annwfyn | Writer's Block

Current Mood: frustrated

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university

Writer's Block

It was pointed out to me yesterday that it seems to take me an awfully long time to write essays. I can spend hours fiddling with an essay, writing and re-writing paragraphs, trying to organise bullet points, and in the end it will take me days just to write 5000 words.

On some level, I do think this is ridiculous. It does not take days to just hit the keyboard. It doesn't take days to churn out something...anything. In my days at the National Archives of Scotland, when I was bored and producing a

shadow_writers story per day, plus voluminous quantities of e mail, I think I was churning out more than that.

So why does it take me so long now?

Why do I need to potter endlessly?

And why is it when I am 500 words away from completing this goddamn essay, handing it in and being finished with it all, I am utterly at a loss as to how to do this?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like your Alice icon :)

I'm going to order the book with Arthur Rackham's drawings later today, actually :)

Thank you :)

Arthur Rackham is a god among men and is loved muchly by me.

I just hope that he has drawn a Cheshire Cat in the Alice version I'm getting.

I get cranky when there is no cat :)

It may be frustrating but all that writing and rewriting probably means you come out with a better mark.

No idea how to finish your essay though, how about going for a long walk and then coming back to it?

Hot Topic and other places have been carrying a lot of Alice and Cheshire stuff lately... I currently have three Cheshire Cat comforters in my car. Probably won't do as well as the Nightmare one, but won't suck.

Some of it isn't the official disney stuff. "Dark Alice." It's a bit like Alice by way of Emily the Strange.

Sorry, I'm heavily in Hot Topic shopping mode this week. Repeat to self: Sally does not need anymore goth tops, Sally does not need any more goth tops.

Well, I know that the more 'important' something is, the harder it is. Even if, in reality, it should be easy. I churn out emails constantly or aim conversations, what have you. and when I actually get a groove on, a story will sometimes just pour out of me. hardest part is just getting started. Other times giving blood would be easier.

i've had simple tasks sitting on to do lists for years now... things that seem impossible but could be accomplished if one just started them.

there's also maybe a perfectionism and insecurity factor...

Talk the essay. Read it out loud to someone else. Then discuss it with them. Get them to tell you which bits need expanding.

Is it the conclusion you're having trouble with, or just word count?

It's the conclusion. It's always conclusions for me. I get to the end of an essay and stare blankly at it, trying to work out how I conclude 5000 words in 500, and what the hell is there left to say anyway?

Then I beat my head off a wall. To be fair, lately it just has taken me ages to write essays. I'm fine with deadlines. I'm just slow. I also have a suspicion that when I give myself lots of time to get work done so I can finish well before the deadline, I just find new and exciting ways to fill in that time.

On another note - 17 books in a bibliography. That's enough, right? Am panicking a bit about that as well.

OK, walk away from it for the morning. Then reread it, aloud if neccessary. Then go over the question with a fine toothed comb working out exactly what they want you to answer. Then answer it in 500 words referring back to the major arguments you have made long the way.

You don't have to repeat what you've said, but you do have to draw it together and make the argument really, really coherent. What's the essay on?

'Compare and contrast the process of Anglicization in Northumbria and East Anglia'.

It is very interesting, to be fair. I like the subject, I've enjoyed writing it. Tis all good.

I just don't know what to say right now.

What is the key thing that makes them the same?

What is the key difference?

What have you added to the field that wasn't already laid out in your sources?

I'm not meant to be adding too much to the field. That's a dissertation. These two essays are studies in critical analysis - I've critiqued the work of those people who have gone before me and complained about them.

Except in burial data where my brain turned to mush and I wound up offering historical narrative, which is bad but at least ups the word count.

Well, then there's the question: What is the best source on this and why is it good?

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Writer's Block

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Arthur Rackham

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Dark Alice

writer's block and general procrastination

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