I am having problems with the dissertation. It isn’t that I hate the story or that I am worried where it is going, it’s just that I feel pressure. I am worrying that I have the age range right, or if I am using the right words, or if the chapters are too short, or…
Well, you get the idea. I think it is because University is almost back and I was hoping to have finished the first draft. I mean it is almost there. Only another 4000 words and it should be done. But still I am finding myself stalling.
I think it’s because I want it to be perfect. I mean who writes a first draft perfectly… I mean now that we have computers.
I was thinking about it the other day. Victorian writers must have written only one draft. I mean they were hand-written. How long would that have taken? You must have needed to think about each word. Every mistake would mean at least one page being re-written. That is mind-blowing.
I remember going to school and having to write my essays. It was a nightmare with the dyslexia, The onset of the computer brought about the change in my writing, although it took another twenty years to realise I could use it to tell a story. I’m not all that fast. 🙂
Still I am having problems getting the dissertation on the computer, but at least I don’t have to hand-write it. That is the stuff of nightmares!
What I’ve got to do is forget everything and just write. That is so easy to type, but so hard to put into practice. Still I’m going to do my best over the next week to get it finished.
I remember writing my undergraduate dissertation by hand and paying to have it typed up… it seems like the dark ages now! Fortunately by the time I got to writing up my PhD I had a computer, with a 40Mb hard drive!
Brilliant. 40Mb hard drive! I remember when everything was on floppy disks and you had to be so careful. One splash of water and puff… all the data gone.
Yes, the one in the lab was like that… that’s why I bought my own eventually. It cost me about £1500!
Our first home computer was that much. The day after it was paid off… it blew up. Smoke and everything. The thing used to crash every 5 minutes and there was no modem. It was years before we started using the internet. 🙂