Writer's Block

NP: Shipwrecked -- Sky Cries Mary

Writer's block is absolutely, positively the worst thing a graduate student can deal with, aside from losing your funding or not having health insurance. I have a very tight writing schedule that I HAVE to follow in order to be finished before the dissertation director leaves for his new job in Manchester. This means PRESSURE, PRESSURE, PRESSURE.

For example, take today. I have to write 8 pages today in order to stay reasonably close to on track. 8 pages is a lot. I have done 9 in a day before but had to do seriously heavy editing on it the following week. So far, I have one in about an hour and a half. That's not good. Yesterday, when I was unblocked, I did 3 pages in 2 hours. I'm in bad shape today.

I am stuck, for all intents and purposes, at one particular passage. I keep going back and forth from the theoretical to the specific and my transitions are getting repetitive. You see, politics in the 1940s and 1950s were like Survivor is today. People would form alliances within their own parties and hold those alliances through an election cycle. Once the cycle ended, there would be a brief (8 month or so) period of shuffle where the alliances fractures and were rebuilt. On Survivor, this happens whenever there are an odd-number of contestants. If there are 7 people, it usually breaks down to a 3-3-1 situation...who ever the one goes with wins the next two votes until it is a 3-1-1. Then, the two singlets can flip one of the majority (usually the one in the weakest position) and make a new 3-2 majority, or both get picked off.

That is exactly what the Republican Party did after the election of 1948...only I can't write in my dissertation that "The Taft and Stassen organizations teamed up to swing moderates from New Mexico, Indiana, and Montana to gain control of the RNC just like Boston Rob, Amber, and Rupert did on Survivor:All Stars." That just want fly. It is the single most-difficult passage I have had to write and it looks like it is going to derail my entire schedule. Ugh, gag, and vomit.