Creativity and Writing

NP: Black Eyed Peas -- Don't Lie

Writing a dissertation is a tough thing. Like a very wise kid once said, "If getting a Ph.D was easy, everybody would be walking around with one."

So I'm sitting here struggling with the edits on Chapter 1. I set a deadline of Aug. 22 to have it finished and turned into the advisor, but I caught a bolt of lightning last week and I may actually be able to get it in a week early. That is, if I can get it in a shape where it is actually coherent.

When you write, especially a large project, it is hard to keep track of your thoughts. After tweaking the paragraph order from page 14 through page 28, I find that I completely left out a critical part of the story. In my head, I included it where it needed to be. On paper, a very important set of facts that contextualizes the whole middle third of the chapter is gone. I guess that's why we edit these things huh?

(Sidebar: Why is 50 Cent still making music? His "Just a Lil Bit" just came on the streaming audio station I was (operative word: was) listening too. Every so often I think popular music is getting better and then something like that comes along. Can a song be any more repetitive than that one?)

So I have found that, when writing a dissertation, all of the creativity is beaten out of you. Sure, I have a new model for looking at a political party's effectiveness that may change the way people look at "out of power" parties, but then again I may not. Does that count as creativity? Or is creativity the exclusive domain of the M.F.A. people who get a Master's in creative writing?