Comments on: The Eleventh Hour

By: Tenured Radical

Tenured Radical — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:57:37 +0000

I wish I could tell you something different, but for many of us, writing is just like this. Oy.

By: Nabil

Nabil — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:57:20 +0000

I think you captured that really well. Whatever it is, it’s not just you. The way you feel about writing papers, I feel about life.

I only realized just how important social motivators were for me when they all disappeared. I never really thought about pleasing my professors while I was at college, but it was an anchor for me. I may not know what the fuck I’m doing on this earth, so I might not know “success” if it slapped me in the face, but if I could impress my professors, well, at least that was something. When I left I felt like impressing a handful of professors was my only quasi-tangible achievement.

But now what?

By: Dance

Dance — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:35:00 +0000

To file for next year—

This mad dash approach is not so much your friend when writing a dissertation. Or a book. Look for a book called “writing the dissertation in 15 minutes a day” immediately you get to the phd program. Wish I had.

By: renaissance girl

renaissance girl — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:28:05 +0000

hang in there, neo.

By: neophyte

neophyte — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:15:59 +0000

Maria and Hannah — we’re smart, competent ladies. We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again. (This time, with feeling…)

RG: Yes. I think what scares me is part of an old tendency of mine — the tendency to think too big, to get too worked up about the meta. These applications have forced me to think in huge terms, about Career and whatnot, when I should be focusing hard on what’s right in front of me. I need to get out of that mode, think of my work at Brit Uni not as some step in some huge process, but as exactly what it is: my present, my current moment.

Belle: That’s how I’d like to work. I don’t know what I’m arguing, ever, until I start writing, and I don’t start writing because I don’t know what I’m arguing… you see where this is headed. I need to kill the second half of that cycle and accept the free-form, the first, most “creative” part of the process. Thanks for reminding me.

By: Belle

Belle — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:50:32 +0000

Yikes? My own process is the slow, sometimes painful thinking about things long before they hit paper/screen. And I write much more creatively on paper than screen, so the transcription onto screen/disk is where ideas and words get wrestled into academically acceptable styles and prose.

Good luck. Is recognition of a problem really the first step towards solution? And is it a problem?

By: Hannah

Hannah — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:49:10 +0000

I promised myself I was going to break my last minute mad-dash to the finish-line essay style this year. I fairly much created my diss last year at the last minute, sleepless and too wracked to think or talk about anything other than adulterous wives.

I’d declared this the year of change. But look, where am I now. One completed (but bad) essay, and one halfway done. Due? Monday.

Actually, perhaps I have learned something. I did all the research weeks ago. And then sat on it. Rather than using it. I’d like to claim it was percolation in my brain, but actually it was gallivanting, the flu, Christmas and general avoidance.

We’ll be fine! Your essays will come to exist. Maybe we’ll learn something.

By: renaissance girl

renaissance girl — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:55:36 +0000

My writing process: long, drawn-out, beginning far in advance of deadlines to accommodate my slow, slow composition. And when I think of those deadlines, whether I’m 4 months out at the beginning of a project or in the last hours with a paragraph still to labor out of me, you know how I feel? Scared shitless.

It may not be the method, but the enterprise.

By: venusfueri (aka Maria)

venusfueri (aka Maria) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 03:51:22 +0000

I feel you. I need to pull a 40-minute to 1-hour long presentation out of thin air using 19th century Japanese archives for my grad seminar on Thursday. Not liking it at all – I also work in bursts as well, mainly at Starbucks this week, as all the libraries are closed due to New Year’s holiday.

Good luck!