The first was that because it was a mostly new chapter, I figured it would take the most work, so wanted to dedicate a full month of summer to it. The original draft of the dissertation had a whole chapter on pamphlets, and I did some cool work, counting, cataloging, and organizing the topics of pamphlets 1500-1667. It revealed some interesting trends, and started some questions I now am exploring, but like the original draft, it identified patterns and trends but did not analyze them. The end result is, I'm using one graph form that work, but that's pretty much it.
The second is, I realized when I reread the diss as prep for this revision, that I was going to completely reorganize the book. The dissertation went chronologically, from Gesta regum Anglorum to Þe Deulis Parlement, to Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV and Macbeth, to Paradise Lost. It analyzed devilish leaders, demonic parliaments, revisited devilish leaders who rebelled, then all those elements in Paradise Lost. The dissertation title, Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliaments, and Diabolical Rebellion from Malmesbury to Milton proved that I was thinking along these lines all along. It makes more sense to organize the material this way, so Malmesbury is in conversation with Shakespeare for how they consciously and unconsciously construct human leaders as demonic. I can then put these two constructions in conversation with the actual devilish leader of Satan in Paradise Lost.
Other than reorganizing the book along these themes, the other things I realized was I should retitle it. So rather than Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliaments, and Diabolical Rebellion in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature, it's now The Political Devil in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature.
I also realized there was stuff to cut because it's not focused.
I remembered a professor saying that the first thing you did when revising the diss to a book was cut all the footnotes. He wasn't serious, well, not totally, but it is an easy way to think of the different work a diss does from a book. A lot of those footnotes are only there to prove I did the work, not to support my argument, so those got cut first.
But too, this new organization means the argument is leaner, so there's a lot of things I'll cut because it's tangential, and not essential to my argument.
Lessons I learned from the dissertation, or on rereading the dissertation:
It's much easier for me to spot, or even stop before I write, poor stylistic tics I had. Weak or passive verbs and constructions, too much "I argue."
While I stated that I historicized these texts, I did not do as much as I thought. Too often I gestured to it, but didn't actually DO the work. So in the revision, the rough organization is: outline/intro, history, scholarship, historicized analysis/close reading.
I've also learned that starting with questions, identifying throughlines, helps me construct chapters from a solid foundation. I work best when I can "see" my thought process, but was traumatized when someone told me not to blog my work, and not to use my whiteboard, so it's taken me a bit to get back to both with comfort.
So my white board looks like this:
As I'm working on the pamphlet chapter, I've added questions, things to emphasize in this chapter and in others.
Another thing that worked really well with the dissertation rewrite, that my dissertation director taught me, was to outline my project. So I have a rough table of contents, that outlines each chapter.
Just as I did with the diss, as I get into the work, I jot notes, expand, add specifics, but the outline forces me to think out/plan my cohesive argument from the beginning AND provides a guide as I write so I don't get lost along the way.
Mechanics:
My rough schedule is to pull close readings, draft, add scholarship, revise and finalize, with roughly one week per thing to get done. I believe this is a manageable work schedule for a few reasons. One, I defended in October, so the research is pretty up to date. I've pulled some scholarship, as I've shifted focus, and for this new chapter, but for the most part, there are no groundbreaking or new things I need to make sure I've missed. I've printed things as they've come out the last few months, but there's not really any extra work there. Also, this is all I'm doing this summer. I'm not teaching, I have no other projects, this is it. I've cleared my schedule of everything I can until this is done. That means I have all summer to get the heavy lifting done, but even once I go back to work, I've pulled out of everything BUT teaching, so I have plenty of time to finish.
Also, while I'm laser-focusing the book, it's more about revising/rewriting bits for strength, making sure my argument is at the forefront, and reorienting how I use scholarship. So it's a lot of work, but it's not "new" work if that makes any sense. Also, by now, I can "see" how the pieces fit together, what needs to go where, which is also easier.
I've encountered a couple of stumbling blocks. The first is, as a graduate, I can get a community library card, to take out books, but not as many as before, or for as long (which is not a big deal because reading is my superpower) BUT the bigger issue is I cannot get ILLs, which is an issue since the few things I will need WILL be new, AND I no longer have online article access. The librarian recommended a fix, that I'm working with my dissertation chair to work on, so we'll see.
The other stumbling block is personal. I went to the eye doctor the other week, to get eyes checked, see if my glasses needed to be updated, and told her I was having issues with vision getting blurry in afternoon and at night, not being able to focus or read, eyes feeling tired, and headaches. She did some tests and it turns out about half of my eye glands, in each eye, that produce tears, have died. There is a procedure to unblock what is left, try and save, along with a massive routine of eyedrops and stuff, which SHOULD prevent further gland death, BUT it's around $1000 and not covered by insurance. Other than that, it means that this week, when I'm supposed to be plowing through secondary source reading, I'm not able to. More than an hour or so of reading and my eyes really hurt and I have a headache. But, the procedure is tomorrow, and results should be immediate, so we'll see.
The books below are my main sources, and I still need to reread them. One thing I noticed in the dissertation reread was that too often I defaulted to other people's arguments. Not that I shouldn't support my own with previous work, but I wasn't confident enough in my own work so I was hedging a bit. So, I'm using these scholars' work, but reworking HOW I use it.
Next steps include finishing the scholarship review, then redrafting, revising the chapter. I feel good about being done with the pamphlet chapter by the end of June.
Then in July, my plan is to address the newly designed first chapter, on devilish leaders, so I have time to dedicate to how this new organization/format works. Hopefully that will make it easier to redo the other chapters once I am back at work.
That leaves "Devilish Parliament" for August, "Devilish Speech" for September, "Diabolical Rebellion" for October, " redo intro and conclusion for November, then December for reread, last looks and send off. Originally, I though devilish speech was part of diabolical rebellion, and it may be when I write that's true, that it's not enough on it's own, that it's diabolical BECAUSE the speech leads to rebellion. But we'll see. If not, I'll need another clever "d" synonym for devilish.
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