It\u2019s really hard to decide on what I should post about today. I have diversions.<\/p>\n
The first is that I\u2019m in the final throes of revising my thesis to meet the examiners\u2019 comments. I thought it would be a much bigger task than it was. I\u2019ve sent my revisions and comments to my supervisors and then I send the final in and, hopefully, by the end of the week it will be done and dusted save for graduation. I submitted the thesis over a year ago \u2013 even for Australia this is slow. I don\u2019t know why it was so slow, but career-wise it doesn\u2019t matter to me (this is not my first PhD and I\u2019m in my sixties) so it\u2019s better the admin slowness doesn\u2019t apply to young students than it does apply to me. Also, between submission and graduation, my first PhD took 3 years. It was not my fault, but it cost me my first career. By me a drink and I\u2019ll tell you the story.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s rather nice that lateness doesn\u2019t always carry such costs.<\/p>\n
The second is that the submission period for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion closed yesterday. Many of us are a bit overwhelmed. On 4 June (10 days before submissions closed) there were over 14,000 submissions, which was a record for Royal Commissions. No-one knows the final number yet.<\/p>\n
The staff serving the Royal Commissioner is obligated to read every single one of them. And those of us keeping track are wondering what this means. That Jewish Australia matters? That haters have put in many thoughts? We know that haters have oput in some thoughts. We also know that Palestinian Australia put in a 259 page submission. I\u2019ve seen the outline and need to read it because I cannot make sense of it. Or rather, I can make sense of it in and of itself, but not how it helps Australia handle antisemitism. It seems to be arguing that we\u2019re making things up. This is why I have to check. I\u2019ve been told by quite a few people this last week that antisemitism is fictional, but there are so many incidents right now that this is not a claim so much as a misdirection. I need to know why APAN feels the need to spend 259 pages backing that misdirection if that is, indeed what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m supposed to be doing is writing fiction. I lay in bed last night working out things that needed working out, but today have only written a couple of hundred words. We\u2019re in a weather trap and my bones hurt and I keep procrastinating and worrying about Jewish Australia and other groups being confined by wagon trains circling hate.<\/p>\n
Let me leave you and go back to my big writing decision for this week: Lincoln or London in the twelfth century for a section of the novel. I want both, but I don\u2019t think both will fit. I also want Cologne and Speyer. Both! Actually, writing this out has made me think: people travelled in the Middle Ages. Why don\u2019t I have someone travelling to Cologne from Speyer? That would give me the words for Lincoln and London. I just need to check concepts and characters and plot and\u2026 all the things\u2026 except the history. I have most of the research for that at my fingertips because of the non-fiction I was working on recently and that still has no home. All this research pays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s really hard to decide on what I should post about today. I have diversions. The first is that I\u2019m in the final throes of revising my thesis to meet the examiners\u2019 comments. I thought it would be a much bigger task than it was. I\u2019ve sent my revisions and comments to my supervisors and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,636,56,14,20,18],"tags":[656,112,70,580,1165,970,124,170,86],"class_list":["post-4665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-nonfiction","category-process","category-writing","tag-antisemitism","tag-australia","tag-history","tag-jewish","tag-jewish-australia","tag-jews","tag-middle-ages","tag-phd","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4666,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions\/4666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}