Walking the Talk

I'm a little prone to excessive self-confidence, to the assumption that I already know how to do something because, well, I've been in the same room with someone who did it. Sometimes, however, life brings me face-to-face with the fact that actually *having* an experience is pretty necessary to understanding it and that I previously had no idea what I was talking about.

Case in point? Writing a dissertation.

I mean ... I know this will be a shock to all y'all who have actually written (or are well into writing) one ... but ... Writing a dissertation is *hard*. Incredibly hard.

Now, I'm not talking about the things that are always challenging about writing, things like crafting good sentences, providing coherent analysis, or establishing and supporting an analysis. I'm familiar with those challenges and have had my share of struggles with them. I expected to clamber my way through those obstacles much like I have in the past.

Nor is it just that the dissertation presents all those challenges but in larger format, though that's closer.

No.

For someone who has written a few short stacks of conference and seminar papers but who has never tackled anything made up of multiple, separate chapters, writing a dissertation is hard because it clearly requires a conceptual orientation that she has not yet developed: the conceptual orientation required for a book.

I had not realized that this would be a major difference.

It is.

First there's the problem of sorting ideas and examples into their proper places. Even though I have little paragraphs telling me what each chapter is going to be about, it's not like those four chapters are separate from one another in the way that four seminar papers might be. For one thing, what does dh care if I turn in a seminar paper that relies heavily on the same examples that I used in cf's seminar? As long as the paper is it's own thing (i.e. as long as I'm not recycling the entire paper), reworking an example to make a new point (or even repeating an example and a point) is perfectly acceptable. It seems to me, however, that such repetition in a dissertation (or a book) doesn't work. So, I'm constantly tripping over myself as I start making a point and then realize that probably I should make this point in another place.

Then, there's the related problem of maintaining the chapters simultaneously conceptually separate and conceptually related. Every time I sit down to write, ideas that are supposed to be carefully placed in chapter 2 keep trying to invade my writing of chapter 4. Even worse, the way that ideas keep piling on top of one another makes me worry that I don't actually have four chapters - just one massive, rambling mess of an overgrown seminar paper.

Which suggests that the real problem is that I don't know what a chapter is, how it works, or how you write one. I certainly don't know how to write a book.

I suppose this is why one writes a dissertation in grad school and then gets a job and revises the dissertation into a book instead of having to do the whole process for the first time while on the tenure clock.

But holy crap. There's nothing like trying to write a dissertation to make you realize that you, in fact, have No. Fraking. Idea. how to write one.

And, I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking there's probably no way to learn how to write a dissertation other than ... well ... writing one.

gulp.