I can write a talk fluently, and the words just come flowing out. I have something to say so I just write it down. For example, I compiled in a few hours a good portion of a talk I will give later this year, about 2,000 words, or a third of the talk. It should be that easy to write a talk like that, especially if, like me, you think a talk should be spoken language rather than the reading aloud of written language.
It should also be easy to write a blog post. It shouldn't be harder than writing an email to a friend. Registers of discourse (formality or informality) and stylistic refinement can be adjusted, if the email has to be worded in a particular way for tone, but let's say that there will be a baseline in which you can just write, the way you can just talk if called upon to do so.
To write a chapter of a book, though, is painstaking work, much slower than these other forms of writing. This shows that, in some sense, what is preventing you from writing more fluidly in real time is a kind of block caused by the expectations of the genre in which you are working. You should just be able to write as fast as you can think, and worry about levels of academic formality at a later stage.
People who are stuck writing need to write on a blog, or in an email to a colleague. Of course, there will be times in which the search for a very precise expression will slow down the process, but that won't be the case for most paragraphs.
3 comments:
I keep on trying to apply technes like this.
How does this apply to me -- what expectations of genre block me? Well -- I associate academic writing with near-lethal to lethal violence, so I prefer not to do it. But back when I used to actually do it, before I acquired this complex, I just wrote. I like notes, outlines, but not informal drafts. I like to start out as formal as I can get, although I do revise.
I don't write talks, I have notes and flashcards, and I rehearse them mentally. I give great talks. This means I am actually one of those who should speak into a recording device, record talks I give. *I had never thought of that -- record something I have rehearsed, not something I am just composing (I never saw the point of this last).*
I also make great handouts. These things are worth thinking about.
A quick caveat for those who are about to try flush their block out by blogging. Though I'd consider my myself a capable and prolific blogger (>1000 posts), I've been wanting to write books for years and have never succeeded. It definitely has something to do with my conception of the reader. But it's pretty strange.
Then there is a kind of blockage going on. Not an incapacity to write or speak, but a difference between media that makes one kind of speaking / writing so much more difficult.
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