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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Academic writing, is this normal?

85 replies

daisyjgrey · 14/01/2020 10:23

Academics, writers, anyone with that kind of experience, help!

Not only am I a professional procrastinator (a different topic entirely), but it genuinely seems take me a good hour or so of sitting in front of a computer flitting between reading reports and scrolling through ASOS/Mumsnet before my brain has warmed up enough to actually get any sense out of it.

Is this a thing?
Am I just maybe a little bit stupid and need to give myself a stern talking to?
Do you do anything similar?

(The irony of starting a MN thread while obviously procrastinating is not lost on me by the way).

OP posts:
amusedbush · 14/01/2020 12:38

Yes, I'm in the final stages of a part time MSc and you wouldn't believe how long it takes me to kick my arse into gear. I find myself stuck in an internet wormhole, enthusiastically googling what the population of Shetland is Confused

I find the pressure of the actual deadline approaching gets a fire going under me.

pugtato · 14/01/2020 12:42

Totally normal! I'm a research librarian and have to sit and work on academic and medical research all the time. I'm currently on here having a mental rest before tackling the next topic!

KateTheShrew · 14/01/2020 12:46

Absolutely normal! I am, ahem, 'writing' a conference paper at this very moment...

QuestionableMouse · 14/01/2020 12:55

I'm an author and this sounds true for me too. I'd probably be so much more productive if I could open my laptop and just go 🤷🏻‍♀️

Though I did stay up all night a couple of weeks ago working on my dissertation draft... I got so much done I might have to do it again.

daisyjgrey · 14/01/2020 13:37

Ambushedbush I properly laughed at that, I once HAD to find out where Dubrovnik was an hour before my dissertation deadline.

It's Croatia, in case you were wondering.

OP posts:
amusedbush · 14/01/2020 15:35

@daisyjgrey

It's weird how interesting geography becomes when facing a deadline... Grin

PigletJohn · 14/01/2020 17:19

I like to put in chapter and section headings, and then a description (to myself) of what I will put in them, and why. Sometimes I think of something and add it to the notes of a section I'm not working on yet. This gives the mind prompts.

You haven't got to start on page one and work through to page 2,049.

OneTooManyBathtimes · 14/01/2020 17:29

I've also seen (and found) that writing in comic sans helps you stop editing when you should be writing. Because it's a hated don't, you don't care whether it's good or bad for the time being.

And there's also a colour combination to make the page a mint green. This also helps ypur brain relax and focus better rather than looking at a white page. Can't for the life of me remember it off the top of my head though. I'll have to look to see if I can find it...

OneTooManyBathtimes · 14/01/2020 17:33

Found it!
Red 205
Green 255
Blue 205

hazell42 · 14/01/2020 17:41

Well, its normal.but not productive
I would give yourself 15 minutes to muck about, then start..I usually find starting difficult, so always begin my day by writing around my subject
I have a notebook full of pages that begin "what I'm trying g I say is..."
Try reframing your question, or summarise what you've already got, and then you will naturally start adding new stuff
In the end, though,.it doesnt matter how you start, it only matters that you start

MitziK · 14/01/2020 17:55

Layout - Page colour - pick a pale green from the drop down options, IIRC.

Depends upon the version you have, though. I think it might be under Design on some newer ones.

And if you want it to print the page colour, you often have to enable it in the File Menu - Options.

I usually start with A3 paper and marker pens to try and work out what I want to talk about, then write a paragraph if I can or headings for structure, rather than final ones.

I'd have Introduction

write something about what spangles were. Add a picture.

write something about what the issues were facing 19th century spangle farmers, such as infestation with mangleorchestrachomper beetles (with a picture of both beetle and the damage to the spangle plant).

Give a compare and contrast between production of spangles in 1746 and 1837 (or whatever figures I could find, in a graph).

write something about the attempts to alleviate the crop losses in lesser parquet spangles that had failed.

Stick in a quote about the consequences of such spangle losses. A picture, too.

Say that Toxteh O'Grady was a spangle barnacle farmer from Luton and hornblazerpenwoggler farming was created in order to do something (make the beetles' wings drop off so they couldn't achieve the 83.7326 degree angle of approach for mating, for example).

Talk about the impact of this introduction of hornblazerpenwogglers with a graph and saying what was there, add a quote.

Rehash the stuff into a TL;DR

References
Bibliolography

Etc, etc. Start with typing 'stuff about spangles' 'picture of 17th century spangles in a field' 'graph here', so you don't have acres of blank space and an equally blank mind, then what you are doing is filling in the gaps and only writing about one thing at a time, instead of ten thousand.

Oh, and always start with pasting full links right underneath your quotes and pictures, so you can find them in an instant, rather than having to remember to put them in at the end.

daisyjgrey · 14/01/2020 18:21

MitziK you win the internet today.

Whatever book you're writing, forward it to me immediately please.

I very rarely actually laugh properly at things on the internet but I've done it twice on this thread today.

I appear to have found my people.

OP posts:
honeyloops · 14/01/2020 18:24

Totally normal. First two hours of my day are generally doing mindless things/admin and drinking brews until my brain is ready to write :-)

Hauskat · 14/01/2020 19:19

The tips here are gold! I’m going to be taking notes (right after scoffing supper and watching some zombies). Any other tips from parents on how to deal with fitting in writing? I haven’t managed to get anything significant finished since my dd was born (4 years ago!!) but have just started getting up at 5 to have a couple of hours ‘writing’ before everyone wakes up. I failed this morning but otherwise I am massively enjoying the time to myself but so so exhausted! Also only succeeded in organising notes/colour coding my reading list(!) etc.

theWarOnPeace · 14/01/2020 19:46

Hauskat it depends on why you’re writing, but if it’s for sharpening skills/practice, then give yourself a word count, or between count, say 600-900 words, and then generate a random topic to write a short piece about. I did this morning, 900 words on the year 1995 for teens. It’s practice of outlining, planning, presenting, and editing work. I was really pleased with it, and feel like it was worthy practice.

Yesterday’s was shorter, because I was working with other people so had to pay attention. So I did ten minutes on the bus, writing about George Michael - writing about him for someone who has no concept of who he was, so fully explaining him. Sounds random but a news article had caught my eye, and I often do this thing of writing practice explaining who someone very obvious to me actually is.

Imagine you’re explaining something to someone who has been on a desert island. Or from another time. I’ll practice explaining people like Bob Marley, Emma Thompson, Harry Potter, my neighbour, whoever. I practice writing from different perspectives, too. Something that made me determined to do that was the book Nutshell, by Ian Mckewan. I love doing it now, even from animal perspectives, or the antagonist or at different levels of knowledge or understanding.

MitzK yes to all of that! Definitely start getting it down. If for an essay, then the main question being in the document is always surprisingly boosting to me. Even if I’ve got it right in front of me on paper, it doesn’t ever work quite as well as putting all of the question and/or guidance into my word doc. And writing off the back of the questions. I always colour code questions, pointers, my main body of work, and random notes and bullet points I keep down the bottom. Say, an interesting relevant quote, or thought, or something that doesn’t quite have a place yet.

theWarOnPeace · 14/01/2020 20:00

Oh, and read a lot! Good writers are always voracious readers, always.

BurleyBob47 · 14/01/2020 20:05

The Pomodoro technique works for me.

Booboostwo · 14/01/2020 20:52

Academic here. Writing is like giving birth for me. I spend months reading, taking notes, ummming, humming, aaaaaing, mucking out the horses, anything but writing and then I sit down and write 1000 words and hour for 3 hours a day over 3 days and it’s more or less done. I have to really push myself to sit down and I am very grumpy in the days leading up to a but push!

MiniGuinness · 14/01/2020 21:00

I use the pomodoro technique. I start with 20 minutes work and 20 minutes rest (ie googling shite about dalmations or when the first Berni Inn opened) then I gradually increase the working time. I do this with housework too, although the breaks then are usually long enough to watch a whole box set,

bagginses · 14/01/2020 21:05

I am terrible. I am currently writing an essay which is due in on Thursday. I am getting my ideas down but it flows terribly. Just can't get into this module at all! I have to give myself 20 mins on and then a break. Takes forever to get to the point where I know what I want to write. I always say I could happily talk about the subject for hours, but writing it is another story!

ByeMF · 14/01/2020 21:11

Same. I have lots of breaks. I find the ideas come during the breaks, not during the periods of intense writing. It's taken four years for me to realise that I'm the sort of person who needs an overall plan, plus a paragraph plan. When I start my writing is absolute shit stream of consciousness, that gets layered and layered, edited and edited until it's a thing of absolute beauty.

TheThingWithFeathers · 14/01/2020 21:15

I write for a living and today I did most of my work in the last half hour before leaving to get the bus home! Grin

MedSchoolRat · 14/01/2020 21:31

Hmmm.... I can write all day! I can waffle for England, tbh. Can spend hours composing a single email to get it "just right". Writing is the easiest part of being an academic (by far). Or so I thought.

Figuring out how to pool oocysts measures (geometric means, medians, mode, individual data not reported in any group, Categories, field view, arithmetic means, log scale, ratio scale) over different periods (single days, periods, whole period) using variable if any variance (range, SE, SD, IQR, 95%CI, illegible & indistinct error bars of unstated meaning) - read off of a fuzzy chart that British library used the world's oldest photocopier with fading toner to turn into a pdf - all that is a Fing pain.

After I find a way to pool & summarise those data, presuming I extracted them correctly, writing about it will be Piece.of.Piss.

Strandliv · 14/01/2020 21:58

Have you tried ‘Shut Up and Write’?
thesiswhisperer.com/shut-up-and-write/
You could organise one yourself. I’m a PhD student and attend these every now and then, especially if I’m trying to publish a paper. I find them very useful.

SarahAndQuack · 14/01/2020 22:00

Remind me, what's your subject, @medschoolrat?

Is it an actual writing subject, or are you in a sciences area?

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