Troublesome Words

I am finding writing tough.

Much tougher than I thought I would.

At the helpful suggestion of my supervisor I am tackling 'vignettes': short little hunches or observations; which is how I am managing to fool myself into undertaking small bits of data analysis that don't feel too 'I'm writing my doctorate' scary. 

The current vignette focuses on a process of 'misremembering' that I have observed repeatedly in the data. This is essentially to do with teachers absorbing, embedding and then embodying pedagogical ideas to the extent that they cannot recall not knowing the thing.

Yesterday I spent the whole day writing. I tucked myself away in Little Acorns and set to it. In the morning, I worked on some commercial non-fiction and wrote about 2,500 words in under three hours. In the afternoon I switched to the doctorate and barely squeezed out 500 in a longer time period. It is crushingly, numbingly hard to do. Especially in the wake of feedback on my first vignette - that was detailed, helpful and, well, stifling.

I feel as if every single sentence has to be checked and double checked for precision and accuracy in a way that doesn't happen with other forms of writing. There is no freedom just to write. And I have become obsessed with word counts. Just like my GCSE students, who ignore my claims that it is 'quality not quantity' that matters.

Tomorrow I shall be attempting blood from stones. It will be more productive.