To write

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more." - Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz


Aw, writing. The worst part of the scientific process, but also the most necessary. As the saying goes, if it's not written down, the science never happened. Ugh. 

I'm spending from now until I turn in my final dissertation revising chapters, writing bridge chapters, and formatting the entire thing into one coherent document. It's not that difficult of work, just tedious. And long. And full of words. So many words.

I pulled a past graduate student's dissertation off the bookshelf in my advisor's office to use a template for my own. The University has pretty strict requirements about fonts, margins, etc., so it's nice to have another dissertation to look at as a guide. Maybe I should smell the book or throw it across the room. It could help.