I am almost there people. I have defended the proposal, and collected most of my data. I have one more round of interviews to do, but data analysis is making me very unmotivated to even open up the word doc file. I do everything else other than think about how to approach the data.

I am doing a narrative analysis of four interviews and I am just clueless as to where to begin. I really like grounded theory because it is clear cut on what to do, but it is much more difficult to make sense of large chunks of narrative treads/ stories, especially when people tell stories within stories or half stories with no conclusion etc. There are no "self contained" stories like in the fairytales... or what research methodology texts suggest.

I sort of see the finish line, but I know I have a loooong way to go. I see hours, days, and weeks fly by and no work done. I go shopping, I cook more, I watch TV.. everything but open the word file!

Some suggestions please on conquering the fear of approaching the data...

I found getting really familiar with the data was the key, without pressure to begin analysis immediately. Just a suggestion- I found that printing out the data, then getting a kind friend to also read it and having a session of writing whatever themes jump out at you on post its and sticking them on the wall, was really helpful! This gets over the terror of the data, amd when you see random words/phrases on the wall you can see where the thematic groups are. Also good in that you can see that you are both seeing the same sorts of things in there. good luck!