cw: writing, internalized saneism, perfectionism OCD

I'm not an established academic, but as a current MA / incoming PhD student, this tweet put me in my feelings because I hate writing. Except, of course, that I don't. Or I didn't. Or I only hate it when I know I'll have an + https://twitter.com/scholarfairy/status/1265068436234870786

audience, and I don't do it much otherwise. I used to write for the pleasure of it and not for performance. In Grade 5, I came home from school every day to write a "novel" or two. They're still saved on floppy disks that I'll never be able to recover--and I'm sure it's for the +

best. I can romanticize my Yu-Gi-Oh-inspired fiction and my elemental fantasy, a stark contrast to essays that feel impossible to write until they're over. I'm conscious now of how little I know, and I can't craft sentences that look--that sound--like the ideas in my head. And +

it doesn't quite matter that my readers won't know the difference. In fact, that's the problem: they will think that this incomplete, imperfect articulation reflects my analysis when, in fact, it's another thought--incomplete and imperfect, but mine and clear only when the +

clamour in my head quiets, only when I don't reread. My final drafts are full of errors. They, and I, are exhausted. It's a relief to submit them. Perfect peace--at last--while I wait for comments, terror when I receive them. I don't take criticism badly, for all this anxiety: +

I think I love (generous) critique. It's the only thing that could make me return to a paper, and learn to reshape it. I want to be pushed to think harder. And writing makes me do it, in ways that oral presentations don't. Writing forces me to untangle things, to struggle +

through them, but it robs me of tone and gesture, of control. Giving my words away, where they may be misunderstood, feels like an impossible thing. No matter how many times I do it. I can write quickly, sometimes--under pressure; preferably, with the imminent threat of +

embarrassment (see presentations), but if I have to think slowly--if I have time to think that someone else will read me, or to fixate on getting it "just right," then I could take forever. And it's terrifying. It makes the dissertation feel impossible. And to whom does one +

speak about this set of challenges--the ones that everyone faces, that everyone talks about, but which they seem to "power through" in a way that I have yet to figure out? Why would I start a PhD in English, of all things, if I cannot depend on myself to write? +

It's because I have something to say, and I have a community that's willing to support my efforts to say it. And it's because I know that I will, that I can quit. I don't have to write a dissertation; I just want to. And I don't. Or I didn't.

But, you know, maybe I will.