I’ve been stressing about finishing my book since, well, it feels like forever. I’ve been avoiding the conclusion for weeks (since the last fevered push, in fact). And what do I find when I finally open the file and look at it?
It’s a breeze. It’s virtually done. I even pretty much got that final concluding paragraph down (well, half of it: still want that knockout final sentence really). What was I worrying about again?
I don’t quite understand why my perceptions of where I’d got to with this thing were so far removed from the reality. I could have had this polished off with a few hours’ work any time in the last few weeks. Instead, I kept avoiding it because I was convinced it was a hideous deformed monster baby requiring radical surgery for which I didn’t have the time (or inspiration).
Two lessons from this:
1. I am a compleat fule.
2. If you’ve been putting off finishing that paper or chapter for the last month because you think it’s a pile of utter dreck, you could be as mistaken as I was. Stop avoiding it and do something about it.
11 comments on “No more avoidance (till next time)”
This is, I think, how “writer’s block” works. I got just incredibly bored and bogged down with the revision and extension of my dissertation for a book — so much so that I wrote and published a different book instead. When I went back to the dissertation-to-become book, I found that all I needed to do was to write the next sentence, and then the next …
Isn’t it possible that the writing elves were working on it while you weren’t looking? That’s what I keep hoping will happen to my thesis … no luck so far.
No comments - ’cause I’m going back to writing immediately!
Thanks for the inspirational breeze
It’s not the writing elves - it’s your own inner writer working away at it while you think nothing’s happening and you’re not doing anything. But you can’t have done it earlier: it wasn’t ready, wouldn’t have fermented enough, reached critical mass, or whatever.
Congrats, anyway!
Thanks! I needed to see this!
Thank you very very much for this—I have been.
Now to convince my supervisor.
Hey - congrats on finishing your book! Have you been working with a publisher? I’m very inspired by you…
We haven’t got to the point of a signed and sealed contract yet, but hopefully the formalities will be sorted in the next few months. These should be the final revisions (except for minor cleaning up). I really hope so, because I’m sick of the sight of the thing. I just want to be able to stick it on my CV and forget about it…
(Next week’s mission is to write a conference paper with some new material! What if I can’t think of anything to say though…?)
Have I mentioned lately that you totally rock??
There are all too many blogs out there where the quality of commenting is woefully below that of the actual posts. My commenters, on the other hand, are completely cool.
That’s great! Wow…final revisions on a book….that must be like touching a piece of the true cross….cool.