A friend and I have been going at it with our bachelors thesis essay for a couple of weeks now. We got some well needed feedback from our handler, and that got us going for some late nights in stress. We finished and were wuite happy with the result.
We got some more feedback this monday, and the essay is due next monday, leaving us with quite some work to do. We tried pulling some late night of work this evening, but couldn’t get us to do it. The whole situation reminded me about something a colleague used to say.
Write drunk, edit sober.
Not only is might it be easier to write while drunk, you might get some stuff out that you otherwise wouldn’t. It’s also more fun. And I don’t mean this as a need to drink alchohol, it might b drunk in the sense of feeling. David and I drank a loooot of coffee and energy drinks, stayed up long after our bed times and played a bunch of table tennis. That worked for us.
The thing is, some people are better at the drunken part, and some are better at being sober. Some are better at producing text, some are better at editing it. Some are good at both. To me, the writing process is simply a loooot more fun. It’s what gets me going. I’m really good at the sober editing, fibbling with micro details that needs fixing to get the macro to look its best. It’s just not as fun.
I’d like you to think of what part of the process, any process, you’re good at and what part you’re enjoying. Think about what you could do to be able to do the things that check both of those boxes.