The Writing Blerch - in Honor of the Oatmeal's Running Blerch

Click on the image to visit the Oatmeal's cartoon about running.

I started running long distances when I turned 30, and I love, love, love the Oatmeal's comic about the blerch. I'm actually wearing my Blerch tech-shirt right now because I try to go on a run in the morning before I start dissertating to counteract all the sitting I do while I'm working.

I tend to write the same way I train - I set up specific amounts of time for work, and I try to make mini-goals. For running right now, I'm doing a couch to 5k training program because apparently, after you have a baby, jumping right into training for a half is frowned upon by your midwife. Also because I need to in order to get back in shape. But it feels better to blame it on someone else.

For writing right now, my goal is to write two pages a day. Today's other goal is to get 2 more descriptive review transcriptions done.

Every day, I assume that, because I wrote two pages the day before, psyching myself up for today's two pages will be easy.

It's not.

Every day, I think, "Oh, I'll just skip my two pages today," and then I have to force myself to start writing. Right now, I'm putting off the two pages by writing a blog post.

I don't get it. I like the part where I'm actually writing, so why is it always so hard to get started?

The answer is clearly that there is a special Blerch for writers.

I will now tell the Blerch to shove off, and I will actually write my two pages.

So there, Blerch.

Writing = Complicated

This is me bouncing my new daughter Ella (7 weeks. Awesome baby) on my knee while I review transcripts because writing = complicated. She woke up early from her nap, and if this dissertation is ever going to get written, sometimes she has to help by snuggling while I write 1-handed.

As a recipient of a grant from the Agnes & Sophie Dallas Irwin Foundation, I wanted to document my summer writing, partly to ground myself as I try to keep working through moments like this, and partly as a way to say thank you to the Agnes & Sophie Dallas Irwin Foundation. 

When I wrote the application for the grant, I said, "When Virginia Woolf said that a woman needs a room of one’s own to write, I wonder if she ever thought about the impact of a five-year-old." And here is Ella, on my second day of working, demonstrating just how true that is. I wouldn't ever want to give up the hugs and cuddles and time with Ella, and so my first entry is written one-handed while I bounce her on my knee.