1000 words today

I wrote...yes indeed. The Introduction has officially been launched. At the moment the writing is a bit romantic and sentimental but I'll whip its butt into shape by the end of the weekend.

Mentally I'm preparing myself for supervision on Wednesday - record the conversation and listen more than you talk. And if all else fails I'll fall back on my new mantra 'It's my story and I'm sticking to it!' In a very strange way I want to say that I don't care what will be said and discussed on Wednesday, because inside me I'm starting to feel that I can do this thing anyway. Although that might be the vodka/tonic whispering to me.

interpretation and discussion

I've been delaying, putting off and avoiding. I'm resisting sitting down to write this something that will eventually morph into a chapter that outlines my interpretation and discussion of my research analysis. Should this be called findings? I guess that is what it is. My chapter titles at the moment are not sexy, they aren't personal - they are very formulaic and follow the prescriptions set out in any 'how-to' books on doing a PhD. Maybe the sexiness will still come...we will see.

But my main problem has been this inability to want to deal with the interpretations - in effect tying down the crux of the thesis and really saying what the research is all about. Thoughts about this have been drifting in and out of my mind for weeks now, especially as I've been writing and rewriting my analysis chapters. Just yesterday I tidied my study, as my niece has become the temporary tenant of this room in my flat, and I found version upon version of my analysis chapters. I think it would be underestimation if I said I've rewritten those chapter more than 10 times over the past 12 months. But the key issue now is to decide what the hell I do with everything written in those cases.

To feel like I'm doing something about this issue - even though I'm not writing (but we all know writing is the only thing that counts) - I've been reading what other people say and do about this section of their thesis. So I consulted Kamler and Thomson and attempted what they call 'conversational moves' which is essentially where you set out the argument you are trying to make in each chapter. So my argument is a weak and convoluted one at the moment, and I actually think this exercise will be more helpful once I actually have the two ends of the thesis i.e. the introduction and interpretation/discussion, worked out. I've also been reading other people's theses - but we all structure our work so differently - so none of the theses I've read have presented their analysis as two separate case studies. Most people have identified specific themes and construct their analysis around these themes. Another common strategy is to draw together some analytical and interpretative insights at the end of each of such thematic chapters. My themes have become embedded in each case study presentation. I have also kept my case study analysis 'clean' and uncontaminated with theoretical interpretation. I was hoping that the interpretation and discussion chapter would attempt to lift out the themes from both cases and then subject them to theoretical scrutiny.

So this weekend, starting today, I will just sit down and freaking write!
- How is the theory helping me to explain and understand the case studies?
- What are the answers to my research questions?
- Do the case studies actually relate or touch on the research questions?

Let's see how this goes - I need to be brave, like a warrior or something and just face this thing head on.