This is my life right now:

I’ve spent the past couple of days in thesis-land, and for that I’m grateful.  I had the sinking feeling that I would find myself inundated with story ideas and completely unable to focus on my day job, but after the spurt of fictional pursuits earlier in the week, I’ve transitioned back to my research.

When it comes to my weekly goals, then, I somehow managed to meet both my thesis and fiction-writing goals.  Luckily, I spent the beginning of the week binging on fiction; I wrote about 3475 words for Path to the Peacock Throne, which is a hair under my 3500 word goal.  For my thesis I’ve also written roughly 3500 words, so yay!  I’ve managed to complete Week 1 of ROW80 and remain on target.

Right now, I’m crossing my fingers that I can have a section of my findings drafted and delivered to my advisor by Tuesday.  In case I haven’t mentioned this, I’m a historical/cultural sociologist, and my MA thesis is a textual analysis of 1920s etiquette books.  There are a number of things that I’m doing with this project, including a study of wedding etiquette and a larger discussion of the author’s role in interpreting the laws of so-called “polite society” for the reader.  I’ve been working on the thesis for almost 3 years now, and I’m ready to be finished, so as much as I’d like to work on fiction, I really do need to tackle my day job first.

I’m also looking forward to going to Las Vegas for my first trip with my parents and younger sister in 3 years.  This means that I might be a little absent over the next week, as I’m not sure what internet access is going to look like.  If I can, I’ll post ROW80 checkins via mobile, but we’ll see.

At any rate, I hope that everyone has had a wonderful weekend!  Good luck on progress for the rest of this week.  If you can, hop on over to visit the other ROW80 participants and cheer them on!