Writing Wednesday: Team Perez Edition
Steven Pressfield has a wonderful project called Writing Wednesdays which can be summed up simply: “Writing Wednesdays is an ongoing, blog-version of The War of Art”. After finally reading The War of Art after years telling myself I needed to, I decided to take up Mr. Pressfield’s exhortation to writers everywhere this week. Regardless of how much or little I wrote in this space before today, I was going to write. But I didn’t know about what. Leave it to the Muse.
First Drafts: the old way
As happenstance would have it. Today’s Writing Wednesday is about first drafts. He is dead on. First drafts are the hardest most vicious of things to write. It does not matter if it is a ten page term paper, or in my case, the thesis that stands between me and my “Master of Arts”. Often we don’t notice the Resistance in the smaller projects, but they are there. Once, while an undergrad student, I delayed and procrastinated my final paper the full term. I read, took diligent notes, but every time I sat down to write, something got in my way—or more precisely, Resistance was beating me down like rag doll and I didn’t even know about its existence. When I finally sat down the night before it was due (late at night), I had to compel myself to write one word after another. An hour went by, and I had a page. Two hours, and I had a page an half. Yet then something happened. I broke through Resistance and found a grove. Not really aware of my inspiration, the next two hours seemed as grueling and painful as the ones before, but by the fourth hour I had exceeded the 15 page requirement. After a quick proof read, I went to bed. In the morning I made my revisions, proofed it again, and turned in.
Writing my papers last minute has never been a regular occurrence. I have always started the actual writings weeks in advance. What has been more frequent is the time it takes me to actually finish the writing. Resistance managed successfully to make me stress over details, ensuring that all my bases were covered, even stopping my writing and returning to a research mindset if I made a claim that I was not 100 percent sure about. This led to mad dashes and late nights as deadlines approached with a paper 9/10 of the way complete. This was not something that would be sustainable in my thesis project, and I knew it. I had to rethink my game. Trouble was, I didn’t know about Resistance and therefore, couldn’t adequately prepare for its trickery. Still, I found a way, though admittedly, it would have been much easier had I read The War of Art sooner.
First Drafts: the new way
My thesis is about a year and half over due. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’ll be the first to admit that some, perhaps even most, of the delay has been my struggle with the Resistance. But other occurrences have befalling me that were completely outside my control. At times, I let those beyond my power affect and exacerbate my own procrastination. Losing my thesis committee last February and having to effectively start over with a new one, did not mean that I had to stop research. Sure, I may have no project, or to start on a different track entirely from scratch. But what happened was different: a new committee equally approved of my project as the old one, and a former reader became my advisor. I lost two months of work that could have been spent advancing forward because I wasn’t sure. Suffice it to say, none of that matters. What I’ve learned the hard way, and had explained to me elegantly by Pressfield is that the excuse or reason for the delay does not matter one Fu**ing bit (coughpardon me). What does matter is pushing through those delays and moving that cursor to the right one sentence, one word, one damn letter at a time.
The first draft was submitted several months ago, and comments on the first part were sent to me about the time I was hit by a truck (long story for another day). Here I had a legit delay in that I spent several weeks on meds managing the pain. My body wasn’t even able to focus on anything more complicated than the simple task of going to and from the living room. Slowly, the pain subsided, became more manageable, and I was able to concentrate on the task ahead. Revisions.
Lesson: No excuses, play like a champion
So what did I learn that you can also? Just keep pushing. Turn off that Basketball game, that Presidential Oval Office address and write your papers. My first draft was awful and I was embarrassed to turn it in. But I knew that it was a necessary step. If I hadn’t turned it in, I would have agonized over other aspects, trying to make it perfect. Except that I can’t make it perfect because I am not an expert. My committee are the experts. Turning that rubbish of a draft allowed them to see what I had, where I was going in my thinking and letting them eviscerate the garbage so that the gems can shine.
