Work in Progress

from scratch

I’ve finally started to feel like I’m writing a book, rather than just revising my dissertation. The biggest difference is probably that now I’m writing for a broader audience, beyond just a few committee members. I’m also constantly making decisions about what to cut, whereas with the dissertation, the goal was to squeeze in everything I had collected.

This has been difficult, though. The biggest and most dangerous challenge is that I do not have a hard deadline, which leads to procrastination or endless, often aimless, revisions. Next is the feedback issue: without supervisors or committee members, where do I get feedback? Do I just write the entire book by myself and send it out all at once? The lack of feedback over the long term is another factor contributing to procrastination. Without a deadline to submit to someone and without the expectation of having regular sounding boards, it’s easy to keep putting things off.

So, writing this blog is helpful. It pushes me to sort things out, document the process, and practice writing for a public audience.