It's time to whine again.

[hmpf]

I have five pages of one useless attempt at an introduction, three pages of another attempt, and two pages of yet another. I also have five pages of notes and some actual bits of more or less coherent text about gender.

Any time I look at any part of all this, it's like my brain grinds to a complete halt and there's just... absolutely nothing. Can't even patch the notes on gender together to form anything resembling a text.

Two and a half months to go. If I had a concept, and managed write about one page per day, it would still be doable, though only barely.

But I still don't even have a concept.

In a couple of weeks, it will officially be undoable, as I have never in my life managed to write more than one page per day, so there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to write 60-80 pages in a space of less than two months.

Of course, there's still the option of getting the two month extension of the deadline, and sort of betting on the not-too-unlikely chance that by the end of that time I'll have some sort of breakdown so I can have a doctor excuse me from taking the final exams practically without preparation nearly immediately after handing in the thesis. Thankfully, my psyche is fairly reliable in its lack of resilience to stress, so it really isn't a very large bet to take. If I need to take the extension option, it's almost guaranteed I'll get ill. (Well, it's kind of almost guaranteed anyway, really, tbh. January will be hell, if I keep aiming for the January 30 deadline.)

Comments

[mikes-grrl.livejournal.com]

Hm. Well honestly from what you told me, you have a clear grasp of your thesis topic. Are you just uncomfortable committing to one course of action on it? I know your uncomfortable defining your terms, but really, don't take that to heart.

The idea of a page a day is worrisome, though, knowing how slowly you write...

Wish I had answers for you. Well, answers you haven't already thought of, anyway! LOL!

Hope you figure something out soon. <3

Concept and execution

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

It's true that I have a vague idea where I want the thesis to go. But I've spent a good deal of time in the last three weeks trying to just, basically, produce a text on *one* sub-topic (the gender thing), and what I noticed when I did that was that everything I have is *seriously* flimsy. I sort of knew that before, but I hoped that, once I started writing, I would get 'deeper' into the matter, and something worthy of an academic essay would turn up. Thing is, that hasn't happened. It's *still* flimsy. It doesn't go beyond just saying 'well, there are a number of concepts of gender present in the cultures depicted here, and they interface in the following ways in certain characters and their interactions, and in certain groups.' Which, don't get me wrong, is not *nothing*. But it's not enough - and I can't for the life of me find anything more to say.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

I have no clue if this works as well w/ nonfic as it does with fiction but http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html it couldn't hurt, even if you just brainstorm on it. :)

LOL

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's a brilliant idea - for some people, I think. The problem with me - apart from plain old writer's block - is, my brain is seriously slow. So, it's not just that I keep getting distracted by something shiny - although that happens, too, and exacerbates the situation - but that, even at my very best, it still takes me an hour to write three sentences. Basically, every few words, I have to pause and reread and think. Sometimes just for a few seconds, but often for quite a while - sometimes it takes as long as half an hour or so to just finish a sentence. An annoying sound wouldn't change that at all. My brain can't work faster than it does.

Anyway. Still a fun application. Maybe I'll check it out sometime - it may work for *some* situations, who knows.

Re: LOL

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Understood. ;) Part of the point of it is to stop the "go back and read" part, trying to separate the writing phase from the editing phase so you can get your ideas down without spending an hour worrying about whether you're putting them down right - basically trying to make your "other" writing come out as quickly as, say, the writing you do in posts and comments on LJ. Then, after some ideas are down on paper, the agonizing can begin, but at least then you've got several ideas to chew endlessly on - rather than one.

But I totally get that it could be as much an irritating hinderance as it is a help, depending on how your writing brain is wired.

Getting ideas down

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, it's my ideas, not the phrasing, that make it necessary to go back and reread, and think. Idea generation for me is not really separate from the actual writing process; the ideas only get teased out while I'm writing. So I often just hit a kind of wall, where I don't know how to continue a sentence because I actually hadn't thought that far. There literally is nothing to continue it with, so I need to think and find something before I can write the next bit.

(My writing brain is highly weird, I suspect.)

Re: Getting ideas down

[bimo.livejournal.com]

Hmmh, normally I would have suggested exactly the same method as svilleficrecs already did.

Maybe, the following will sound terribly silly...

But if the good old "Write now, edit later" approach doesn't really work for you, what about putting yourself into a more or less spontaneous imaginary interview situation, in which you take both the roles of the well-informed journalist and the expert.

Write both your questions and answers down. If the answer to a particular question gets really elaborate or leads your reporter self to a new set of questions, all the better.

This way you can, step by step, narrow down/formulate the central questions, and,in reply, come up with possible solutions/statements. All you need to do in the end, is to summarize your interview contents and put them into proper writing.

[nick-101.livejournal.com]

Good luck on that. Get the extension, if you can.