First Draft: thesis

My thesis's first draft is complete. Nineteen pages long, and it's not nearly long enough. It needs to be closer to 30 pages, but I was pretty tapped out after writing it all week. It also had a lot of reorganizing needed.

The topic of my thesis is a study of medieval Ireland and Catholicism's entrance into the druidic, polytheistic society. The idea presented is that saints were used as a large part of the conversion process in Ireland. Because they are also the figureheads through which monasteries were founded, they also were the influence behind the monastic movement.

The monks used tales about the saints - called hagiography - in their quest to prove the saint's dominance over each other and, more importantly, over the native religion.

Fugue

I finished hard editing Fugue. Whether it stands alone or not is an entirely different matter. Because of the subject matter, it was written in a way that either draws people in or turns them off. Readers have said they love it and were disappointed when it ended. A few fellow writers said it had a jumpy beginning.

I presume editors tend to think in more of terms of a critical writer rather than a reader. I'll be shelving it for a few weeks until after my thesis is finished.