I tend to write in spurts. I'll spend long periods of time doing absolutely nothing, but if I hit a rhythm I can have tremendous bursts of productivity. However, right now I'm working on an article that I really like, and I'm having a lot of trouble getting words on the page. The problem is that whenever I have one of those flashes of inspiration, I get really excited and can't focus on actually writing it. Instead, I just pace around the house talking myself through it, and I don't actually write anything down. By the time I've calmed down enough to sit back in front of the computer, the moment is gone, and I still can't write.
Does this (or something similar) happen to anyone else?
With the many papers I've written these past years, I often think in terms of "the moment," but I think it's basically a load of excuses for me not writing because I don't want to or am not as ready as I'd like to think. If I were to be honest with myself, I think I'd find that the moment is created by the writing, not vice versa.
ReplyDeleteI am not a professional writer. Not in the "journalist" sense. As a professional however, I am expected to "write" to communicate.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens in my case is that I lie in bed, or watch tv, or driving home in the car and I am "recording" the structure, logic and general wording of the report.
Then I get stuck...
Once I start putting down the words I get into a process of rewriting the rewrites to the point of collapse. It is the difficulty of getting the exact meaning intended...
I rarely talk to myself, so writing stuff down tends to be my way of talking to myself. (This probably comes through in some of my more rambling blog posts -- I generally do write primarily for myself and secondarily for readers.) My problem is more that I'll get the crux of my idea down, and then be slow and lazy about tracking down everything I need to support it. The paper I started back in February, in which I defended decisions that made reference to childbearing and didn't overturn same-sex marriage bans on sex discrimination grounds, has had this problem -- I haven't even opened the file it's in since March.
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