Take 3

I've begun and stopped this blog a total of two times now, but I like the title so much that I don't have the heart to get rid of it.  So, here's take three:

Why have I started to write here again?  Well, I started reading Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, a book whose title at lest gets bandied about in academic circles for those interested in--or worried about--writing their dissertation.  The title is meant to be provocative, of course, since no one could reasonably get a dissertation done in fifteen minutes a day.  The point is that you should write every day, or most everyday (she says that can mean seven days a week, or five excluding weekends, or whatever).  The point is to find something that works for me.

As a test run, she advises starting to write non-stop for ten minutes every day, for roughly a week, just to start getting into the habit of writing regularly (she ultimately likens it to an addiction).  So, that's a roundabout way of explaining what I'm doing here. 

I'm writing.  Every day. 

I see this as being like running, a hobby I recently picked up.  Because I was out of shape, I started slow, running for one minute, walking for one minute, for a total of thirty.  The next day, I ran for two minutes, walked for one; the day after that, I ran three, walked one; and so on, until I could run a fully 5K without stopping (the other day, I actually ran an [informal] 10K without stopping, it's become such a habit).

Well, my writing muscles aren't in the best of shape either.  Sure, I've written papers, assignment sheets, and even my dissertation prospectus--which, by the way, I successfully defended earlier this month!  But writing those things were always more like sprints, words flying across the page in a flurry of mental activity.  I'm envisioning the dissertation more like a distance run: slow, methodical, well-paced, with plenty of room for contemplation.  But to get to that 5K, that 10K, that chapter, call it what you will, I have to train. 

So, train I will.