Finding my voice

I am plugging away at the writing of Chapter 4. It is slow, but I am making progress. I feel like my biggest challenge right now is finding my voice. In dissertation seminar we talked about writing in first person and how that is how more and more dissertations are being written. Of course this feels more natural and is much easier to write, but I feel like I am breaking rules. I just read a little of “Writing up Qualitative Research” and of course Wolcott says to use first person and set the stage with lots of thick description, but I am worried that my dissertation will be perceived as a piece of creative writing if I get too into that description. I know the style that I want to write my book in, but I'm not sure if my committee will think that style is appropriate for this piece. I think my approach is going to be to write it the way that feel natural and then go back later and change the language if needed. And then I will save all of my drafts so I can refer back to them when I am preparing the manuscript.