writing and writing fatigue

Before I have to do some structured writing I'm always anxious. I try and delay doing the actual writing until the very last moment, yet I know that once I start it will be ok. An important thing about writing is that in order to write you need to know what you want to say - this sounds a bit strange because I'm mixing up my literacy modes here. You can't write if you don't know what you want to write about. And when my writing is particularly poor it usually means that I didn't know what I wanted to say. Clarity in your thoughts is the sure-fire way to get clarity in your writing. It doesn't mean that you can't create that clarity over many iterations of the same piece of writing - in many respects I think that's the only way to get clarity - constantly reworking and rewriting.

I'm working on my literature review and/or conceptual framework - I sort of feel I should say literature review so most people will know what I'm talking about, even though I feel what I'm writing is an outline of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks on which my research is based. I know what general areas of discussion I want to include and I've broken down the task into sections. First I'm working on different individual sections - reading bits of literature on a particular theory/idea/concept and then writing about it - then once I have all the sections written I will weave in the connections to create the final coherent outline of my conceptual framework. This is my strategy anyway - helpful I guess when you are trying to subdivide a 10-15K piece of writing into manageable chucks. So far so good.

I decided to work on the Bernstein theory first - because I felt least comfortable with my understanding of this body of knowledge. My aim was to finish the section over the weekend and by Friday I  worked out a detailed structure of the section (fairly small +- 4000 words) with all the necessary key points I wanted to make and their corresponding references etc...Great! - until Saturday afternoon, that is, when it took me almost two hours to write a paragraph about an concept that would have a fairly subsidiary role in the overall theoretical ensemble. But I pushed on, determined not to be deterred by this minor bump in the road. Alas - Sunday and the house of cards came crashing down. Blank, I was completely blank. I knew what I wanted to write I just couldn't write it - there was a missing link that I just couldn't find and it because of the gap I couldn't move on. Again I pushed on - I went to work and sat with my outline and tried to write paragraphs, then sentences, then bullet lists to articulate my understanding of a particularly useful conceptualisation of knowledge in the curriculum. But nothing worked - I knew what I wanted to say, what I needed to say, I knew what the scholars said about it but that's where it stopped. Now in my ideal world this would be the time when I go talk to someone about my problem and why I think I'm experiencing this problem and I would probably want to talk about the body of knowledge I'm finding difficulty writing about. And then I would try again, hopefully with some new insights and ideas to guide me. 

Not living in this ideal world though, I wonder if this experience is simply telling me that maybe I'm just a bit tired - maybe its a sign of writing fatigue - unfortunately I don't have the luxury to entertain this idea too long but I've decided to take a little break from Bernstein anyway - give 'him' a week or two and then apply myself to it once more. 'A change is as good as a holiday' as my mother would often say.