'And Now For Something Completely Different'

I took a vacation from my regular writing routine this morning. Sort of. Instead of writing about process and writing dissertations, I…did some writing for my job! I work as the Senior Graduate Assistant for the Faculty Senate President at my university. We publish a monthly online newsletter. This takes up a lot of our time at the end of every month. I spent the majority of my week--when I was not busy writing about process, writing dissertation pages, and blogging, that is--proofreading and editing articles and columns that my boss writes and writing headlines for them. I also write my own column, the Administrator in the Spotlight. This involves setting up appointments with administrators (typically top level) to interview, drawing up questions, conducting interviews, and condensing the material I collect from these interviews into approximately 500 words. I usually exceed this word ‘limit’, in fact, though I keep it fairly close when possible. In some cases I’ll hit 650 words, but our publication template allows us enough flexibility that this isn’t a huge problem.

I hadn’t written an article for the newsletter in several months (we don’t publish over the summer). I’m also now getting quite used to the new writing process I’ve adopted in order to complete my dissertation. Switching over to a journalistic writing style was therefore pretty difficult for me. This is not to say I didn’t get the writing done on time. But I quickly found that I had to lapse back into habits I am trying to break: focusing on word count, writing as concisely as possible, worrying about how polished my copy is, and so on. I didn’t enjoy having to do that. I also worried that I wouldn’t be able to approach my column creatively, though that particular fear proved to be unwarranted. The column, which is about providing a window into the types of jobs and functions that make life at my university possible but which staff, faculty and students may take for granted, by its nature allows for some creative leeway. For this month’s column I interviewed the Director of Development of my university’s theatre (think box office here). I spiced the introduction up a bit by suggesting that if ‘all the world is a stage’, then the Director could be considered an Atlas of sorts. Minus the punishment and suffering for rebelling against the gods.

Writing my column took up my entire morning. Because of this, I opted not to write about process. My logic was simple enough: this is something I like to do as soon as I wake up. Since I couldn’t do that, and seeing how I had already written a great deal for the day, I felt that I could move straight into writing dissertation pages this afternoon. However, I made the mistake of changing how I approached my dissertation writing for the day as well. I thought it might be fun to do a side by side comparison of the ‘same’ passage in two of my texts and see what changed. It was not fun. Not even a little.

I don’t believe the writing session was a complete waste. In fact, I learned that the second translator adds and subtracts quite a bit of material and that these additions and subtractions say a lot about how the practice of translation circulates in the discourses of conquest and domination. But approaching my texts in this fashion is rather tedious. And I think that seeing how the practice of translation operates across texts is paradoxically much more difficult when comparing texts side by side instead of doing close readings of them individually. I found myself more concerned with how closely the passages I chose to explore resembled one another (or did not) rather than with what they can tell me about how culture is constructed ‘in translation’. Comparing passages side by side thus felt like a much more round about way to get to the point where I was asking questions about the practice of translation as I understand it.

I’m going to have to accept that there will be times when I am forced to change my routine for various reasons. If today is any indication, that doesn’t mean that I won’t be productive. But I also think that my process is going to be the most beneficial to me if I don’t tinker with it on purpose. I think perhaps one reason I decided to change how I approached dissertation writing today was because I was feeling exhausted from juggling all of the different tasks I had to accomplish this week. In addition to writing quite a bit today, I also found time to work out and drive a friend to the dentist (and stop for groceries on the way back). I think that I felt if I changed things up a little bit that I would break the monotony of my routine. But I think perhaps that it depends on how I think about my routine. I may be doing some of the same things day in day out: writing, reading, writing, reflecting. But I’m also discovering new things about my reading and writing processes on a daily basis precisely because I am following a routine that encourage me to reflect on those processes.

A Writer Writes

I spent my first writing session this morning--the session which I devote to writing about my process--reflecting on how much control I have over my writing. To put this more accurately, I asked myself how much control I like to have over my writing. I framed my writing around this question--once I got going--because I didn’t have a specific topic in mind when I began writing. This isn’t the first time I have not chosen a topic before hand. I have done that on a few occassions since I changed my approach to writing my dissertation. I also did this on a daily basis when I worked through The Artist’s Way with several friends a few years ago (during which I discovered that I like to draw). I had a lot of success with this approach, because I was able to get into the habit of turning my internal censor off and work negative thoughts out of my system. But I still find that not having a topic in mind can be a scary prospect. Such was the case at first when I began my writing session about process this morning. When I asked myself why I needed a topic, I hit upon the idea that I wanted to be in control of what I was writing instead of letting it control me.

I don’t know that everyone who writes feels the same about the writing process as I do or makes the same kinds of assumptions that I make. But by asking myself why I like to have control over my writing, I discovered that I make a great deal of assumptions about the writing process that are false. The biggest of these is that writing should come naturally and effortlessly. I know from experience that this idea about writing is incorrect. But somehow that hasn’t stopped me from unconsciously making this kind of assumption about writing even after spending the majority of my life in an academic environment in which I constantly write and write and rewrite and rewrite some more. In addition, despite training myself to write recursively in these sessions each day, I find myself--or at least I found myself doing so this morning--worrying that not having a clear topic in mind before hand when I sit down to write is a horrible strategy. I ask myself questions like, how can I possibly focus my thoughts if I don’t know what I’m going to write about in the first place? Or what if I am simply making things up that turn out to be not well thought out or down right wrong? What if I’m just spinning my wheels rather than making real progress towards finishing my dissertation?

Let me be clear. I did know that I was going to write about process when I sat down to write first thing this morning. But I didn’t know what aspect of my process I would focus on, if focus is the right word here. Was anything in particular troubling me? Were things going extraordinarily well? How was I feeling about my dissertation in general? Had any particular negative or positive thoughts about dissertating invaded my consciousness when I woke up?

As I wrote above, I think the anxiety I felt over not having a clear topic in mind beforehand this morning is largely about an unconscious need to be in control of my writing. But, of course, I am always in control of my writing in a sense. The difference is that instead of forcing myself to write about a predetermined topic that may or may not be worth pursuing, I force myself to write without any preconceived assumptions in mind, or, given that I have been making assumptions, as few as possible. This approach allows me to explore multiple possibilities instead of just one. And doing so usually takes me in unexpected and fruitful directions. That is precisely what happened in both my writing sessions today. For my writing session on process, I was able to not only see that the assumptions I had been making about being in control of my writing were false, but that a topic did emerge out of my thoughts. As for my dissertation writing session, I made some discoveries about the atmosphere of distrust of the foreign that the practice of translation creates in my primary texts (well, at least in one of them, since I only had one of them in front of me while I was working).

I also think that having made a pretty specific assumption about what kind of control I have over my writing misses the point of the writing strategy I have adopted. That strategy, quite simply, is that a writer writes. Having preconceived ideas about writing generally hinder rather than aid the writing process. And they stifle the imagination. By this, I don’t just mean that preconceptions about writing stifle my capacity to creatively work through issues that arise in my primary texts, though that is certainly a part of it. But, perhaps more importantly, I also mean that preconceptions block how I imagine the writing process itself. More often that not, those types of blocks lead to less writing, which is the opposite of what I am aiming for each day. Nor do I think--or at least I have to remind myself of this--that this kind of writing strategy prioritizes quantity over quality. Quality isn’t simply a matter of polished writing over poor writing. In my view, polished writing that doesn’t engage the topic at hand beyond the surface is not necessarily quality writing. And I think that the best way to get at the contents beneath the surface of my texts is to throw all my preconceptions about writing out the window and allow myself to imagine the possibilities that the text presents to me.

Non Praescriptio

This evening’s blog entry will be a fairly short one. I also can’t come up with a meaningful title. The short version is that I’m pretty exhausted and don’t have much left in the tank. I also don’t have a strong sense of what aspects of my process I would like to work through at the moment. However, I did have a bit of difficulty writing dissertation pages today, so I’m going to focus on that.

The difficulty I experienced in my dissertation writing session this morning is fairly straight forward. I wanted to do a close reading of a passage in one of my primary sources that refers to Arthur’s use of foreign mercenaries to fill out his invasion force. Part of what I am interested in looking at in passages like this is how the foreign is constructed ‘in translation’. I am also interested in how the practice of translation in my texts plays into our understanding of ‘traditional’ Arthurian elements. One of the elements that I am working on is the role of the knight in my primary texts. I feel as though we take a lot of what the knight represents in any given text for granted. In much the same way that we are prone to generalize about race, gender, class and what have you (always, of course, to the detriment of our understanding of these ‘categories’), I think we generalize about the knight in Arthurian literature as men of ‘honour’, ‘virtue’, ‘courtesy’ and so on rather than focus on what knights actually do in the stories they inhabit. Some of the more sophisticated Arthurian tales do call these knightly characteristics into question, but I’m not convinced that we see a radically departure from these ‘core values’. And I think the practice of translation often underscores some of these problems.

To return to the difficulty I had in writing this morning, I do not always easily manage to articulate how components in my texts, such as the role the knight plays and the practice of translation, work together in the argument I am trying to put together. When I started writing this morning, I fixated on this problem. I had been thinking about the practice of translation in a different way over the last few writing sessions, so I couldn’t make sense of where that intersected with what I’ve written above about how I am coming to see the role of the knight in the passage I wanted to write about this morning. As a result, I felt like today’s writing session was going to be a slog and not generate any meaningful ideas. Nonetheless, since I am trying to form writing habits that are based on reaching obtainable goals rather than on what comes out of a particular writing session, I went ahead with writing anyway. And I decided I might best be able to stop worrying about my thoughts not coming together like I wanted them to by going back over two recent writing sessions for thoughts about how the elements I have been looking at fit together, if they fit together at all. I also considered the possibility that I was barking up on the wrong tree.

Going back over earlier writing proved to be a good move. I don’t want to go into much detail here, but I discovered there is a connection between the elements I have been looking at, though not the kind of connection I had been trying to force into today’s writing session. The short of it is that I think the practice of translation and the construction of the knight are deployed in the same discursive system, a system that, in my view, validates conquest. Once I was able to get past this difficulty, I had a pretty enjoyable writing session in which I was able to pose questions to myself and begin contemplating what these types of questions tell me about how I might look at the passage I chose to write about.

As is usual in these blog entries, there is no ‘mind blowing’ revelation here. In fact, I’m not entirely certain that the way I chose to solve the problem I was having today is the best method to employ. And I’m okay with all of that. What I do think is important, however, is that the habits I am trying to form are having a positive effect on my writing process. I did not panic or become irritated, upset, or anxious about my writing today, which is how I think I have typically responded in the past when writing has seemed difficult or overwhelming to me. I simply worked through the problem in a manner that felt intuitive. I also think it is a good idea to begin looking for patterns in my writing not just on a particular day but also over successive days. That, too, is hardly a significant insight in one sense. But in another sense I am learning that this entire process forms a kind of pattern that tells me how seemingly disparate pieces of information are going to fit together. And I take comfort in knowing this when I have often felt in the past that my ideas for chapters and what I envision my dissertation looking like in the end are a jumbled mess of ideas rather than a coherent and organic composition of those thoughts.

Well, I thought this was going to be a short entry, but it turned out not to be. I’m definitely okay with that, too.

Cogitatio Omnis Est

In my last entry, I explored some of the bad habits I’ve formed regarding how I think about writing and some of the things I might do to change that way of thinking. For today’s entry I want to build on the idea of habit formation and discuss how I have been thinking about the end of this process up to now. I think a good way to get at my thought processes will be to examine how I think about graduating.

I don’t know how most graduate students feel about graduating and finishing beyond the obvious. The road to graduation is a fairly long and arduous one, and finishing brings a sense of completion (though I’ve also read this sense of accomplishment can be accompanied by one of anxiety about what comes next, since graduating is more of a transitional phase than an ending). I know in my case that I would like to be done already. I chose to get a master’s degree along the way. Most of the folks I came into graduate school with either already had their MA or came in as PhD students (thus bypassing MA requirements). As such, these people have finished their degrees and have moved on, while I’m still here. In addition, while I moved through my course requirements in a timely fashion, the dissertation process has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. That is one reason I started this blog, so that I could think through my process and voice my feelings about it while not denigrating it or myself.

I gave what I think about graduating some serious thought over the weekend. Despite feeling that I want to graduate, I’ve realized that I have not been imagining myself graduating. I mean a few things by this. In the first place, I mean the simple idea that I have not been picturing myself standing next to my dissertation director as she hoods me; walking onto the stage and receiving a symbolic representation of my diploma; seeing colleagues about me and friends and family smiling at me in the audience; and all of the happy feelings that should accompany such a momentous day. I also mean the more abstract ideas about graduating: starting a new phase in my life, which should be both frightening and exhilarating; becoming a fully recognized member of the professional academic community; working on new projects that have occurred to me as I have gone through coursework and the dissertation process; and so on. When I have thought about the end of the dissertation process, in fact, I have not had very clear images of what that will mean for me. I have felt as though there is some kind of post‑graduation fog that will come rolling in over me, and that I will be unable to find my way out.

I’m not going to write that these feelings of uncertainty have left now that I have begun to think about them. But I do think it is important for me to recognize what I have been doing to myself all this time without realizing it. It may seem obvious to point this out, but imagining the end of this process in such negative terms has been a hindrance: at best I’ve been confusing myself, and at worst I have been setting myself up for failure. Luckily, I think the first step I need to take is a simple one. I've already written it down in the previous paragraph, in fact: to begin imagining myself on graduation day surrounded by people who are happy for me and feeling happy for myself. This will undoubtedly take some effort on my part. I will have to devote a little bit of time each day to imagining myself as a doctor, as an expert in my particular field of study and as an educator who has something meaningful to contribute to academia. But it takes every bit as much effort, at least until it becomes a habit, to not imagine myself graduating. In the end, I think imagination is everything, by which I mean I can continue to imagine myself being swept away in the fog of the unknown, or I can choose to imagine myself standing on my own two feet with my diploma in hand.

Old Habits Die Hard

Many of us are creatures of habit. I certainly think this is true of me. For instance, if my daily routine is disturbed for some reason, even if it’s just a tiny thing, there’s a good chance I’m going to be annoyed or cranky. This doesn’t mean I am incapable of changing. But it does mean that changing takes a good deal of effort on my part. And if I’m to break one of my poor habits, it’s likely going to be through forming a new, more productive one. Knowing what I know about myself as far as habit formation goes, I want to blog about how I’ve changed my writing routine and how this has been affecting me over the last few days.

When I first changed my writing routine, I decided that I would start by writing three times a day. I can always add another writing session later if I think I need to, but I don't want to subtract any. The first session would be devoted to free writing about process. The second covers dissertation writing. Finally, I write a blog entry, like I’m doing right now. I don’t do these writing sessions back to back. It’s not an optimal way for me to write, for one thing. For another, I have other obligations each day: working on projects for my Assistantship; walking my dog Jersey; running errands as they come up; exercising; preparing meals (and I mean really preparing them and not throwing something in the microwave); and so on. I also block out time each day to read material related to my dissertation (there is always more to read and reread, despite that I have already read more than I can possibly write about in a dissertation). Lately I have been devoting this time to going back through one of my primary sources to work through questions I am forming about how colonial subjects are constructed ‘in translation’.

This new routine in which I break up my writing into discrete sessions has been very effective so far. However, I’ve been noticing an unexpected side effect over the last few days. I’m usually done with the first writing session by 8 AM. After I walk the dog and have breakfast, I will head to a nearby coffee shop. I’m usually there by no later than 9:30 and will leave anywhere between 11 AM and noon, depending on how long it takes me to reach my page count or to realize I've written all I'm going to write for the time being. This means that I’ve finished the bulk of my writing before lunch time each day. What I hadn’t counted on was how much ‘free’ time this leaves me over the course of the rest of the day. Even though I spend time reading and writing when I get home and taking care of the other things I need to think about, I feel as though I have too much time on my hands. And this perception of my time is leaving me feeling rather anxious. So much so, in fact, that I’m pretty sure it’s affecting my sleeping pattern. I have slept poorly all this week. I have laid down to sleep between 10 and 11 PM each night, but I have not fallen asleep until around one in the morning. And despite that, I am generally waking up by 5 or 6 AM and spending some fitful time trying to relax so that I can have a good first writing session.

The reason I bring these feelings of anxiety up is not because I do not think my new routine is not working. As I’ve already written, I think it has been very effective. Also, even though I feel like I have lot of free time on my hands, I'm generally busy until at least 5 PM (and often later), which would make for an eight hour work day if I was working a regular 40-hour a week desk job. Rather, I think the issue I am having is that, despite having tried to shift the way I write each day onto a paradigm that is goal oriented (i.e., I write so many pages in each session, regardless of how long it takes), I have been unable to think of my accomplishments in non‑temporal terms. What I mean by this is that I think I have had the mindset that I should be spending so many hours each day on writing. And I don’t think this is a very easy habit to break. I’ll also add that writing isn’t always going to come as easy as it has been coming to me lately. There are going to be days when it definitely takes me longer to accomplish my writing tasks than it is taking at the moment. But in the short term, I feel guilty about the surplus of time I have had each day to relax. I feel like, if I have accomplished so much in such a short time, why can’t I accomplish double that amount each day? But I know that this would not be good for me in the long run. I have noticed, for instance, that although I have exceeded my goals each day since I started my new writing routine, I reach a point in each session where I lose a lot of steam. I might write for a little while after I hit that critical point, but this is usually a signal to me that I need a break.

I don’t think getting rid of the guilty feelings I’ve been having is going to be easy for me. I’m not even sure working through the reasons why I think that I’m feeling this way will make much difference. Certainly not in the short term. But I think it’s important for me to stick to this routine rather than change it up so quickly or, worse still, go back to my old routine. And I’m sure when I start shaping some of my free writing sessions into more polished dissertation pages that I will be spending more time in front of the computer than I am at the moment. And it will be equally important then to not panic or think about how much more time it takes me to accomplish those tasks each day.

Legens Dense

There are multiple directions I could take today’s blog entry in. Quite frankly, I’m not sure what I want to write about. This blog is primarily meant to be about my dissertation process, but there are lots of different processes that feed into putting a dissertation together: thinking about what I accomplished on a specific day, thinking about what my long term goals are (these are not necessarily straight forward and are just as susceptible to change as daily goals, perhaps even more so), thinking about the specific dissertation ideas I wrote about that day and how I can build on them (or abandon them, depending on what came out of the writing session), and so on. I’m hesitant to write about my goals at the moment, which was the subject of this morning’s writing session on process. I would like to share some of the insights I’ve had on why I’m going through this journey, but I’m not feeling up to it at the moment. I was exhausted (in a good way) after I wrote about this morning and don’t want to tire myself out right now. I’d rather finish the day strongly. So I think I will write about the close reading I did in my second writing session.

The close reading of a passage is a mainstay in today’s research in literature, though it is not the only approach, nor necessarily always the best one. How to 'read' a text depends on the interests and purposes the reader/writer of the text has in mind when they get to the writing stage. The close reading would not be well suited, for instance, to a paper on how Chaucer is being taught in the classroom today, though a close reading of what educators have said about teaching Chaucer could be done. The close reading is a good choice for the book length chronicle written in verse that I am currently studying. It also lends itself to the kind of uncensored, raw kind of writing I am doing at the moment. I wrote several pages about four or five lines of verse, which is a very close reading indeed.

I chose to do a close reading of a passage that has been chewed over by scholars in my field and by folks interested in Arthurian literature in the context of Translation Studies in particular. Because I already knew it had received lots of attention (in fact I’ve written down ideas about it before, but I think it’s a good idea to rethink a passage after a while and see if anything new or different presents itself to me), I tried to throw out all of the assumptions I had ever made about it. Instead of writing down answers to what I thought the passage meant, I asked every question that quickly came to mind. And I tried to curb my impulse to quickly develop answers to those questions. Doing so it not always easy, and I did speculate at times about how I might answer the questions I was putting to myself. But I think the real pay from this approach was seeing a pattern emerge from the types of questions I was asking. Without realizing it, I had asked a lot of questions about what the passage was telling me about how ethnicity is constructed ‘in translation.’ I’ve written about this topic elsewhere, but I hadn’t had a chance to give it much thought as far as the primary source I am now working with goes.

(Re)Discoveries like this excite me. Asking questions instead of trying to supply answers didn’t just tell me something about what I think the passage is about. It also told me something about my research interests that I have been taking for granted. This kind of (re)discovery can be a great motivator for writing a dissertation, especially one that focuses on medieval literature. I emphasize medieval literature here because, even though we are ultimately separated from the read texts we read in space and time, no matter how recently they were written, the sense of distance we feel when read a text can be a bit overwhelming where medieval literature is concerned. I have remarked on more than one occasion to friends who are either writing or have successfully defended their dissertations that, because my primary texts were all written between 800 and 900 years ago, I do not feel any particular attachment to them. I don’t feel personally invested in them. Or it is hard for me to find that personal investment. And I’ve been really jealous of friends who have found that personal sense of attachment. I have event felt that their dissertation topics are more worthwhile than mine because they are personally invested in what they are writing about while I have not been, or so I had been telling myself.

I’m not going to commit the fatal new critical error here and state that all literature transcends space and time so that we don’t need to think about the specific historical and social circumstances that may or may not have influenced the writing of the texts I am working with. But, after seeing a pattern emerge in the questions I was posing today, seemingly of its own accord, I now feel as though I can find ways to relate to medieval texts by asking the kinds of questions that many of us ask ourselves today. What does ethnicity have to do with all of this? What about race? What about gender? What about colonial discourse? And I think asking those sorts of questions today helped me to relate to the text I’m examining in a way that I can make personal.

Scriberens dissertationem in minuto quinto decimo per diem

I’m going to get this out of the way right now. If you’re struggling with your dissertation‑and even if you’re not‑I recommend getting a hold of a copy of Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as Bolker recommends that you write for AT LEAST fifteen minutes every day, especially on days when you’re having trouble. I’ve only just started it, and I’m already feeling tons better about my writing process, though I was literally shaking when I began reading it, because I felt as though I had been going about my dissertation all wrong. But that sensation passed as I confronted and worked through that feeling and decided to rethink my approach from here on out rather than feel badly about my approach up to that point.

My job isn’t to plug books I’m reading, so I’m not going to give an in‑depth recap of the lessons that Bolker provides her readers. But I do want to spend some time discussing how my process has changed‑for the better, I think‑over the last several days. I’ve had quite a few issues with my writing. Most if not all of these issues are pretty typical ones. They’re the same fears that everyone I know who has gone through this process has had: fear that I am going to write a boring or unreadable dissertation; fear that I am not going to contribute to the body of knowledge about my topic (and it turns out the body of knowledge already out there is small, though it is not completely non‑existent); fear that I’m not going to finish in time (I have until December 2012, but I want to finish by June); fear that I don’t know what I’m writing about; and on and on. In short, I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform. I know that I’ve been doing this‑I’ve had plenty of conversations with friends in my department and with my dissertation advisor about it‑, but I hadn’t directly confronted my fears myself, and I think what I needed to do was put them into writing, put them into my own words rather than simply listen to what everyone else was telling me, though that was an important step. I hadn’t asked myself why I had all these irrational fears and whether or not there was something about my process that was causing me to feel this way. And I believe my process was holding me back to an extent.

I think we all eventually figure out some tricks to forming dissertation writing habits. Some of these are picking a certain time of day to write (mornings work best for me); picking a good space or spaces in which to write (e.g., a coffee shop); deciding on realistic writing goals for each day, and so on. I had tried all of these things, but I was still writing very slowly, if I was able to write at all. Many days I would stare at the words on the screen with disgust, shame, guilt that I hadn’t written more, and so on. Even if I stopped to ‘organize’ my thoughts and write without censoring myself, the problem would quickly return once I tried to go back to the way I had been writing. Part of the problem was that, even if I took a break from my normal routine, I had established a pattern of thinking about my writing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Another stumbling block was that I had set myself a specific amount of words to write each day. This isn’t a horrible way to set up a writing goal, per se, but I had noticed that it took me quite a few more words per page than what is considered average. Each page felt like a struggle because I was focused on how many more words I had to write than what is average.

I’ve done a few things to correct these problems already. For instance, I’ve shifted from word count to page count as my writing goal each day. I’ve also started writing about my process each day in addition to my dissertation writing goal. This obviously means I need to write MORE each day than I had been, but I’ve also begun forming a new habit of not censoring myself at all whenever I sit down to write dissertation pages. This is a very new approach for me in terms of academic writing (I’ve done it with creative writing), as I’ve long been what a former professor of mine has called an eeker. I would eek out a page a day, sometimes less, and rarely more, but these pages would already be in pretty good shape and not require much revision. I’ve written this way for years, mostly with success. But it hasn’t been working with my dissertation, so I’ve decided I’m going to be what that same professor called a gusher. This type of writer gushes onto the page and doesn’t worry about style, format, spelling or anything that gets in the way of productive thought. I’ve always felt this kind of writing was counter intuitive or inefficient. And perhaps it is counter intuitive. But I’m not sure anymore that it is inefficient. For one thing, it allows me to directly engage my thoughts rather than worry about writing in a linear fashion, which is also one of the eeker’s habits (or at least it’s one of mine). And in many ways it is a much more creative approach to writing, because it allows me to slap down ideas and make connections that I might not have otherwise noticed. Writing that incorporates a creative element very much appeals to me, so much so that, even though I’ve only been writing this way for a short time, I’m not sure how I ever got by writing differently. And the best part is that this kind of writing is stress free. I’m breaking my writing up into manageable blocks: a few pages on process when I wake up; a short break; then a few pages on the dissertation. I’m adding writing a blog entry in the early evening to this routine. I’ll reward myself with the evening off once I finish said entry.

Another really important lesson I’ve learned in a very short time is to begin owning my dissertation. I’ve always known this dissertation is mine, but I haven’t treated it as though it is mine. Without realizing I had been doing so, I had been treating it as something to be turned in to my committee, chapter by chapter (and I haven’t yet turned a single full chapter in, though I am becoming much more confident that I can do so soon) and then a final draft to be judged, assessed, and so on. I think this view of my dissertation, as something to be turned in rather than as mine, is why I have been thinking that my dissertation is boring, not up to par (and, incidentally, the feedback I have received from my advisor so far has been positive), and all of those negative thoughts. For instance, it could turn out that MY dissertation is very straight forward. But why does that have to be a problem? Why does it have to be a weakness? Why can’t it be a strength? I think asking even simple questions like this says a great deal about what my mindset has been and what I need to do to change that. I don’t necessarily think overcoming that negative mindset will be easy, but I think taking ownership of whatever my dissertation turns out to be is a critical step, perhaps the most critical step, that I need to take. As cheesy at it may sound in writing, telling myself that this dissertation is my dissertation and that nobody can take it away from me is something I want to do and remind myself of on those days when, unlike today, I am not able to write so effortlessly. Owning it will also allow me to step back and look at the stumbling block(s) I encounter on a particular day, whether it is guilt or shame; worrying about things in my personal life and letting that get in the way of writing; wrestling with a particular issue or question (which perhaps can be approached a different way or put aside for a while).

I don’t think I’ve written anything particularly earth shattering in this entry. That was not my goal. Rather, my objective was to put down in words what I’ve been going through, to acknowledge it on the page, and to put it in the public sphere. In many ways, deciding to own my dissertation is about accountability. But even more importantly, I think owning my dissertation is about not having to apologize to myself or anyone else about what my dissertation is or turns out to be.