Sobriquet 50.7

I'm currently at a stage in the prewriting phase of Chapter Three that I find tremendously difficult to work my way through. Like many people with hyperactive minds, I often need to harness my excess energy in order to focus on something that does not interest me as much as, say, the crossword puzzle book sitting on my nightstand or the copy of Morris Kline's Mathematics for the Non-mathematician sitting atop it, but I have really been struggling to re-read the pages of notes on and quotes from the critical articles on Disgrace. I mean, I have been making progress, but it is a haltingly slow, frustrating affair. I suspect that I am chomping at the bit a little, itching to begin writing the chapter, thereby building up a fairly potent store of impatience which, in turn, makes it harder to focus on the task at hand. Another factor contributing to the difficulty I have been having sustaining focus, I reckon, is that, having already separated the critical wheat from the chaff, each quotation is something that requires a good deal of concentration and reflection to be properly processed. Thus, in terms of the mental effort one must exert, it's rather like running one sprint after another for the length of a marathon.

And, of course, there's the constant struggle to mentally arrange things as one reads such material with the intention of writing something worth reading, a struggle that is only partially alleviated by the addition of a pad and pen.

So, yeah. Like everything else with this chapter, this stage seems like it will take longer than I'd hoped.

For the next day or two: Continue re-reading and bibliographizing.