Stewing

I am a doctoral student.  This means that one of my priorities should be writing for publication.  It's not easy in the internet age - and probably complicated by my age.

Although I'm fairly comfortable with technology and various internet forms of communication, I'm not fast.  I like to imagine that the pressure on grad students to write for publication twenty or thirty years ago was more manageable.  Peer reviewed journals have regular deadlines, put out books to review, future issue topics, etc.  Many days I think that things would have been easier if I'd gotten through my bachelor's degree in a timely manner and moved quickly onto graduate work, seeing as that would now be about 15 years ago.

But the fact of the matter is that I'm a grad student now, the age of super speedy internet.  There are blogs, and tweets, and online journals, not just peer reviewed journals.  Newspapers are online and move much more quickly than before.  It's difficult to keep up.

Often I will use the image of a good stew when talking about writing.  A good stew takes hours of slow cooking, with a stir now and again.  This is how my mind works.  I'll read something, it will strike me as profound, I'll want to reply or respond, but need a bit of time to process, mull, think it over ... to stew.

Unfortunately, in this fast-paced world, stewing isn't helpful.  I really need to work on faster response times.  That's my writing thought of the day.  Less stewing.