A new idea for writing a thesis…

This is the first of what I hope will be many blog postings as I attempt to find a way toward the writing of my Master’s Thesis. I have now been working at the writing of my thesis for about four months. Over the course of my writing I have been sharpening and clarifying my concepts and ideas, but I have been having tremendous difficulties fixing those ideas in place and putting pen to paper. After a month of frustration over lack of progress I have to come to some kind of watershed where I need to find a way to really start writing.

I have spent a lot of time evaluating my motives and goals, and creating structure in my life to enable my words to flow, and while I have made progress, it has been slow and needed to find a new way to access my “voice”. Two of the most significant blocks that I have identified to my dislike of the writing process are being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the undertaking, and an aversion to the formality of academic writing. The writing style that I have developed through my academic career has always been focused on small papers where I was able to refine my ideas repeatedly in my head before finally committing them to paper in a near complete form. Unfortunately the larger size of a thesis does not lend itself to this process and I end up swamped by the number of ideas, themes and concepts. Add to this my distaste for the formal, dry and often inaccessible nature of academic writing and you can see that I might have a great deal of difficulties in taking the important step of creating the written work.

I have not been resigned to this process and have struggled to find new ways to move forward, and I think I may have stumbled on a way that can work for me, the blog format. While it certainly is not the perfect solution, among other things I feel it may allow me to work on writing down my ideas in small manageable pieces while also maintaining a semi-formal, accessible format. So over the course of the next weeks or months I have decided to try bringing my thesis into being through the posting of successive blog entries,

My goal s to try to generate three to four posts per week of 800-1,000 words. Each post will be a stand alone work with at least one coherent and complete idea, but will also contribute to the larger overarching ideas of larger sections within chapters and ultimately to the thesis as a whole. One way to look at it might be like the plot arcs found in serial dramas today on television, with stories evolving within episodes, and others over several episodes, months, seasons and finally over the life of the series. While my writing may not be as dramatic or enthralling I can at least promise you that I will not draw it out or subject you to a second season in a flagrant attempt to make money. Nonetheless I invite any who are interested to join me on this interesting undertaking.

Steve