Can't write? Talk!

I attended a workshop on 'beating writer's block' though I knew I did not yet reach to that stage of writing to face writer's block. I have been procrastinating about writing a journal article for a long time, more than two years now and then I put it aside completely thinking its not the priority at the moment. The priority is finishing the PhD. But you know its not write, publishing is the key to be in academia after my PhD. Even if not the journal article I have been procrastinating about writing 1000 words everyday. I have been telling myself since the beginning of my PhD that I will start tomorrow. May be I am the only one who is being so stupid during her PhD. And you are thinking that reading my blog is a mere waste of time. But wait, I might have to tell something to the people who think like me.

Well, as I have started my scary third year, I don't have any choice but write. I could not yet finish the whole chunks of data analysis. I am doing mixed methods research and I have to apply quite a number of methods which made it quite hard to finish the analysis in time. I have been struggling with it since June. But I already beat statistical analysis and now I am writing the results of observation and behaviour mapping. The only right thing I am doing about my research is writing the results simultaneously with the analysis. I finish analyzing one part and I try to write it right away before jumping to the analysis of another sets of data. So now I am working on the behavioural observation data before I start the analysis of purely qualitative data- focus groups and interview.

Now all the quantitative results of the behaviour mapping are ready and put into a matrix, the qualitative aspects of the observation missed in the behaviour mapping are also pointed out and written into an excel sheet and I plotted out the questions I am going to answer/address in this chapter. I chalked out the chapter sections and sub-sections and tried to put all the graphs to the respective sections. Now its just time to write down what I have got. It looks quite simple, right? But here I faced the writer's block for the first time during my PhD- at the stage of composing or drafting the chapter. For two days I played around the sections and sub-sections, inserted pictures where necessary, deleted again and inserted something new. The whole story is in my head but I just could not bring it down.

Stages of writing (adapted from workshop material by Mimo Caenepeel)

Generally a PhD student faces writer's block at the composition or drafting stage of writing PhD thesis. That was not exception for me too. I went through the workshop material. One of the most important advice that I was listening to so many times during my PhD is to set achievable goals during the writing process, like making an outline of the chapter or drafting a sub-section of a chapter. I was doing all these but yet I just could not write- I could see the whole picture, yet I just could not start writing.

I did not know what to do, as such I was looking for my colleague who was working on the same behavioural mapping method. Our research is quite different yet I though may be learning about how she worked on how chapters would help. At the evening when she came to office from some course I randomly told her that I was struggling to write. We went out to another room for talking a bit. She asked me what I am struggling with. I was trying to tell her about my chapter. That was quite a lot of thing that I am handling with that method so she asked me to use a paper to help her understand.

So I took a piece of paper and doodle while I was talking to her what I found and how I am going to organize my chapter. Just after I finished the doodle it seemed I am ready to write. But it was 8 pm and already and I thought of taking the night to reflect a bit more and then go back to it the first thing next morning. 

I went back home that night and I felt so restless until I went back to writing in the office the next morning. I am the most productive at early hours, and whenever I used to procrastinate about something, the next morning I always felt like working even before I brush my teeth. It takes half an hour to walk to my office from home but on that morning the office seemed very far. You might think why I did not start working in the morning at home on my pajama. I always admire my office desk as the best place to be productive as the moment I sit there I am disconnected with the whole world.

And then I reached office, grabbed the coffee and it just came to finger tip...
I spent the next three days working on that chapter. Its not finished yet but I am taking break today, its Sunday, come on!

I am working on manageable chunks so I felt accomplished after each day's session. I worked on only one sub-section each day, I hope to finish it by next two days...Then I will spend two days on adding, expanding or changing some content before I send to my supervisors. I am putting restructuring aside until the end of my data analysis.

The central idea of this long story is 'talk'...Talk whenever you get scope of talking..to your peers, to our partner, even to your dog..Whenever you take the attempt to talk you are in a way telling the estory, and writing is a way of communicating that story to an audience. If you can talk, you can write! I am not any expert but I think I am right at least in this matter :-)

Happy writing!!