Regular readers of my blog will have noticed there has been nothing new to read for a while. \u00a0I guess this could be ascribed simply to the familiar problem of writer\u2019s block, but it felt more like a complete loss of mental and creative energy. Whereas I have, over the past nearly seven years, found writing my blogposts a refreshing change from the \u2018day job\u2019, for the last month it has simply felt beyond me.<\/p>\n
I could blame my travels in Australia and the Far East for messing with my body clock, and hence my energy levels. Plus, fast following on this trip I went to Edinburgh (admittedly for a brief holiday) and then Padua (as I wrote about here<\/a>). So, leaving aside disruption to my circadian rhythm, melatonin levels or other quasi-biological problems, all those absences certainly permitted the email mountain to mushroom uncontrollably. If the inbox has swollen by a factor of four or more (for your own personal breakpoint insert the relevant figure dependent on what your \u2018usual\u2019 and acceptable inbox-count is); if the knowledge that people are chasing you for swift answers to questions you don\u2019t know the answer to; and if the sheer act of not-answering causes you to lie awake at night sweating anxiously, then it perhaps is not so surprising that one\u2019s energy is sapped. I realised, ultimately, that all that procrastination of responses to emails that had already been delayed by my travels was only adding to my discomfort. Eventually I managed to summon enough energy to deal with some of those that were causing me most mental guilt\/pain\/anxiety and that helped to unblock things further, a sort of virtuous circle.<\/p>\n I know there are a few invitations still sitting in my inbox preying on my mind. Other people will have different tactics for dealing with such messages, ranging from accidentally-on-purpose deleting them to continuing to ignore them in the hopes that the sender will lose interest. The reason\u00a0 my inbox is as big as it is lies in part in the fact that there are some ancient emails in this category which I have never yet filed or disposed of. Every now and then, I go back and finally \u2018deal\u2019 with some of these, but that in itself requires energy and time. What this past month has shown me is that my usual tactic of responding fast is really the only one that works for me personally. Even if the response is only along the lines of \u2018I\u2019ll get back to you in due course\u2019 I feel less overwhelmed than if I am actively ignoring them. Consciously feeling unable to deal with stuff only multiplies the problems, so better never to enter that state (jet-lagged or not).<\/p>\n In fact there is another input into my state of mind, relating to the fact that the first anniversary of my mother\u2019s death has just passed, the only other period when my blogging came to a halt<\/a> for an extended period. Honouring her memory, reflecting on who she was and what she made me, has inevitably been a further tax on my strength and is an ongoing work in progress, but not one for public record.<\/p>\n Writer\u2019s block for academics is of course nothing new. Many a student has struggled over their term paper, dissertation or manuscript. Sometimes the task just seems too large and shapeless for the hapless would-be-writer to know where to begin. I have always believed \u2013 and advised my own students accordingly \u2013 that the only way to get over this is to write, anything, in any order, just to release the blockage. Once some part, some easy part, is down on paper another bit and then another may seem more conceivable. Worrying about structure and flow of disconnected paragraphs can come later. Or, as my mother used to say when I couldn\u2019t settle to revision during my teenage years, \u2018il n\u2019y a que le premier pas qui co\u00fbte<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s only the first step that costs. In other words, starting may be hard but it\u2019s likely to be downhill after that. (She wasn\u2019t French, but she was full of clich\u00e9\u2019s and bons mots<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Of course it\u2019s not just students who suffer from writer\u2019s block. It can happen at any stage in the academic life and most people get inhibited or stuck from time to time. It\u2019s just that, for me, I\u2019m not used to it happening with regard to my blog writing. I have been very conscious of my silence, but hope I have now shed the blockage and will revert to something approaching regularity in these posts. Meanwhile I am looking forward to reading a book about science writing I have just come across to get some tips from my peers about style, motivation and outcomes. Written by New Zealander Lisa Emerson, Amazon tells me that \u2018The Forgotten Tribe: Scientists as writers<\/a>\u2019\u00a0 will \u2018offer[s] an important corrective to the view that scientists are “poor writers, unnecessarily opaque, not interested in writing, and in need of remediation.”‘<\/em> She argues that scientists are among “the most sophisticated and flexible writers in the academy<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n I look forward to finding out whether I agree with her in due course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regular readers of my blog will have noticed there has been nothing new to read for a while. \u00a0I guess this could be ascribed simply to the familiar problem of writer\u2019s block, but it felt more like a complete loss … Continue reading