a little oasis in time

It's the luxury of mid-term vacation here this week which means no students and no classes. So I am taking advantage of this little oasis in time to get stuck into some of my more pressing research projects. I spent the morning writing up some ideas for the presentation on September 5 with Anne. And this afternoon I forced myself to start writing the Arrested Development paper. I made it to 500 words in a very short time which was exciting and I feel like I still have some good direction for continuing tomorrow.

It's interesting to consider the different types of writing I engage in during the day. Email is a big one...it's mainly perfunctory communication without any real need to craft the content. While quite often the academic writing of papers and presentations is like a slow torture, that requires reflection, endless drafting and tweaking to try and say just what I want to get across. It's made more challenging by the fact that I have come to the realisation that I am a shaper. I can make all the preliminary notes and plans in the world and they all come to nothing once I begin to actually write. I've rarely stuck to a plan and find that my best ideas are those that emerge during the actual writing process. Clarity emerges from the drafting and the rewriting process and my arguments are never fully formed until right at the last minute.

However, I do feel that this blog sits somewhere in the middle. I tend to use it as a mechanism for encouraging me to actually write...just something...whether it is well formed or not. Some posts are quick and to the point. But then it is also useful for reflecting and working through an idea (as with the writing about Foucault reading). And although I've only been doing this a relatively short time, I think what I saw today was a little payoff from this daily practice. That is, once I actually started writing this morning on my various projects I was able to get something on the page without quite so much agonising. Maybe it is that the blog encourages me to stop second-guessing myself, to have the courage of my own convictions and opinions, to realise that what I write is mine and I can happily take responsibility for it. That is, slowly but surely it may be counteracting what my supervisor calls "the imposter" syndrome of the research student...where you have the uneasy feeling that sooner or later people will find out that you're simply not up to this business of research and academic writing. And perhaps that will never fade entirely, but the more effort I put into writing and expressing ideas about all sorts of things, the more confidence might grow in my writing.