Friday 10 June 2016

A different approach to writing

The old pen and paper. I haven't used just pen and paper to write in a few years. I find typing a fast way to get my thoughts down and save to the appropriate file that I can edit later. 

I'm reading a book by Mitch Albright-the PhD manual- 132 tips for surviving and thriving whilst writing your thesis and one particular point inspired me to stop and write this post. You see, his point about writing with just a pen and blank page has set me on a challenge. The challenge is to just write with no documents, texts, or devices, just a pen and a blank page. 

My challenge tomorrow is to write for at least 15 minutes with just a pen and a blank page in front of me on a subtopic of my research- the theory -practise gap and write. Surely I can do this. I have been reading an avalanche of papers related to my topic over the last few years. 

So here it is, my challenge to write tomorrow for 15 minutes on my chosen topic with nothing else but a pen and a blank page. And this blog is going to keep me accountable.😉

24 hours later, I have returned to this blog post to write an update.
I'll be honest, this approach didn't work for me, however, what it did provide was inspiration to contiNue writing - on my keyboard.

I need to tap away at my keyboard so my writing keeps up with my thoughts. I also need just a single piece of work that I can use to write productively. It could be anything, an article, a mind map, a page of notes. But I need just something to work from. 

I'm glad I tried this approach because although i didn't write anything productive to begin with, I was able to transfer to my laptop, realise what I needed to get back into the swing of writing. So yes, it did help break the drought of writing for my thesis.