Writing has been very challenging for me lately. I've felt the absence of writing peers desperately lately and could really use some encouragement as I slog through my current phase of writing.
It's not that the writing's bad. It's just that there's so much going on right now that prioritizing is becoming a problem. You know, that feeling when you have so much to do that you don't know where to start? There are just so many things that are "urgent" and "important" or even just "urgent" and "not important".
I really do try to categorize things according to that cross section, where urgent+important gets done first, urgent+notimportant and important+noturgent get done in various combinations next, and noturgent+notimportant get done last. But it's interesting how both noturgent and notimportant can so quickly change into urgent and important when you don't get to them.
Lately,
- a job application
- taxes
have been urgent+important
with
- student marking
always taking up the urgent+notimportant category.
Yes, you heard what I said. My student's writing is not as important as mine. Mine will dictate what kind of job prospects I have. Theirs is loose, casually constructed and sometimes done under duress because they have to take the course. But I am paid to respond to their writing and they need that feedback in order to complete the course in time, so it gets categorized as urgent. But it takes away time from what's really important to me.
I've actually made some progress, but most of it has been of the rearranging/editing kind for the dissertation, so it isn't really growing. Harder to see the progress when you're shuffling things around, though the shuffling is a really good thing. I was trying to pack way too much stuff into my introduction, and by distributing key sections of it to other chapters, I managed to chop its monstrous size in half. Now I can build up the parts that need building without feeling like the introduction's becoming a two headed monster!
But before that oh-so-important task of dissertation editing, I need to finish writing the conference paper for next week. It's about half there, but it's really unstructured right now and needs some form to hold its bagginess together.
The Tomorrow's Professor blog has had some interesting posts on writing lately, particularly about how to unclutter your writing, but I find that much of their advice is to do things I already find myself doing. No help there. Apparently I know what to do, and I'm doing it fairly efficiently. I'm just not doing enough of it. Simple.
Sometimes I think the frustrations I have writing the dissertation are similar to the frustrations dieters or smokers have. I can read all kinds of books, get all kinds of advice, but when it really comes down to it, I just have to write. When you're trying to lose weight or quit smoking, you can spend all the time in the world talking about it or reading about it, but it really comes down to action. If you want to lose weight, burn more calories than you take in. If you want to quit smoking, stop putting cigarettes into your mouth and lighting them.
If you want to write a dissertation, quit whining and start putting words on paper.
There. That's my advice to myself. Do you think I'll take my own advice?
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