Comments on: Why the first three pages are the hardest http://bitternsweet.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/why-the-first-three-pages-are-the-hardest/ Seeking and occasionally finding ... Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:13:42 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Sisyphus http://bitternsweet.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/why-the-first-three-pages-are-the-hardest/#comment-569 Sisyphus Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:37:59 +0000 http://bitternsweet.wordpress.com/?p=271#comment-569 What you're describing reminds me of the pressures placed on the dissertation prospectus, with the added difficulty of not having actually written the project (or even, perhaps, researched it) yet. Perhaps changing up the location or medium would help ---- I had to email long rambling emails to friends to get around writer's block type stuff, or call my sister and explain something out loud. Sometimes that helped clarify things. But really, my whole process was a slog and my advisor made me re-write it like 7 times. So, yeah. I hear ya. Good luck! What you’re describing reminds me of the pressures placed on the dissertation prospectus, with the added difficulty of not having actually written the project (or even, perhaps, researched it) yet. Perhaps changing up the location or medium would help —- I had to email long rambling emails to friends to get around writer’s block type stuff, or call my sister and explain something out loud. Sometimes that helped clarify things. But really, my whole process was a slog and my advisor made me re-write it like 7 times. So, yeah. I hear ya. Good luck!

]]> By: squadratomagico http://bitternsweet.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/why-the-first-three-pages-are-the-hardest/#comment-568 squadratomagico Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:09:29 +0000 http://bitternsweet.wordpress.com/?p=271#comment-568 Yup: writing the first few pages sucks. There's so much riding on them ~ you have to draw in the reader and make them want to read a few hundred more pages on the subject. I don't go for the breezy tone, though; I aim for the vaguely mysterious. (In fact, I probably write exactly the way Flavia complained about in a recent post, but I <b>like</b> carefully-composed, slightly ornamental writing, as opposed to the purely expository.) I didn't start with an anecdote, but with a sentence that had occurred to me soon after I defended my dissertation. It had a good sound to it (even though books usually are read silently, I always think about the way the language would sound if read aloud), and it set the tone I wanted. It would be years before that diss. evolved into a book, and I tried all sort of different ways of getting into the material.... but ended up coming back to that sentence in the end. I'm still very pleased with it. Yup: writing the first few pages sucks. There’s so much riding on them ~ you have to draw in the reader and make them want to read a few hundred more pages on the subject. I don’t go for the breezy tone, though; I aim for the vaguely mysterious. (In fact, I probably write exactly the way Flavia complained about in a recent post, but I like carefully-composed, slightly ornamental writing, as opposed to the purely expository.)

I didn’t start with an anecdote, but with a sentence that had occurred to me soon after I defended my dissertation. It had a good sound to it (even though books usually are read silently, I always think about the way the language would sound if read aloud), and it set the tone I wanted. It would be years before that diss. evolved into a book, and I tried all sort of different ways of getting into the material…. but ended up coming back to that sentence in the end. I’m still very pleased with it.

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