Like falling off a bicycle!
Haha! I get to blog, because I wrote for about an hour today! OK -- it's baby steps, and resulted only in about 250 useful words plus notes and and outline. And it's only a review. But, yeah. Amazingly, it was a work-avoidance thing. I really didn't feel like working oon the two job apps I really must send tomorrow. And I left my copy of my reading group book at home and so couldn't comment much today. So I found myself opening up word and writing, which was a bit odd, since I usually write in longhand to get started. I did a little of that last week, though, so maybe it stuck.
One of the things the reading group book talks about, though is the kind of paralysis that can set in, especially when one feels a failure. I realised today that this has happened before. When I was working on the diss, I spent almost three years barely touching it, too caught up in trying to be the perfect stepmother, the perfect wife who didn't complain about taking on a 40+ hour-a-week job to show she was an equal contributor, etc. When the deadline came up, and I had to crank the damend thing out or flush it, I just sat and cried, because I knew I couldn't do it. A good talk with my advisor and my doctor, who slapped me on Prozac so fast I couldn't see straight -- his wife was writing her diss at the same time, so I think he actually knew what I was talking about -- and I just sat down and got going. And I remembered how to do it. It was like that today. You just sit down and words come out. If they're crap, you do it again. But at the end, it's still words, innit?
I realize that this is probably silly for most of you, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better. So there :-P And the review should be drafted and ready for a friendly collegial ass-kicking on Friday.
In other news, I am supposed to be moving on Saturday -- which means I should book a moving van and find a storage unit tomorrow. I doubt it will all get done, but I'll be sleeping in a new place with a very nice colleague who's offered her spare room for as long as I need it, but we think it'll only be about 6 weeks to maybe summer's end. Happy about that, although it's going to be weird not being in a place that isn't "mine." Still, no worries.
And now, because I really should finish up the job stuff, which, if I mail it tomorrow will still be way ahead of my normal last-minute schedule, I leave you with a cat picture:
That is a not-as-good picture of my boy kitty, who will be coming with me.
5 comments:
Writing is painful for me too. If I focus just on writing 6 hours a day, I am lucky to get 1-2 pages done by the time I go home. I think blogging is actually helping me because it gets me to write something each day. Now if I could only switch it to something productive each day. Still its a start.
Lovely kitties!
Glad to hear you got going on the writing. All forward progress is good.
(And a response to Dr. History's comment - I don't think it's possible to write, REALLY write, for 6 hours a day. Work, sure, do stuff that contributes to writing, sure, but actual concentrated writing itself? Certainly you can do 6 hours at a pop, but the problem is that then you need a couple days off to recover. If you want to be able to work on your writing day after day, I think about three hours is a max.
And lest it sound like I'm just trying to justify my own slackerdom, every time I've tried to write - seriously write - for such stretches, I've failed, and Joan Bolker's book on dissertation writing confirms that trying to write for such long stretches every day is just not possible.
Again, I mean actual writing, not work in general.)
Back when I was doing the diss, I could write for 6 hours at a pop -- but like NK says, only for a couple of days at a time. I did get into a rhythm of a couple hours of writing, an hour or two off for checking notes, etc. (or faffing around) then back to another couple of hours, so I was really writing for about 6 hours a day. But then, I was under the gun in a big way!
WA -- my boy kitty was about 4 when that was taken -- he's about 9 now, I think.
I think writing is always hard, and the paralysis can come from wanting it to be perfect, knowing that it won't, so preferring to leave your ideas in your head where they can stay unsullied by being brought into the cold, harsh light of the real world.
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