I almost didn't do my research session today, but after reading a chapter or two of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, I decided to force myself to write for just 15 minutes. Part of the difficulty right now is that I must reengage with a research project I intentionally put on a back burner at the end of November in order to revise and finish up the essay I just sent off to a journal for review yesterday. After so many months, I could barely remember my thesis statement!
So I opened up my research journal and copied by hand my thesis statement from a file on my computer. And then I just let myself freewrite anything related to my thesis statement. Here's the rundown:
9:37 pm started writing
9:55 pm stopped writing
Wrote 1.5 pages of prose by hand. Of this, there is one new interesting sentence/idea. Not the most productive session, but I have at least taken the most difficult first step in reengaging with my ideas.
I also realized that my notecards (my primary system for keeping track of main ideas, important evidence, and notes from various sources), as well as my old research journal, are at my office at work and will need to be retrieved before I can really get serious about writing this next thing. I'll do that tomorrow.
Until then!
Just getting into this was challenging, I am sure. Some work, some progress, has begun...the hardest part just getting started on it.
ReplyDeleteA+ for effort! YAY. I love how you copied it by hand and then you went into free write. Awesome.
ReplyDelete