Get Low...

So today's a low. Today is one of those days when it's hard to write a dissertation. I think I know what I want to say next, but I'm just not feeling it. I can't make myself write, and that's really frustrating. I'm not sure if you can understand this unless you're a writer, because the rational response to my problem is "if you know what you want to say, just say it." The rational side of my head yells at me all the time, and makes me feel guilty for not getting a lot of work done today. And I know I COULD -- I could just sit down and force myself to write 5 pages today, and I might feel good about it, but odds are I'd know it was crap and I'd just throw it all away. I think this is why dissertations are so stressful--you have days and weeks when you get all sorts of work done, you hit a stride and you pump out 30 pages in a week. I've had those weeks, and they feel great. But then you have weeks when you struggle to get 5 pages out. And that's this week for me. I think I've written maybe 7 pages this week, and I think most of those will have to be rewritten. So on the surface, empirically, it seems like this was a wasted week.

But the thing is, and the thing you have to keep telling yourself when you write a dissertation, is that it wasn't a wasted week. Monday I sent an article out to a journal called Early American Literature, which is a good thing. I think I came up with a good way to restructure the paper I read at SSSL to turn it from 11 pages into about 30, which is a good thing. I think I wrote 2 good pages to begin that chapter, which is a good thing. I re-read all of John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia to make sure I didn't miss anything major that I could put in the chapter now that I've figured out a better angle to discuss it, which is a good thing. But when I'm trying to write a dissertation, which is measured in pages and chapters, and I don't have many written pages to show for this week, it feels like a failure. It's hard to accept intangible progress as tangible progress.

And I think that's why I understand why people look at University professors and think we lead kushy lives. They don't see the intangibles. In the "real" world, I haven't done much this week that I could show you to justify a salary. I don't have a physical product -- no cured patient, no filed motions, not even a changed oil. Most everything I've done this week has been in my head, and the world doesn't really like to pay people for that. But they should, because without this week, I wouldn't be able to get lots of work done next week, which is probably what will happen. By this time next week (if the pattern holds) I'll probably have written 25-30 more pages, and I'll feel like I'm right on track to finish this dissertation and find a job.

So here's to next week, may the wind be at my back.