That all sounds very grand....

Yesterday afternoon I "launched" my book. That sounds all very grand doesn't it. It wasn't really. I was determined it wouldn't be. I don't really like being the centre of attention and didn't want any of my kind friends and colleagues who attended to feel obliged to buy a copy. Instead, I decided to chat about the process of publication (very briefly!) and then chat about TV comedy. So that is what we did and it was lots of fun. We also had cheese, crackers, wine, tea, coffee and little cakes. In a slightly unfortunate turn of events someone (NOT ME) had tipped off the local paper so my photo may well appear in the auspicious pages of the News Mail at some point. Until, then you will have to make do with these photos of my book.



Afterwards, I raced home because I was late for a accompanying rehearsal with a double bass student who is playing in the Eisteddfod tomorrow. Then I ordered Thai takeaway, drank some of the wine that I had commandeered from the leftovers at the "launch" and settled in to watch an actual grand event on the telly. I finished the evening with a massive headache and went to bed. I certainly know how to party.

something for the shelf

Here is the real thing. I have held it in my hand. First thought...what a relief. Second thought...it's shinier and a bit bigger than I imagined. Third thought...I am scared to look inside in case I find a mistake. I think I shall just put it on the shelf for a while.

The book

Tremendous excitement and relief today as I got word that my book is now printed and available for purchase. This book, Event TV, is basically what my PhD thesis was all about. I am thrilled that it is in print. The publisher is PostPressed, an small, committed academic press in Brisbane, who distribute their publications online through e-content management. I am delighted that there is a student price which is ten dollars cheaper than the RRP. I am also just basically delighted that they agreed to publish something that most likely will never sell 10000 copies, that they believe in publishing academic work from young researchers in small volumes. John Knight, the editor has a strong belief in the traditional values of academia and for that PostPressed should be celebrated. If you are interested the link is here.

http://www.e-contentmanagement.com/books/398/event-tv-the-production-and-inhabited-resistance

(For some reason blogger won't do the link properly so you'll have to copy and paste if interested) There is a table of contents as well as the reviews/comments that appear on the back cover. I am extremely grateful to Geoff Danaher, Jennifer Elsden-Clifton and Jason Jacobs for writing such lovely things about my work and letting me use them. Apparently, now I need to organise a book launch. Who knows about such things? Not me, but I think I am going to have to find out.

At long last....

There is some movement on the manuscript to book front. I am dealing with a small academic press, and today I got the news that the text has gone to the printer and the cover is in process. There is a "blurb"...some complimentary quotes and quite possibly there will be a photo of me.

I am trying not to get too excited just yet but fingers crossed not long now.

Certainly not Shirley either I would imagine

Ok. I've just started printing out the draft of my book manuscript. A little bit scarily it now looks like a book. 246 pages, a proper copyright page, nice font etc. I could be sitting by the printer for some time.

Now I just have to bring myself to read it, one more time...and fix up the Shirley Bassey lyric thing. Who would have thought that Shirley Bassey would be influencing the final text of my soon-to-be-book? Certainly not me.

Certainly not Shirley either I would imagine.

The Joker is Me

Yes I know this is one of those hopeless youtube outings that's a montage of images. But my interest here is the song, which most of us will recognise as the theme song used for Kath and Kim. With my manuscript coming back to check last night I now have a copyright problem if I want to quote the lyrics directly (which I have). And apparently, this kind of copyright is difficult to clear. So I may have to change the way I have incorporated into the text. I don't think it will be good enough to say "I was unaware"...even though I was. Because that makes me look like a joker.

Still it's a pretty fabulous song. Enjoy.

boredom-induced coma or brain explosion: you decide

I finally finished all the APA punctuation twiddling, the quadruple checking of everything in sight, the last minute spell check, the constant reformatting of the table of contents and plucked up the courage to send the manuscript to the publisher. I am now convinced that I will have done something ridiculous, like spelled my name incorrectly or something else embarrassing on the frontpage. But I am resolved not to look at in any more until it comes back as proofs and/or with any more edits to do. For if I had to read it once more I would have either fallen into a boredom-induced coma or had a brain explosion. So it would have either been very quiet, or very messy.

I am now about to start looking at a paper that I am co-writing with two other colleagues here about a course we teach. I am responsible for a third - about 1000 words. That being said, I have never co-written anything before and don't know what I will make of the experience. I am used to being entirely responsible for every part of the paper. And I kind of like that responsibility I guess. So we'll see what happens next. Plus it's entirely removed from my usual research area of television. I am doing it to prove to the powers that be that there is some connection between my teaching and research so they will continue to allow space in my workload for the research I actually want to do (so this paper is in the field of educational, preparatory studies). Yes, it's ridiculous, because surely the generic skills of research, writing and academic practice in general connect explicitly to teaching a course in preparing mature age learners for entering tertiary education. Surely,if I am writing and researching I am modelling that behaviour for our students in a very practical sense. Well I think so, but others disagree.
So, sighing, I now make myself start. Perhaps I can knock my "bit" over before the end of the week.

"yumour people, I'm using yumour"

It's taken me a week but I have finally finished checking through all my references in the conversion of the intext format I used in the thesis to the APA style required by the publisher. I don't want to offend anyone but that American Psychologist Association sure loves their punctuation. Anywhere they can put in a comma, a full stop, throw in some square brackets or colons they go for their life. I think less is more. They seem to think more is more. It was a useful exercise in patience and perserverance, if at times, quite tedious. So my next task is to sit down and read the manuscript from start to finish. I have finally graduated from calling it a thesis to calling it a manuscript. I sometimes think of it as a book but don't know if I'm quite up for that full time yet.

I have also drafted a short preface to go before the Introduction, as a way of hopefully easing the reader into the work, before I hit them between the eyes with all the theory and analysis (as my contribution to cures for insomnia). But I'm concerned that the tone of the preface and the tone of the rest of the work are too different. But then, I change my mind about that 10 times a day and decide that maybe that's good. Different tones, you know. Like my writing is beautiful music made up of various tones. Either that or it's the ugly sounding twelve tone music, that everyone thinks is clever but no=one wants to actually listen to.

Then, as President Obama instructed us, I pick myself up and dust myself off and remind myself that probably very few people will read it anyway so who cares. (Well, actually I'm not sure he said that last bit, it was a whole week ago so I've forgotten most of what he said). That's when I'm feeling all up and positive.

(Yumour, people, I'm using yumour. Cyncial and sarcastic type yumour, but hey, you take what you can get.)

One for the KandK fans!

a little tip from me to myself

Here's an important lesson that I learnt today that I'm sure I will find extremely useful in the future.

When you spend the morning working from home and then prepare to go into the office for the afternoon, make sure you take the work you have completed with you. Do not very carefully pack your bag and put your folder of work together and then run out the house leaving the folder on the table. It's doing no-one any good sitting there.

A little tip from me to myself.

What was I thinking?

This:

"As the section following this one outlines..."


Or this:

"As the following section outlines...."

What was I thinking? Or not thinking?

Awkward turns of phrase everywhere.

"all our operators are busy at the moment"

In spite of my very best efforts to procrastinate again today (coffee, morning tea, lunch,twitter, facebook, listening to the radio), there has been some progress in the "writing of the book from the thesis department". (note: this is not a real government department, however it does exist for real in my mind. Although.....it is frequently unattended, with a long wait if you call, and poor service when you finally get through. Hmmm...perhaps it is a government department...or Telstra).

However....I have got into the conclusion, slashed and burned the VERY BORING AND UNNNECESSARILY LONG chapter summaries (why did I not take notice of my supervisors when I was writing this the first time round? Answer: because they were very nice and "left it up to me")and started writing some new stuff bringing it up to date with discussion of more recent programs. I am sticking to my plan of focusing on We Can Be Heroes and Summer heights high with the intention of name-dropping in other programs as relevant. So far so good. There is progress to take into the weekend and continue with over the next couple of weeks.

An encouraging "no"

Just received a very encouraging "no" to my Arrested Development paper that I had sent to The Velvet Light Trap. That's okay. Until a week or so ago, I had actually forgotten I sent it. And unlike some journals they took the time to give some very useful, lengthy constructive criticism, praising some aspects of it which was nice, and recommending that I definitely follow through with the ideas in it to revise the paper. In my experience not all journals bother to do that either. They did take some time to get back to me, so I can live with the fact that I won't revise it for them. I'm happy to keep it on the backburner for the first few months of the year while the book is my focus. This article was a new idea, just germinating, when I wrote the paper. And I believe no writing is wasted if it continues to generate new ideas in my current work - which it has.

So, all in all, good.

fear not (as if)

It's been a little while since I posted an update on the book. Fear not, good people, this does not mean there has been no progress. In fact I managed to stick to my thirty or so pages a day in editing and actually finished getting through the whole thing yesterday. As with all writing, I could keep changing it forever with minor tweaking, but forced myself to leave as much of it alone as I could stand, just changing and revising parts that really annoyed me. So it was a relatively pleasant experience, surprisingly.



The task ahead now is to rewrite entirely the introduction and conclusion, which at the moment stand as detailed "thesis" style documents. I have decided with the Conclusion to make it more of a postscript, incorporating a discussion of We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High (instead of boring chapter summaries which I am going to delete - oh so bold!). Because then the last section of the Conclusion, which I read for the first time in some time yesterday, I actually quite liked and will leave it as the ending. The Introduction needs vastly reworking also, with the main aim of making it less boring. I think it can be a lot sharper than it is right now. That will be next - probably the job for January.



It's funny...I am finally starting to think of it more as a book now, rather than a thesis. I know I was supposed to think of it as a book all the way along but that never really happened for me. Finally, also, after eighteen months I am able to read it in an objective way, perhaps finally separating from the emotional and weighty task of completion, which was such a milestone. The telling moment was when I found myself actually enjoying reading it, and thinking, "this might be interesting after all!"

Making plans and doing the sums

I have been doing some sums this morning. If I am going on official holidays on December 15th this means I have about three weeks to get through my book edits once more if I am to holiday without it hanging over my head. So if I have about three hundred pages still to get through, and work on the premise that I can find time for it five days out of seven, then I need to do 30 pages or so a day. That doesn't sound like much. Does it? Actually, 30 times 15 seems to be 450 (according to my trusty calculator). So what I have really done is factored the usual procastinating time, as well as unforeseen events such as getting up in the morning and thinking, "I don't feel like looking at that book draft today". And the fact that when I'm at work I might actually have to do the job they are paying me for (which sadly is not research...don't get me ranting on this).

looking forward

I have made some progress in the last week or so on "the book" and now see the need (and the potential) for another chapter that looks at We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High. I think this may cement further he discussion of the comic as resistance, as well as draw together the mockumentary stuff which is really only getting started during the Kath and Kim analysis. Unusually, I am sort of looking forward to writing this too. I think the Arrested Development paper gave me the impetus (and a little confidence) to write something new. So, just counting down the days now until the end of term and looking forward to some student free time to get stuck into planning and drafting.

so funny

"Actualise the virtuality of the comic in everyday life"

thesis...p. 279.

I can't believe I left that sentence in. I still like it though.

scary writing hiding in my thesis

"In spite of the lack of a clear indication of the inhabited resistance indicative of control....."

So much indicating going on there...it's a wonder I wasn't turning in a circle.

But wait there's more....

"The voice seems to function to stabilise...."

Why not "The voice stabilises....."


what next...a free set of steak knives for the first 500 callers perhaps.

the 23rd of July!

Today at work saw a return to the book revisions and writing. If you had asked how long since I had looked at this I might have said - two to three weeks. But no, the last date was 23rd of July!
Anyway once I got over this little shock I busied myself with continuing through Chapter Four. This is probably my least favourite chapter. It looks at Bruce Gyngell and Graham Kennedy as Australian television sites. I still think it serves a valuable purpose in terms of a transition from my analysis of prebroadcasting images and the more contemporary sites in the later chapters, but I don't enjoy reading through it, unlike some other sections. I did manage to get right through the chapter today though and began making changes and edits on the main document.
Very bravely I also printed out the APA manual in preparation for changing the entire referencing style from Harvard. It's looking like a pretty fiddly job. ho hum.

Isn't this always the way?

Well it's Friday afternoon and I have actually managed to send my revised article back on time. For all my procastinating over the reference list once I sat down yesterday and made myself attack it, it didn't really take too long. Isn't this always the way? Sadly though, the time I have spent on these revisions this week meant that the book revisions and writing took a back seat - AGAIN. I'm giving myself a deadline of the end of August to be through all chapters once. Then I can take a step back and try to decide what really needs doing in terms of the overall project.

a parody of his younger self

Well the weather is certainly conducive to working indoors today (not that I work out of doors any other day) but still...there's something comforting about sitting inside soaking in the artificial light with the rain and gloom outside. So a good day to get something substantial achieved on the thesis-to- book project. I managed to make my way through the third chapter yesterday and finish off the changes I had made. Today I attacked the fourth chapter. Of all the chapters in the thesis this is the one least plundered for papers over the last 18 months or so. As a result, it was the least well remembered. This was helpful in one way as it was almost like reading it for the first time. So I went a little crazy with cuts and edits, and was surprised at the density of the analysis in places - particularly, the section on Bruce Gyngell. I know when I first wrote this I thought it was great and really central to the thesis, but now I'm less sure. I think it will need some more consideration to see how I can make it more readable.

I enjoyed reliving the Graham Kennedy as I read through (particularly after watching Bert Newton last night on TV). Kennedy really was the King...he set the tone and style for so many television performers who have followed him. Bert was the straight man most of the time and it was Kennedy who blazed the way. So while Bert's still got the one liners, the innuendo and the timing, I think it was Kennedy who was really creative and spontaneous. A shame he's no longer around but I don't know if he could have ever surpassed the early work on In Melbourne Tonight. In his later years it all became a little too obvious...he sort of became a parody of his younger self.