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"A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."
---Jane Austen, in Pride and Prejudice
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Since I’ve been doing a lot more writing than reading lately, this week’s quotes are all observations about writing from Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day (yes, the book I griped about last week).
“The only rules there are in the dissertation-writing process are the useful ones you make up for yourself.” (7)
“What does ‘ownership’ of your writing mean? It means that your writing belongs, for better or for worse, to you, and you alone. . . . Other people own their responses to it, but you own the writing.” (17)
“Sometimes writing a dissertation is a bit like having a serious, but not mortal, illness: it takes enormous energy to sustain life, you have to take very good care of yourself so you don’t collapse, and your defenses—in this case not white blood cells, but psychological defenses—are sky high. One symptom of this ‘illness’ is ‘dissertation paranoia,’ the powerful, not totally rational feeling that other people are out to harm you, and that you must be vigilant and fierce in order to protect yourself and your work. . . . Dissertation paranoia, fortunately . . . is time limited; It tends to disappear when your final draft has been accepted.” (27)
“Remember that you are entitled to put your dissertation first (not for several years, but for a while). Realize that it’s time you stopped asking other people’s permission to do so.” (66)
“It’s more common for the students I’ve worked with to read too much than to read too little. They use reading as a distraction, or as a way to avoid having to think their own thoughts, or as a magic charm: ‘If I read everything in the field, then I’ll be able to write and be sure I haven’t missed anything.” (69-70)
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Happy Reading! Or, maybe today it should be “Happy Writing!”
2 comments:
Oh my! What an undertaking. Hang in there!! You can do this.
My candle burns at both its ends;
It will not last the night;
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I can not fathom the discipline it must take to write a formal document. Your hard work, discipline and sacrifice will cause the rewards to shine brightly.
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