Kind of 'Writers Cramp'

I'm going through one of my periodic spells of struggling to write up my research here at the moment. It would be lazy to just label it 'writer's cramp', it is a neat phrase but it doesn't mean very much. Also I think that old fashioned 'writer's cramp' as suffered by authors of fiction and short stories might often refer mainly to a drying-up of inspiration, and I don't think that is exactly my problem.

But it is a kind of a 'condition' for sure, probably it is more like a serious bout of indigestion or constipation than muscle trouble. Partly it seems to stem from too many ideas in progress, too many threads hanging in the air and no 'structure' there to organise the material. When the log jam is cleared and you are making progress again it is usually because you have almost unconciously arrived at a structure in your head at last and then you have something to hang the words on and they start to flow. But if I spend time actively searching for this structue I often find that the problem just gets worse. Better to just write stuff no matter how awful it is, you can go back and get the bones out of it later. 'Polish' it.

It doesn't help with serious academic work that there are so many other angles that you are expected to tie in. My study floor is littered with piles of partly read, often only partly understood books that have found a home here on the basis that "you need to relate this to ..." It's like the mathematics associated with calculating area and volume. If you only walk X paces from the middle of the discussion you need to cover the are X squared or even worse possibly the volume X cubed in terms of context. Just ideas, ideas, who cares? A lot of these academics are like can-can dancers, flaunting their charms in the hope they will distract our attention. But they do, who can resist a peek between those covers? And then what does it mean?

Them there is the bloomin' internet! Horrible.You just HAVE to learn to leave it alone. "I wonder what's on the 'Guardian' website this morning? How much further has my pension plummeted today? And then suddenly it is lunch time, a nap, better walk off that blood sugar eh?" And suddenly the day is done, they are sounding the 'last post' and the bath is running. I'm not depressing you am I??

The only way out of these deserts is just to keep fingers moving. In fact just keep moving period. Get up, do some work, put a table of numbers together, talk about it. You also have to have a pretty robust set of values about what you are doing and why you are doing it and who you are doing it for but I'll write about that another time.