Sunday, March 15, 2009

In the midst of it

Just a quick note this week as I'm in the midst of writing the MA thesis. The programming on my project is at a good point -- it still needs 2-3 days more work. I'm hoping to complete the writing portion by March 17th -- slightly behind schedule -- and the entire project by end of this upcoming week.

The writing process

The writing is going well, I can get about 6-7 good hours of writing in per day. I'm not a fast writer and I tend to write once, revise modestly as the real work is in organizing the thoughts. I've become familiar with this process having written many essays over the past few years: re-read my key articles, take notes and quotes, re-read a few past essays - pull out relevant quotes -- that takes about a day. Then I start writing after puttering and forcing myself to sit. Take break, putter, sit. On and on. Occasionally take breaks to detail the shower, do yoga, or get some food shopping done (and yes, get distracted by a Netflix movie maybe ONCE).

What interesting about my process now is how much less anxiety I have around doing the writing, which I had even last spring. I let go of something - my job, expectations I had for myself, who knows. All that matters now is that I can see the end and a new future beyond it.

Back to it.

2 comments:

brownstudy said...

As the subtitle to your blog states: "The challenge is keeping focused & moving forward when the familiar support structures have disappeared."

You're moving forward and you're succeeding. Congratulations.

rani said...

gracias mike.