Today was another good day. I produced 1,000 words of Chapter 4, and I’m actually pretty happy with the form that most of them have taken. I’ve started weaving in some of the research material that I need to set up the context, so that’s a good feeling. I’m really trying to avoid some of the mistakes I made with Chapter 3, and to that end I’m keeping much better tabs on the sources I’m using from the get-go, so I don’t get tripped up when it’s the eve of submission, and I’m scrambling to find citations.

I am hoping that my success of the last few days really does mark a moment when my chapter will take its final form. I don’t want to find myself spinning my wheels with this one the way I did Chapter 3 (which took almost a year to write!) So far, I’m cautiously optimistic, which in academic writing is about as good as it gets sometimes.

Tomorrow, I am aiming to continue working on the historical context, though I might allow myself to wander a bit into the close readings. Though it breaks up the flow my writing process a bit, I do find that it allows me to make sure that I am making connections, both explicit and implicit, between my various sections. Since a critique of the last chapter was that there was frequent disconnects between my close readings and my context, I’m extra close attention to those bits of detail as I make my way through the composition of this one. I’m hoping to get it approved with one round, but we’ll see.

I’m at a little bit of a loss on where to go with my research. I think I’m going to have to dig a little deeper on the historical context, and luckily I have a few places to turn to. Still, I know that it’s far too easy to get so mired in the contextual research that you lose sight of the chapter as a whole. That being said, I do want to make sure that I include as much detail as I can about the geopolitical context of the early and middle 1960s, so that my readings of the films will make sense. I do think that I’ve got enough

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to revising Chapters 1 and 2 today. Tomorrow, though, I will definitely got on that. Honest!