A goal, a goal!

As if I really need more goals.

One of the things I loved about public blogging was the fact that you got into contact with other people who (accidentally or not) stumbled unto your journal entry and found something they liked. Human nature and its love for recognising something familiar, probably.

One of the things I loved talking about was writing. Looking back on that, it was more talking about how I felt about writing rather than writing itself. I tell my students now that they have to write and think about how to approach the introduction, the body, and the conclusion of any text they write, but meanwhile I never quite did that myself. I just wrote, and the fact that I somehow got away with it possibly says something about my natural writing capabilities.
Different for literature essays than for business letters, of course.

What it doesn't say, of course, but what is implied, is that I could have done so much better had I actually listened to my teachers and thought about structure. I talked about hindsight in my previous entry, I believe. It explains why I always did so well comparing poetry though: I never much liked it and reverted to the structure and close-reading of the text, which forces structure by its very nature.

The realisation, I think, is that I was approaching essay writing the same way I approach fiction writing. And since I'm one of those people who work a lot of mystery into their fiction, that means I didn't think about thesis statements, because that would give away my topic right at the beginning.
Seriously, THAT WAS WHAT I WAS DOING.

So maybe I want to talk about writing again. The fiction writing in my life currently just consists of snippets. I want to get back to my 75% finished novel, but I'm afraid that if I do that, I'll get lost and let go of writing a dissertation all-together until I get published. Dreamer.
I'm getting the hang of structure. It's killing me, but I'm getting there. I've analysed introductions, stolen the structure and made it into a research proposal that only covers about half of my idea for a dissertation properly. (Must really get self to stop having tunnelvision.) I think I can have a reasonable amount of pride over the fact that I tamed structure though. One step at a time.

I refuse structure for this though.
There shall be no attempt at structure in this blog.

First Entry

And so we try again.

I've caught myself from having gone to a rather introspective kind of journalling/blogging to a more informative kind, which probably has to do with the fact that I'm too busy to have any real thoughts beyond the kind that have to do with work. It's bad when researching for a possible PhD becomes one of the few remaining escape routes in your life.

So I've pretty much stopped writing, I've admittedly begun photographing again, but other than that, life is currently a marathon consisting of reaching the end of the week so I can sleep. (Right, that's probably my cold talking.) I'm not saying I'm not learning a lot, and having enormous amounts of fun, but it's going too fast.

Meanwhile, I've been forced to rethink my writing, in particular the academic kind, but as a result also the normal kind. For most of my life up to now, I've just written, and not thought much about beginnings, endings, and the way to go about it. That I got away with it, to the point of getting my MA, says something about my writing skills, but the post-graduation time has made me realise a lot of things, not in the least that there's a more theoretical side to writing as well. And that, if I want to attempt this PhD, I'll definitely have to reconsider how I've written before.

Is it weird that you can only appreciate your education after you've actually finished it? And that you wished you would have realised that more consciously before it was actually over?