Blogging

Something has changed this last year. Somehow, I lost the will to blog. I was just talking about this with Mg, and telling him how easy it used to be. I would just sit in front of my computer and tell a funny story. A story I hoped my friends would find interesting and my blog was a way to prevent me from having to say the same story over and over again.

Now it kind of feels like a duty, like homework. Maybe I expect too much of myself. Maybe it's my thesis and the stress of writing. Maybe I just forgot how much fun it could be to just throw random rants into the intertubes without worrying who would read it.

I hope I start blogging again, and soon.

Scared of writing

So I've been in Umea for a month and a half. That's right, about six weeks of fika, korridors, ever-longer days and my bike. In that time I've taken a class, bought and Ipod, made a bunch of cakes, missed my boy-friend, gone shopping and taken up running. Notice something missing in the mix? Something that should be my main focus?

That's right folks, I am scared of writing. Well, I was. It took me a month to actually put fingers to keyboard to do something else besides up-dating my FB status. The thought of my advisers saying my writing was bad, my logic off, that I lacked structure (and all the other fun comments that come with a first draft of the manuscript) made me find a thousand other things to do.

How do you get over your fear of writing? It just so happens I wrote what other people said. I just started reading and taking out full quotes and grouping them into 'themes' to write later. Then, last Saturday I got a nice first paragraph and it was been fun since then. I think I might have found my trigger for writing, and a useful activity while I wait for inspiration.

And I have an meeting for that paper on Friday, so I expect to freak out about how badly I did... but it's always bad and then it gets better..... right?

Draft-head

No one said doing a PhD was easy... and no one said writing was easy either. I knew this, but I threw caution to the wind and followed my dream of doing a PhD (which is inexorably tied to writing a thesis). I did fieldwork, I analyzed data and summed-up my findings. This semester, it was time for me to write paper number one.

I won't lie and say that it's been easy, but it's not a process I hate. These last few weeks have all been about working a puzzle: finding the corner pieces, doing the edges, putting different sections together hoping that everything will fit in the end. The difference between papers and puzzles is that the puzzle you know if you're doing it wrong. The paper, you need your advisers to tell you! -or help you along the way.

Last week was all about putting the sections together. I had written out most of the manuscript in different pre-papers and as I pieced them together, I had to make my discussion of my findings. I finished on Friday evening with a headache and a sense of accomplishment. I can't wait to know what my advisers think, what changes I still have to make and how much longer until I have a 'final draft'.

The problem now is that I can't find the headspace to work. I guess I overdid it last week and have a terrible case of draft-head. I've been thinking about how to explain what that is all weekend long, and I finally came up with the definition: tt's like having a hangover, but without the wine.

Un pedacito de Tito (An itty-Tito-bitty) 1: about my writing style

La consición es algo elegante.
No se trata de suprimir palabras.
Hay que dejar las indispensables
para que la cosa además de tener sentido, suene bien.

Elegance can be found in being consice.
Its not about the mere act of disposing of words.
Its about leaving in the necesary ones so that
things not only make sense, but sound good.