Methodology

Methodology:

Criticise some thing fluid and unknown by comparing (or viewing through lenses) with theoretical elements. Therefore you compare theory to practice and see if there are any correlations then write about them. Therefore you can analyse a text with respect to X theory or Y model etc. Are there any points of comparison that teach us something new?


Research question:

What am I studying? What is my research question? – What is the relationship between fiction and reality? What implications may this have in relation to commonly held theory i.e. Creative Writing Theory / Identity / Authorship etc. This isn’t honed enough yet, however I want points of interest to come out of this work rather than to initially define what elements of it I will study.

How will I study this?

By producing writing that aims to dissolve the boundaries between fiction and reality. That takes elements of reality and blends them with elements of fiction to create something that sits somewhere in between (like Autofiction). Therefore I intend to write about my own real experience at this moment in time, hence this will centre around my own undertaking of this PhD (the focus of the fiction is on the real).

Therefore, I will produce:

1. A fictional dramatised account of my real life (with fictional elements incorporated into this) – blended version.

2. Real / Fictional responses to this account (My feelings about these events as if they had really happened (even if they hadn’t) – blended version.

3. Real commentary on this process to reveal the thoughts / underlying issues in relation to, say, authorship, creative writing, identity etc. A commentary on the writing process linked with ideas for critical analysis.

4. A critical analysis of the whole work including both fictional and real elements and looking at the relationships between these.

I have chosen the idea of producing a number of blogs to cover each of these threads. This has a number of benefits:

1. That it keeps the different elements of this study separate from one another so that I will be able to analyse the various threads.
2. That it enables people to interact with the unfolding narrative thereby becoming incorporated into the narrative. If I were to just produce the account in private then this ability would be lost. There would be no sense of “liveness” within this piece. Doubt in reality no longer matters and the piece can simply be resigned to a static state. This, in some ways, begins to resolve the dichotomy of speech Vs. writing because it is unbound, interactive writing – rather than bound writing. It can be easily stolen, reworked, edited, deleted, linked through and therefore displays different properties to that of a standard text.