On Writing

Reading about writing is inspiring.

Jewels from the required reading for my "dissertation proposal boot camp" course this week:

• "...use writing to think, to explore, to blunder, to question yourself, to express frustration, to question further, to get to what feels like the truth of your subject.  And to celebrate."

• "Peter Elbow...and B.F. Skinner...both believe in writing in order to think, rather than thinking in order to write."

• "You will learn to write in a way that will allow you to be heard.  If you're to do all of this, you need to write every day." 

• "First you make a mess, then you clean it up."  This is how I write.  Reading for inspiration and brainstorming to tap into the transcendental for ideas and insight.  Then I try to organize, put things in order and correct the grammar. 

• "For some of us, writing gives us a place to be with ourselves in which we can listen to what's on our minds, collect our thoughts and feelings, settle and center ourselves.  For others of us it gives us a chance to express what would otherwise be overwhelming feelings, to find a safe and bounded place to put them."

• "Writing offers the pleasure of a deep, ongoing engagement in an activity that is meaningful, one where you know more at its end that you knew at its beginning."

• "Keep writing, no matter what." 

• "But you will still sometimes want to follow your mind wherever it leads you, still use association, and still not worry if your thinking is divergent.  Divergent thinking is what will ultimately produce some of the most interesting ideas in your dissertation." 

• "...use freewriting to establish the channel between your thoughts and your writing, in order, as B.F. Skinner has put it, 'to discover what you have to say.'"

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker