Commit to Your Writing Even When You Don't Have Time: What My Thesis Experience Taught Me
This month’s theme for the
blog is writing and time (if you missed it, check out our latest WriteCast
episode on apps and tools to help you make the most of your writing time). I know
this because I’m staring at a blank Word document with a note from the blog’s
editor, Anne, that the deadline for the blog post I agreed to write is approaching.
She suggests I write something about writing my thesis*, which is a very
practical and helpful suggestion, except that I’m not sure I have anything very
useful to report about writing my thesis. It was over a year ago, and I’m
allowed to keep the memory of that stressful time in a hazy fog, right?
Maybe what I’ll write about
today is less about the immediate act of writing my thesis and more about
reflecting on the overall experience after such a long time away from it. While
I was writing my thesis, the immediate question of time—whether I had enough of
it or was using it wisely—was a huge issue for me. I was working full time
while writing my thesis, so what’s left of my hazy memory mostly consists of
those instances I struggled to set aside time for writing. But now that those
stressful moments are gone, I’m left looking back and reflecting on what the experience
taught me.
What was important back then
was not so much the quality of my writing each time I sat down to my computer.
What I can now see at a distance is that all the little moments—the 5, 15, 30
minutes where I was able to actually write—mattered, but what mattered more was
my continued perseverance at writing. While I may have worried that I wasn’t
writing enough pages or writing those pages well enough, now I see that it was
less the individual moments of writing and more my continued commitment to just write that was key for me. The
important thing was that I continued to find those moments to write, no matter
how short or productive they were.
I also now see that writing
my thesis was not just about writing that
thesis. Writing—any form of writing—is like training. Each time you write,
you are practicing a muscle, training it in new and different ways, developing
your writing skills. Writing my thesis helped me complete the requirement and
graduate, sure. But writing my thesis also trained me for more writing. The
lessons I learned while writing my thesis, like time management, revision
techniques, the best way to revise for my (seemingly endless) wordiness, and
how to use constructive criticism, are ones I continue to use when I write
e-mails, articles, and even blog posts.
I’ve returned to these
lessons over and over again in my current writing. I can trust that this
training and these lessons will help me in the future as well. By trusting in
my past writing experience, I know that as long as I simply write—persevere in
the act itself rather than focusing on whether what I initially write is good
enough—I can succeed in any writing project—even a blog post where I didn’t
know what to write about.
*At the Writing Center, we often talk about the
“thesis” in terms of the thesis statement (see our many resources on thesis
statements: website materials, blog posts,
a WriteCast episode, and a webinar).
Here, however, “thesis”
refers not to the thesis statement—a sentence that drives the argument for a
paper—but to the capstone document often required for earning a master’s degree.
Beth Nastachowski is a writing instructor, the WriteCast podcast co-host, and the coordinator of webinar writing instructor for the Walden University Writing Center. She can’t write without coffee by her side, enjoys giving her cats catnip, and wishes everyone a fast and early spring!
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