I have been struggling to revise an overlong conference paper I gave, or gave part of, a few years ago in
Seattle, trying to see if I can turn it into an article; or, failing an article, a draft I can link on academia.edu in the "conference paper I don't plan to publish" category. So far, I'm failing dismally. The subject is in what ways the character "
Echo" in
Joss Whedon's series "
Dollhouse" is a Sophoclean hero, and how that matters. But this subject leads me apparently unavoidably into philosophical questions that I really don't want to engage, at least not in what was supposed to be a light-hearted pop culture paper (What is reality? Do souls exist? Is chocolate a necessary food group?)
At the very least, I don't think there's any way I can revise the paper, which should probably have been titled in its original form "every single thing I can think of that interests me about
Dollhouse, in no particular order", to make it answer the original question. I can start a new paper on that question, but I don't think I can revise this one to fit.
On the other hand, I have always hated revising more than anything. I would far rather write a new thing than revise an old thing so that it actually works. So perhaps I shouldn't throw in the towel yet.
I have, I think, thought of the solution: more research! Or to quote
Matt Groening's advice to grad students on how to avoid the agony of writing: when all else fails, "Read another book". I'm sure someone out there has already answered all the interesting philosophical questions in Dollhouse, and I can just cite them, and get back to
Sophocles.
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