dissertaphobia

The moment is here. For the time being, I’m past the low blood pressures and chemo reactions, I’ve wrapped up my responsibilities at Claremont, and my workload facilitating Fuller’s online ethics course is both light and shared with a coworker—the perfect time to be reminded that the idea of actually sitting down and writing a chapter of my dissertation intimidates the daylights out me.

If anyone asks, yes, I’m working on my dissertation. Specifically, I’m writing the chapter on Chris Marshall, author of Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime and Punishment and a leader in the effort to gain civil rights for the Maoris in New Zealand—but only if you’ll allow me to use the word “writing” figuratively. In reality, I’m looking up resources online, reading & taking notes on articles that Chris emailed to me from New Zealand journals after I had met with him in Dallas four months ago to pick his brain, and checking out books related to the topic of restorative justice. But when I start to write, I suddenly notice that dishes are waiting to be washed, my desk to be organized, and several emails to be answered.

Years ago, in Seattle, a woman who made most of her living writing poetry and short stories gave me this piece of advice: “Step one: apply ass to chair.” In fact, I’ve gotten that far several times. Once seated, however, I’ve found that I am capable of staring at blank screen for well over an hour. Somehow I’ve pulled it together enough times in the last few years to put out several other drafts and papers, and I’m sure it will come back to me. For now, I have to settle for hyperventilating, quaking in my seat and waking up screaming in the middle of the night.

However, on a related topic, I’ve been getting some invaluable assistance on my Trocmé chapter, which will claim the center of my attention in about 3 months. My friend GM Roe, from Seattle, contacted me a couple of weeks ago with an idea that he had been mulling over for a while. He wants to pull together a team of Francophiles, mostly from Bethany Community Church, to help with the translation Trocmé’s unpublished papers and sermons. In addition, he has contracted with a student in Philadelphia to spend a day next week at the Swarthmore Peace Collection locating and photocopying the specific materials I have in mind. Both GM and Glen Stassen had offered to make detours from upcoming trips to the east coast to do the same thing, but now neither of them will need to do that, and we’ll be able to start translating right away.

I suppose with this many people investing themselves this deeply in my dissertation I’d better start writing, panic-stricken or not.