Category: Uncategorized

I am ready to delete most of my paper. I wrote about Eve in Paradise Lost, and I did not like it. I’ll delete it because I’m unsure how it will work with Motherhood/Religious expectations in His Dark Materials. I am probably going to ask my reviewers how they feel about the section before I delete it because I did write a fair amount. However, if they don’t like it, I will cut it.

Otherwise, I feel like I finalized my thesis to a degree. It is definitely going to focus on the women in the story and how they are perceived. If I cut the Eve section, then I will add in a little sub-analysis for the witches and Gyptian women. I didn’t add them because I was worried about having enough space for them in the paper. However, if I do that, then Eve gets shortened to a small section of the paper rather than a whole three-page analysis.

First Draft

I like the ideas in my draft. After all, this is one of my favorite topics to have ever written about. The part that I have written about is Mrs. C and Lyra. Like most mother-daughter relationships, it is such a complicated relationship, and I am really excited to have delved into it. Is it perfect? Nope. It is a mishmash of writing and ramblings, but there is work there. That is all I can really ask for. It is a little elementary, but we will work on the words later.

I have no clue if my draft is really comprehensible yet. I feel like it only really makes sense to me because I have the knowledge going behind it, but I wanted to make sure that if someone were to read it, it would be understandable. All I really want from the peer review today is to know how readable the essay is. I know that it could use a lot of work, and that is okay.

Next, I want to focus on my character study of Mary. I think there is something so cool about a scientist being the serpent. Was it supposed to be because science is the opposite of faith? What about her name? Is she the mother figure that Lyra needed? How does her background affect the way the story goes? There are so many avenues to go down.

Drafting Research

Honestly, I suck at drafting. It always feels like I have to be perfect on the first try, but I know that is not the case. I know that somewhere deep down, it’s supposed to be more of getting the words out there and then fixing them later. However, my brain hates not feeling good enough on the first try. It is one of those things where I love using bullet points because the more I can expand on them in a paragraph, the easier it feels.

I have a rough introduction and a few points written down. Is it perfect? No. It kills me a little, but to have a good edit, I actually need to have words on a page. I can not just sit there staring at this blank page. It is a really big struggle to get over the hump of writing the first couple of words, but it was really helpful to just sit with some music and tell myself that it’s okay for it to suck. I like editing, and being a grammar Nazi in high school is why I am an English major today. I need to get the finished project. I don’t really know what I am going to draft next. It will be wherever the flow takes me today. It might be more about Lyra, or more about Mrs. C. I will figure it out when I get there.