Wrestling with the Literature Review

Of those 80,000 words, I have written about 25,000. I am awaiting feedback on three chapters and getting stuck into the literature review. 

It's hard. And painfully slow. Writing for this doctorate is like nothing I've ever done before. It feels as though I have to wrestle with every sentence; at times every word. They are slippery little suckers. 

And the literature review is particularly slow. I have begun with the literature review that I originally wrote for the proposal - although I have read more than 150 books and papers since then - so there are one or two things to add. But it is slow because it involves reference after reference, most of which I am having to reread, since it is abundantly clear that when I wrote the proposal with the original literature review I understood far less about what I was reading. 

The most astonishing thing, though, are the non sequiturs and the lack of coherence and organisation over all. The literature review for my proposal reads now like a bunch of notes about things I happened to be reading - with no system of organisation whatsoever. I had imposed one, but five years later it makes no sense.

I suppose, looking on the bright side, this is evidence of how far I have come on this journey. conceptually.