Finding my writing mojo; writing through writer's block

Ive tried to enter into this months task: one journal article per month.
Instead I wrote a conference paper. Ok. Then went to my own capping. Ok. And thenwas meant to start writing.
I have looked at the two abstracts i had scoped. they are OK.
And IVe not progressed them.

So whats going on?
Tired of writing? A possibility.
The last conference paper was exceptional fun: bilingual in txtspk and plain speak. And now the pedantic holds so much less interest. A possibility.
The paper to write for an international audience rather than the NZ journbal- written once, writing twice has lost its appeal. Its a formal starchy space.

So what have i done. Ive turned up for work to write. Ive allowed distractions.
Ive turned up to work again, and stared at it, toyed with it like a plate of broadbeans gone cold.
Ive revisited some chapters on writing.
Ive read some articles i could think to emulate.
Ive talked with cj. This was a good option.
I have spent today reading good writing; or at least the type of writing i would rather read.
I still have a niggle that this is procrastinating, however it feels a whole lot better than self flagellation.
I have a suspicion writing from a space of self flagellation is pretty ineffective.
Might as well try the more fun approach.
Today ive completed 6 pomodoros of reading. I finished a Gherardi article

Gherardi, Silvia. (2010). Telemedicine: A practice-based approach to technology. Human Relations, 63(4), 501-524. doi:10.1177/0018726709339096
on telemedicine- it structured an argument around things not totally intuitive and then analysed the data to the structure.

Ive also read some more accessible type of reading:
Cowen, Tyler. (2013). Average Is over: Powering America beyond the age of the great stagnation. New York, NY: Dutton Adult.
some good ideas about artificial intelligence through to Turing test, that could lend itself to fears of technology and working alongside technology, strengths identified in the hybrid relationship similar to Latour and Haraway

And am now reading Gladwell- though I started with a web page on what makes Gladwell such a good writer at http://qz.com/132669/heres-why-everything-malcolm-gladwell-writes-is-so-compelling/
And the one idea thing is strong in this, take one idea and exemplify it through the storytelling. This is something i hope to work with.
Gladwell, M. (2013). David and Goliath: Underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants (Kindle ed.): Penguin.
And there is scope for finding the number one idea , theres working with weak ties, the counterinutitive success made possible because of distant-presence, visibility counterpoised alongside visibility, being heard silently...

In between i also signed up fro #acwriMo, a writing commitment for November.
Did housework- fixed the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed.
And put out at least one workplace fire.

Now to keep reading Gladwell's David and Goliath, hoping to get my mojo back.

I just rechecked the writing scholarship and am feeling less troubled. My conference paper was identified on it as an outcome, so this wasnt a distraction after all.
And my goal which was accepted did not specify the dates of completion as per calendar month, hence my fear i wont have one done by months end may be a little premature. Will just settle in with the plan and keep trucking along.

Writing to the plan

The tiny text plan is working.

I'd colour coded the abstract that provided me with four major moves.
I then started writing to the plan, workied ok in section one, the why of the research. Got a little unsure in section 2 and began to meander as i am want to do. Popped in some headers on each page reminding me of the section i was intending to address. Then colour coded my sections to match the coding in the abstract. Much less straying.
Got into the third section (data and analysis) i started writing, however this was before i established quite how i was going to address the mess inside my head. Once i found a way into the structure that would leave a lot of stuff out and reconfigure some of the other stuff i knew, i was able to provide some subsections. This led to my revisiting the abstract, rewriting my intent to match what i had done, and again I could then write to the plan.
The article is now 3/4s done; pretty tidy if i say so myself.
That section was bigger than intended, but the one before it was smaller.
I feel like the balancing of weighting regarding the four moves has been reasonable, as has the balancing of how I've addressed the data.

Ive never written in such a delineated way before and it really is liberating.
Historically i have written me a river, then put in the banks and dykes when it wandered all over the place.
This way of writing is so much less wasteful of words.
Last section to address is the argument that the data led me to. I now know where to start tomorrow.
And having the plan I know that even if life gets in the way i can stop or start knowing exactly where i am up to and where to launch off from.

Where I'm writing on my writing retreat; the Waiwera tidal estuary. Not where the arrow points (thats pointing to where i had a honeymoon! Its for sale if i suddenly come into money... the pictures borrowed off a real estate company) But just across the road on the waters edge. Probably a space at risk of flooding if global warming raises water levels. In the kitchen are also instructions regarding what to do in the event of a Tsunami warning.

The life of Pi: a metaphor of Phd survival?

Is it madness to undertake a PhD?

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

And so embarking on a PhD is not madness, the madness is already within.

Being all at sea; drowning past relationships and not knowing if the current trip will be survived seems an apt metaphor for the phd journey:
There's an alter ego to be managed: trained if not tamed.
One's tiger needs feeding if it is not to consume the self.
All rules for being lost at sea with a tiger need to be followed...and then abandoned. There are no rules for this scenario.
From the research proposal through to the ethics application and to data collecting...

“Things didn't turn out the way they're supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Be ready to let go.
Madness, or at least anxiety and depression seem, from my observation, to be what occurs when one tries so hard to hold it tight.

On writing of what is studied, there is no one way, no 'one correct way', to do this. There is no objective reality that can be replicated in one's writing; what is written of is the story, what is drawn is the map; do not mistake the story thereof, or the map, for reality.

“The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?
Doesn't that make life a story?”
...
“So you want another story?"
Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened."
Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?"
Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English."
Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

There's the danger of losing oneself in the journey; of not leaving an apparent safe haven that masks potentially fatal entrapment.

“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Make friends; play nicely; get support- virtual (#phdchat) or otherwise (other students, your supervisor)

“You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?”
...
“I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary.
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

The work gets progressed. it gets enacted not by hope or by wanting, but in action.

“I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

And having completed this phase of my journey:

“Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Flying too close to the sun; the PhD as an Icarus adventure.

I have flown too close to the sun.
For 8 years I've been working flat out on creating a phd that has anti-climaxed and now inhabit a space where i am no longer flying, but i havent hit the ground yet either.

Along the way, I have spent part of my time exhausting myself trying to predict, and then control, what markers as well as imagined other readers would think about my work.
Will they get it?
What does it mean to have a thesis that's not in the usual genre of a thesis?
Is it too avant garde: too "Yoda', too Turner-Hospital? Too ANTish? The partial story line suggest not knowing where its going...
These are criticisms i have already experienced.
Is there only one way to write a book?
I can cripple myself thinking what I have written might not work.

At some level, I also know such thinking can make the colourful beige, the vibrant a still pond. At its worst it can lead to a non submission.

I wanted to go as far as I could, but with fears of being burnt, I hold back, playing it safe, just stretching the comfort zone, mine own and that of markers.

Writing a PhD is to write to be judged. Overtly. This writing is not an act of art for art's sake. It's scary. There is lots of potential for being failed. And of failing oneself. All very self-referential in a thesis of change, of risk and failure as much as it is about innovation and new ways of being. An Icarus adventure then;
of flying closer to the sun.

Seth Godin reports, "trying to control what other people think is a trap".
But that's the trappings of academia: of writing and not being found wanting.
How then to avoid writing with a voice that is stifled by what others might think? Is it possible, or even desirable, to avoid being both audience and writer? As noted by Seth Godin, to attempt both is exhausting and counterproductive. I cannot be second guessing all the time what unknown others might think.


"This might not work" is a curse but reframing allows for flight. I've been reminded I never wanted a perfunctory thesis; I did not aspire to writing it in someone else's voice; I did not want beige or mediocre. A PhD is then also a chance to fly.

Writing at 4.00 AM in the morning, unable to sleep, and with habits of writing in every spare moment, I listen to Seth Godin write of his Icarus adventures, of his newest book and see so many parallels. In his writing (and he is a celebrated successful author) he talks of listening to himself, and of forgetting what he had written, not recognizing his own 'voice'. Of listening to himself and crying. I am very humbled to have this person being so open and honest about his own risks, he writes:

"Hearing myself, months later, reading something I didn't remember writing or reading, I shed a few tears. Yes, this is work worth doing."

And I am reminded also of Patti Lather's an ache of wings in troubling how to write.

And am reminded that Flying close to the sun is exactly where i want to be.

Some writing got wrought, and I am now right on track

In the little moments I filch from writing, I have been reading how to write a literature review. I have also been reading about how to just write. Here is what I have learned:

My paragraph construction is awry. I didn't know about not starting a sentence with 'however' or that 'nonetheless' is acceptable but means something else? I have only been less than fluent in English for half a century. And am still tortured by it. Time to throw all my toys out of the cot and say 'I don't care'. This is a blog for goodness sake! And I can start a sentence with 'and' if i want to. On the other hand, in my thesis I had better behave and apply some grammatical correctness. Nevertheless, I regret not paying more attention in my English classes as teaching myself grammar is difficult. Subsequently, I have so much unlearning to do.

My thanks to Monash University for establishing an excellent website on writing. Those of us that get into a University and progress to PhD without having learned enough about writing are appreciative.

And my friends wonder about how come 6 hours can be absorbed in progressing one paragraph....


Today I approached the task with stealth, and have, at least, been entertained.

Doing a google search for boring literature reviews I discovered a cute paper on how to write boring scientific papers.
To summarise: hell is rereading one's own work. Hell is also multi-layered and reading student PhD submissions could well be the purgatory that one deserves for inflicting such unapproachable writing on to an undeserving world.
The characteristics that make so much scientific writing unbearably boring, resulting in a top-10 list of recommendations for writing consistently boring publications.

* Avoid focus
* Avoid originality and personality
* Write long contributions
* Remove implications and speculations
* Leave out illustrations
* Omit necessary steps of reasoning
* Use many abbreviations and terms
* Suppress humor and flowery language
* Degrade biology to statistics
* Quote numerous papers for trivial statements

In the Annals of improbable research, I found this gem on How to write a PhD dissertation. The abstract tells me:
In this paper we demonstrate that writing a Ph.D. dissertation can have
many benefits. Not only do you obtain extensive typesetting experience,
but afterwards you can have your frequent-flyer literature addressed to
"Dr. Your Name."

The notes regarding Chapter 2 left me smiling:
There comes a time in the life of every graduate student when she or he realizes that another two years of graduate school cannot be endured. Even though a year spent writing your thesis will be filled with frustration and angst, it will end up being worth it in order to escape school forever.
Remember the following phrase: "No one will ever read your thesis.'' You'll hear this phrase a number of times as you finish up, and it's vitally important that you believe it to be true. The phrase is important because without it you would be tempted to work on your thesis until everything is perfect, and you would never finish.
Say "It's good enough for the thesis" to yourself several times a day. Tell yourself that you'll correct all the mistakes when you turn the various chapters into independent scientific papers, even though this won't happen (see Schulman 1996a and references therein).

I loved Schulman's approach of citing himself frequently, and hope he goes ego surfing and finds that others cite him also. Tracing a few of Schulman's references, I found myself reading the Ig Noble awards for research. My favourite was by David Sims in Organizational Studies, titled You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations
This one helped me to realise the task of academic writing is not so hard. Despite not being successful in my last grant application, I am not a failure. I now have further research that needs to be given voice...I could write a Narrative exploration into the phenomenology of soul destruction in academia...

Having been a little more grounded in the reality with the insight that polishing a gem that's never going to be seen is a waste of a life, and wanting my own life back, I am now ready to write. I will, on the advice of my supervisor, save my other considerations for publishing in my post doc life.
:)