SQUIRE Blog

Why is it so hard to write?

Kathy Kirkland

Topic: Miscellaneous

I've been participating in a Writing Collaborative here as part of the Leadership Preventive Medicine Residency.  For our session this Friday, the call came out for "your current draft" to be submitted in advance so that we could work collaboratively to improve each other's work.  At the last group meeting, I was exposed as being a "writer in theory" ie I did not really have a draft.  (I was not the only one!)  One person pointed out the obvious fact that I have been talking about and presenting this topic "forever"--so what is the hold up?

Why is it so much easier to put together a powerpoint, or a workshop on a topic, than it is to write it as a paper?  Some of it has to do with the permanence of the written word--the same reason it may be better to express anger in person or on the phone rather than in writing where it can be read over and over again, ruminated over, and develop a life of its own.  Writing it down makes the stakes higher.  It activates the perfectionist in me, and makes the task ahead feel enormous and never-ending.  Even writing a first draft brings on inevitable feelings of vulnerability...."You actually think that?"

A benefit of the Writing Collaborative is that it turns out that everyone has these feelings about writing.  We all skulk in thinking we are the only ones finding the process painful, or avoiding it altogether, and there is this relief in learning that our experiences are possibly universal.  I think it helps to know that.

The other benefit is the publicness of the forum.  Although it is a small group of us, failure to produce any work is obvious.  And because it is a small group, multiple failures to produce work leaves us nothing to collaborate on, except how pitiful we all are.

So, with all this in mind, I have actually spent some time this week moving my draft forward, and submitted it for group input on Friday.  I've gotten 5 pages of intro and methods on paper!  The work ahead still feels immense but better than a blank page.