Game World Phenomenology

 Things are coming together. I am going to have to stop reading more new books, but I think it's a good time to stop with that kind of input anyway. I now have notes for almost every little part of my text and lots of references to work with. Today I spent much of the day with Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck, a book I have been aware of for a long time. It's strange compared to my own writing. She sees everything from a perspective guided by literature and narrative. So in many ways she's "wrong" to me, and then again she's not. I have to reconcile that perspective with my own and with all the others. Many ways into the material supposedly make for better research, now I will find out if that is true. This Friday I am meeting with my thesis advisor to discuss the shape of my work so far. That should be exciting. 65 more days of uninterrupted writing.

 Today was a great day for writing, I got so much done and it's still not over. Right now I'm figuring out how to get the part on phenomenology in shape so I can ask my supervisor to read it. I'll probably save the part on atmospheres for later, but the rest should be done shortly. Then it's time to get into sound and music and immersion. And I really need to get started on the part on narration. There's so much to do, but I have the map and I know roughly where I want to go. It's fun. I think I'm still on schedule with my writing, but there's still a lot to do. I hope to have many more days like this one. Being old and having worked as an art history teacher for many years, I have some insight into the work process. When I was accepted as a graduate student, I shared a computer with other students in my department. Books had to be checked out through the university library, and most of the time they had to get them for me from other libraries. Journal a...

 Today I had some spare time from other obligations so I could do some thinking and reading. Even with just an hour to spare I read and sorted som essays on Atmospheres edited by Tonino Griffero. There i found a few good notations on the historical development of atmospheres as a subject within phenomenology as well as notes on when the term gets useful in writing. I also found a few essays in the collection that I really don't need to read; after a few pages it was clear to me that I had no use for them. That too is work. I also read the introduction and a few short chapters in Monroe C. Beardsley's Aesthetics  and while I will read more there I think it's way to much philosophy to be useful for anything but background knowledge. There's really not a lot of time in this process for deep background reading. I also spent ca 15 minutes playing Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar, 2001), remembering what a joy that game is. Driving around in a small low-res city and listening ...