Workin' on it!

About a year ago to the day, I started working on a 20-page paper discussing failed roads and mobility in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.  After writing that paper, I decided to embark on a project (which most of you know already) about citizenship in Parable of the Sower and its sequel, Parable of the Talents by thinking of citizenship as a form of prosthesis, which became a 60-page master's thesis.  In the meantime, I was accepted to a local conference and presented a 6-page version of the original paper on mobility, but inserted many good insights from the thesis project.

Now, I've just turned in a 12-page "version" of this same paper, which will become a 20-25 page version within the next three weeks.  You'd think I might be bored of this topic or something, but truthfully, I'm not!  Every time I sit down to do a significant revision I learn something that I didn't know before--about literary criticism and theory and about the novels themselves.  For example, my original thesis discussion involved a section on virtual reality in which I looked at how virtual reality breeds passive citizens.  Now, I've taken the passive citizens and virtual reality combo and looked at it with a more sophisticated theoretical framework, and I've become aware of the subversive nature of virtual reality.  I just re-read what I turned in today, and I can already see some of the things I suspect the professor will recommend that I reconsider when I revise it into the 20-25 page paper by the end of the quarter.

The previous academic programs I've been in have never encouraged rewriting something over time; in part because they were terminal programs with no expectation of publishing articles.  Now, I guess I'm getting a tiny taste of the process for publishing an article, which includes peer review, advisor feedback, multiple revisions, and multiple more reviews.  I'm hoping that these ideas will make their way into print at some point...if my stamina for staying interested in this project for a year now is any indication, then I should be able to make it through.