall level of effort at a moderate to low level. Importantly, when you fall off your routine, inevitable with sickness or the unexpected, get back on it as soon as possible. Your routine gets stronger every time your follow it. It also gets weaker every time you don’t.

Manuscript changes

What I want to do:

Reread Bannet

Add Wollstonecraft - at least enough to figure 0ut where she fits

Explain why the biography is important and revise to fit. It is important because:
- the circumstances of their lives provides insight into what opportunities they had (the mentors, access to resources, etc)
- the circumstances of their lives is what positioned them to HAVE other choices than gender
- the private choices they made provide insight into the strategies they used and since I am claiming that individual women could play their hand differently, I should show what sort of players they were

- I say beyond gender for two reasons - one of them is that we need to look at men and women NOT from a gendered perspective, but allowing for these other strategies - ie people listed as "women" were also other things, the other is that men and women could choose similar strategies. So yes I should have male comparisons, but in a sense I am looking at one variable to see how relevant that variable is to certain situations - and that is just fine.

- If I AM to add men, who do I do: Pope for Lady Mary, Johnson for Montagu, Hume for Macaulay, and Adams or Gerry for Warren, then Burke and Wollstonecraft.

- More on virtue?

- The literary market, read Eisenstein and Guest (small change). Consider manuscript publication at the end of the 18thC - is it still a possibility and how do we understand the marketplace at that time?

Meanwhile in France???

job stuff

Various links and info on jobs:

Negotiable items
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep/jobsearch/negotiable.html

Defense suggestions

What I should look at:

PG - newtonianism, Descartes p. 35, mentor/mentee relationships, how is a model different from the new categories I draw up here, Aristotle and the genres? and finally Pope and the Dunciad, did he really say what was wrong was gravity?

PM - Wollstonecraft, Bannet

DW - literary perspective, i.e. the persona of "author" that was not available to everyone, if looking at GENDER then you need to have male comparisons too (add a chapter on each guy?), also be more specific about textual analysis (e.g. p. 146 on the discussion of the curiously gendered gesture of Warren, saying how she should be excused as there were talented men who had failed also).

Consider the amount of biography and justify it.

Legislation that wasn't

"Wrong dates, false attributions, and a lot of plain malarky get passed on from generation to generation as scholars plunder one another's footnotes." (From Robert Hume's Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archaeo-Historicism.)


Post on C18-L by Joel Berson:
2) Writer A quotes from the 1675 diary of a young girl in New England who comments on luxurious, fashionable dress that she had seen displayed in Boston -- 40 to 65 years earlier than other writers put the arrival of fancy clothing. A cites B, who did not document his source and who told me his notes were inaccessible. Fortunately the quoted passage turned up via Google, leading to "A Puritan Maiden's Diary", discovered by Adeline E. H. Slicer and published in _The New England Magazine_ in 1894. (I also found a third writer, C, citing the same passage.) Reading the diary, my ears began to tingle -- it did not sound 17th century even to my untrained ones. Should I accept and use the Puritan maiden's quotation as evidence of the beginnings of a consumer society in Boston in 1675? Fortunately, I also found Mary Beth Norton's "Getting to the Source: Hetty Shepard, Dorothy Dudley, and Other Fictional Colonial Women I Have Come to Know Altogether Too Well", in which she "demonstrates conclusively that it was in fact composed in the late nineteenth century by its nominal editor, Adeline E. Herbert Slicer" (from the abstract). Thus Norton saved me the considerable time and effort I might have spent in "vetting" the diary myself, and at least *I* have not picked it up and repeated it.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month - apparently there is this yearly novel writing competition - looks interesting and all, but I don't think I should get involved in writing a novel in a month in November. I should have other things to do. What is interesting is the page with tips on how to EDIT your work once you have a draft. Several people talk about their approach:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/nowwhat


The best three comments are from Chris Baty. He says:

1) It will take longer than you expect - and he gives a timeline. Very helpful.

2) Get someone to help you with the plot - get a 30 page or so storyboard and then get help with nailing that down. - I think the getting help is good, but I think the 30 page storyboard is even more helpful, since it gives an OUTLINE of the whole thing without all the pesky details. It gives you a frame to work from.

3) Do not polish the details of style until you have the plot down. What you polish may end up getting cut, and you end up futsing with details that will never matter. Once you know the plot and the characters - THEN you can make it pretty.

I want to add a fourth from my own experience. Use that 30 page storyboard as a base and start filling things in as you go. I made an outline that I kept expanding and expanding until first one and then a second and a third chapter emerged. At first I tried to write linearly, from page 1 to page 200, but that is really not how I process information. When I started seeing it as a puzzle where you have bits and pieces connected and they grow bigger and then one bit suddenly connects to another and you keep an eye out for all the edge pieces because when you have those in you have a frame for the whole thing. It has also been the case several times that I have a few paragraphs that stick together but really don't belong where I first stick them, so I move three paragraphs over to another part of a chapter (or in some cases to a different chapter) just like you do with the puzzle when you realize that those particular red pieces are not part of the nose but of the scarf in the other corner of the picture.