Yesterday went well. Although I couldn't switch gears from work routine to school routine for about 2 hours, I still managed to do what I've planned.

The major goal for this week is to write the first draft of my paper. Two weeks ago I drafted a flow of arguments for the article. Sort of like a list of one-line directions: first say this, than describe that, than show this, etc. It became my road map for the paper and took out some of the frustration over the whole thing.

Yesterday I broke this list down into 4 writing chunks to be done each day, leaving Saturday and Sunday for fixing up figures, tables and most importantly for revising the whole draft. I also had to write my first chunk yesterday. As I said, it took me nearly 2 hours to "get in the mood". My brain was braking around any thought which would initiate writing. It was like a little baby, demanding snacks, jokes, and blogs. Finally though, I have faced the fact that there is no way I will be successful with this endeavor if I'm not successful today! There is no tomorrow, I can only control what I get done today.

It was a deal breaker. Even though the whiny baby in me still moaned on the background on how terribly painful it is to write, the reasonable self took over and started writing. There were a few times where I'd get stuck or get overwhelmed by the complexity of different arguments and how each argument should precede another so how in the world am I going to order them?? But what I told myself is "Just write!", "Concentrate on what you want to say for this chunk and worry about how it all fits in later".

Today I did the same thing with the next two chunks. Except I rearranged my work schedule a bit, so I got the writing done earlier in the day and will take some work home instead.

I hated each sentence, each paragraph I wrote. I am sure that they are choppy and ugly and weak. I keep freaking out that I have not written much and immediately afterwards that I'm trying to say way too much. Yet somehow I also have this certainty that it's a good progress! First of all, I have something written down. Out of my head onto the paper! Yay! It is already more than what I had a week ago. A lot more! Second of all, as the time approaches the weekend this paper is "brewing" in my head and the structure will emerge and things will fall into place. I'm not binging but making steady progress. I'm not relying on tomorrow to get things done. How great is this feeling?!

The other two goals for this week were to contact my committee to arrange the oral exam date (DONE! but two of them have not written back to me yet. It's been 24 hours, people! How long do you need to tell whether you are free or not on a certain day two months away?) and to figure out what chapters I should have in my research proposal. With this last one I wonder... maybe I should ask my advisor if my paper would be ok for research proposal. After all, department guidelines state that research proposal is a 10-page document and I'm already planning to give two papers to the committee, each about 10 pages long. My research proposal as I see it will easily be about 50 pages on top of that. Hmm... does it sound more like a dissertation to anyone?