Writing maybe hard but…

I know my last blog post was on why writing seemed so hard; however, writing can be fun. Yeah, I just typed that. For me, writing is my creative space. I don’t see myself as that much of a creative person, but writing gives me that chance to create, to put words together to form a sentence that carries a message. It is thrilling. A friend of mine said ‘writing is like her own Everest where she can lose herself in creating’.

With academic writing, it might not feel that way because you are expected to write in a particular way and use vocabulary specific to your field of study. It makes it feel like writing can never be fun for you. I am here to tell you it can be. It takes practice. You might be used to hearing that, but it’s actually true. You don’t get better at something if you do not keep at it. It might be tedious at first, but practise makes it better.

Your first sentence may not make sense. Your first paragraph may be all over the place but don’t stop writing. Initially, it might feel like you are not cut out for this. I mean not everyone is great at a particular skill so maybe writing is the skill you are not great at. Well, guess what? You are a graduate student and submitting a dissertation is a requirement to secure the degree. I suggest you might as well decide to learn the skill in the process. I mean what have you got to lose?

I would like to say that when you feel you can’t write is when you should. I know it sounds absurd. However, building writing skill requires Consistency and being consistent entails doing something even when you don’t feel like it. Hence, you have to keep writing. For a graduate student, I suggest scheduling a time frame every day dedicated to just writing your dissertation. For instance, 2 hours every day, Monday to Friday can make a lot of difference. In no time, the words begin to come to you, and sentences become more natural to form and paragraph begin to flow better.

Let me point out that you have more to write from a position of knowledge. The more you read, the more information you have at your disposal and the more you have to write about. You could just have an inclination to write it better than the author put it. Or what a particular author said is in line with what something you read somewhere else and you can both as one powerful idea. You are already writing. Reading and Writing go along. You can also consciously decide to put down something from every article or book you read, which can only help in forging the writing skill.

Now is a better time to develop writing skill as a graduate student because of the bountiful tools available to ease the process. I will be talking more on this in the next blog. Until then, don’t forget to reach out and share the blog if you think it can help someone else.

Photo credit: andreahelenajacobsen on flickr