Writing - Part III: ReWriting

I find Re-writing strangely tiring. There's something about going over, again and again, the same big block of text in fine detail that just drains me completely. I really only noticed this recently. I think the stress associated with squeezing and formating everything down to a defined page-limit contributes, somehow.

My PhD funding proposal is almost complete. It's due very soon anyways, so that's good. Thursday, I presented it to FAB-lab, and got lots of feedback (my ego survived by hiding under a psychic rock). Of course, the timing demon had set a trap for me, and I had to TA all afternoon Thursday. Then I had to work on my proposal before the great suggestions from FABlab evaporated from my brain. No surprise; I was really tired Thursday night, when I got home at 11:00 (and fell over into bed). Friday was also a super-rewrite day, followed by Biergarten (mmm... alcohol derived from rotting seeds); again, no surprise, I was tired. Confounding variables. But I (surprise!!!) got some work done on Saturday, not too much, no problem. Sunday we won't talk about. Monday was a holiday, but Grad students (including between-degree-limbo people like myself) don't get holidays, so I was in at school, working.

Monday I had nothing to drink (alcoholic, anyways), and I didn't do anything physically strenuous (gym was closed). But my brain shut down around 5:30. I caught myself just staring at the screen. Writing a coherent and non-snarky email to send out my revisions was an act of surpreme intellectual challenge. Very strange.

Tuesday was much the same as Monday - I shut down around 5:30. All I'd done those days was rewrite. And rewrite some more. I am now developing a hypothesis: rewriting over a complete-but-not-perfect rough draft (as opposed to working on an incomplete rough draft) is very tiring, much more so than is ideas-driven, novel-work writing.

Weirdness abounds. Oh well, it's almost done. I'm now doing the comparatively less-plodding work of rewriting my abstract. Once this proposal is in, past the deadline, I'll post the abstract here, so both my readers can point and laugh.