Writer's Block

It has been a while since I've blogged. I miss this.

It's not that I haven't been writing at all; I've been working other things. I've been working on a couple of pieces for In All Things, and revising a chapter I've been writing with one of my professors. I have an article about half-way done too--still need to wrap up some data analysis before I can finish writing it. But the big one lately has been my dissertation proposal.

I had an afternoon blocked off to write the other day, so I started with a check of where things are. I have a draft of chapter 1 written, and got it back from my advisor with feedback. I'm pretty pleased with where things stand for that, actually, so I decided to go on and draft chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 (lit review) was overwhelming me--I have the outline written, and a ton of research already done, but I wasn't feeling it--so I went on to work on chapter 3 for a while (methodology.) I generated about 2 pages...

...and I hit a wall.

Writer's block struck: I ran out of ideas, nothing could string together, and I sat there staring at the screen.

This does happen to me once in a while. My go-to strategy is to read something new, to try and shake things up. Since I was working on methodology, I hit the library site and Google Scholar, and I wound up reading a few really good pieces about case study methodology in the field of EdTech, but I just couldn't make any headway. So I tried a change of venue; sometimes just packing up and walking someplace else and setting up to write again is enough to get me unstuck...but no joy. I was disheartened and dispirited. I decided to hang it up for the day and go home.

I hate that, because it feels like giving up. Usually I can at least write something, but there are days when nothing will come together. Writer's block is a real thing.

Image by NIcholas Flook [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]