infobong.com

I really need get the idea that writing is easy out of my head. I know why I started thinking that way. When I started grad school, I was so intimidated and anxious I needed to reassure myself that I was capable of completing my assignments. Besides, I had been making a living as a professional writer - if I could pay the bills writing, I could get through a term paper, right?

Working as a professional writer also fostered this idea in another way. I would write several articles in a week, and I'd routinely crank out 1500 words in less than an hour with a reasonable degree of quality. When I started school, I could still write this fast, given I had already done the research and had my ideas mapped out. Over the course of three years of grad school, I don't seem to be able to hyper-focus and produce like I once could. I peck away at the word processor, waiting to get hot, but now it seems l plod through papers, struggling over each sentence. Part of the reason I'm always writing cold, I'm sure, is the return of critical voices inside my head that stifle production, and part of it is that academic writing requires a degree of analysis and precision not required by descriptive journalistic writing.

I've grown to really dread writing. I can sit down and lose myself writing a blog entry. I've come to see blogging as "junk writing" - a waste of time - so I've curtailed my blogging substantially. But writing my papers seems like such a chore: the fun part of research is over, and now I just have to organize and write up my results. I wonder how I can make school writing fun again.