... and the ugly.

I woke up this morning with that horrible, sinking feeling in my stomach.

Last night was not good. After my worries about BitchAdvisor had somewhat passed, I got an email from GoodAdvisor that had me (once again, this week) in tears.

I sent ch. 2 months ago with the warning that it was a very rough draft, but that I needed to get it off my hands for awhile and wanted to show some progress... after all, for me, 30 pages of anything is progress, even if it needs reworking.

Last night's email, while still generally nice in tone, essentially said that the chapter was utter shit, and that my writing was a disaster... that the basic structure was there, but that the "presentation" was horrible.

See, the one thing I can generally count on is that my academic writing is good. It's not always great, but it's good enough to get me through a lot of shit. I got honors on my M.A. thesis, and I hadn't even edited the fucker when I turned it in... so while I can handle criticism about content with no problems at all, I've never had to deal with criticism about my writing style. Ever. (Note: I even helped Sasha rewrite the first chapter of his dissertation, and his advisor, not knowing it was me, said "oh, you found yourself a very good editor!" So it's not that I'm crazed about this... I really can write and edit.)

I'm not saying my blog writing is good, by the way. Maybe I should "use" the blog to work on my writing, but this is still more of an outlet for anxiety than anything else. I certainly don't consider it an "academic blog."

What sucks, for me, is that I don't have anyone else to get basic feedback from before I edit things. The way I was seeing it, at the time, was that I could rewrite the chapter from what I had, or I could send it in and get some comments - right direction, wrong direction? - and then revise it. The first seemed like a complete waste of time, as I'd been beating my head into the wall over it for weeks already.

Now I have some comments on 1 & 2, at least, and working versions of 3 and most of 4 that I will not be sending in yet. I'm going back to rework the first chapter, starting Sunday. It will then go to my department chair at Small Private College where I work, as she's volunteered to read and edit the whole thing. Then, I'll give it back to the advisors, and hope the response is better.

Good gosh. I was starting to go for "March sucks," but I've decided that it's the end of Winter instead. DST on Sunday is as good a time as any to signal change, or - barring that - Spring Equinox.