Term Papers Are Like Giving Birth

   The act of creating in writing can be quite agonizing, particularly when it involves a) an audience; and b) a deadline. Oh well, it is all very smooth and good when I am writing "for myself" (whatever this means-perhaps "future self" is more accurate). But when it comes to writing with a particular goal in mind, it can be difficult. I think part of the reason why it is particularly tough in academia is that there is always a push to say something that hasn't been said before. In my blogs, what I write is usually stuff that has been said in some other way or context, and I don't pretend that any of it only comes from me. But when it comes to academia, it's a different story. Just when one thinks that they have found something 'original' or new to say, they will end up finding somewhere else that someone has already thought of it. But the tricky thing with academic writing is that it's very hard to strive for originality without losing the essence of what you are writing about. It's possible to go so far off field that what you write might have no relation to the original topic. I suppose this is a necessary hazard of any kind of writing.
    I have a sense that true 'originality' in research and writing strikes  a delicate balance between building on what has already been said and being 'creative' as they say. I have sometimes found myself deliberately trying to write something 'different' only to find that it bears no relation to what my original research questions were. The theory might sound exciting, but all theories need to be able to address or relate to a question, at the end of the day. Otherwise, the theory is something like "the world is supported by a million turtles". Nobody can dispute it, perhaps, but then the idea is so obscure and unprovable that not too many people are interested in proving or disproving it, much less building upon it.
     It tends to be that writing is more exciting when it speaks to someone else, even if it is an imaginary stranger of sorts. No matter how original I can be in my head, it doesn't seem to become exciting at all until it starts to get framed in a way that I imagine someone else being interested. I suppose this makes me a bit inauthentic, but maybe that is the part of me that wants to use writing to connect with people, or even to feel less alone. In a sense, we can always be our own audiences, and that's going to be true for all time. But it is also interesting when an original idea is truly relevant to someone else.