
Overcoming a fear of writing - eisenkr
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2009/03/graphophobia.html
======
ekpyrotic
I fear writing; a result of my perfectionism. The prospect of defective prose
frightens me, so I don't try. A thought I put to paper last month:

"I am imprisoned within my lack of clarity and lack of style. Fucking failure.
Chained to a quiet and passive existence.

I want to express; I want to free my ideas; I want to communicate my message;
but I fucking can’t. I can’t clear this painful fog."

~~~
GeneralMaximus
I just decided to write a lot. Even if it doesn't make sense
([http://blog.uncool.in/2009/03/26/episode-1-perspective-
shift...](http://blog.uncool.in/2009/03/26/episode-1-perspective-shift/)). I
suppose after a month or so of writing crap, I'll be able to loosen up my
rusty writing skills a bit and my writing will become more natural.

You might want to try that.

~~~
michael_dorfman
I agree. Commit to writing 3 pages a day, even if it is just repetitive
nonsense and ramblings. Feel free to burn the notebook at the end of the
month. After a few months of this, you just may find you have loosened things
up a bit in terms of the old "the best is the enemy of the good" problem.

------
tokenadult
Rudolf Flesch recommended

[http://www.amazon.com/Write-Speak-Think-More-
Effectively/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Write-Speak-Think-More-
Effectively/dp/0451167635/)

choosing someone whom you'd like to write to and who would write back (a
parent or a grandparent, perhaps?) and then writing that person a letter with
lots of description of what you're thinking about and doing once a week. After
a year of that, you'll write a lot better.

------
yummyfajitas
I'm often faced with the following choice: write a paper about Algorithm 1.0,
or try to figure out Algorithm 1.1? Or perhaps tweak the code to make it
cleaner/faster/more general?

Writing the paper usually loses.

~~~
ibsulon
Write paper 1.0. Then work on 1.1. Then, instead of having one paper, you have
two, and are that much closer to tenure. :)

~~~
yummyfajitas
In theory, that is the optimal procedure. But writing code is so much more
interesting _right now_.

It's my most productive form of procrastination.

