Solo Session: PhD Iceberg Explained: Writer's Block is a Nonsense!

Students and Graduates!

In this new late-night solo talk of the PhD Iceberg Explained Series, I speak about the issue of Writer's Block, a common feature that affects PhDs, overall.

But is Writer's Block really a cognitive and intellectual challenge to all of us or is it just NONSENSE?!

Stay tuned for this solo session as I share three impactful insights along with some solutions that PhDs must put into practice if they feel they have Writer's Block.

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Thank you all for tuning in, it's been a pleasure!

Cited Bibliography:

Bergler, E. (1950). Does “writer’s block” exist? PubMed, 7(1), 43–54. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15413593
Lumivero. (2024, June 12). Dealing with writer’s block. Lumivero. https://lumivero.com/resources/dealing-with-writers-block/
Pantry, P. I. a. F. (2021, May 6). New kid on the (writer’s) block: A h

Students and Graduates!

This is a mid-roll from my late-night talk with Ilana Horwitz, PhD, about her book The Entrepreneurial Scholar. A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. Use the code IMH20 when buying her book at Princeton Univ Press

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Students and graduates,

Have a break from this session by hearing a late-night talk I had with Michael Gerharz, PhD, about the impact of communication in your PhD and in public.

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

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Chapters

• 3:36 Defining Writer's Block
• 13:14 Evolution of Writer's Block in History
• 31:00 Characteristics of Writer's Block
• 47:30 Effective Strategies to Overcome Writer's Block

Transcript

Speaker 1: 3:37

Hello students and graduates, welcome to PhD Lounge, the podcast of late-night talks in which PhDs have a drink and talk about their research topics. We're now in the mid-term of the first term of university and I hope you're doing outstandingly across your university life, socializing with your roommates and engaging with your PhD studies. I also hope that you enjoyed Halloween with your best costumes if you dressed up as your thesis or something else or you just wanted to have some fun and have some drinks. It is also the month of the Movember movement to raise awareness and help men suffering from mental health issues, including suicide thoughts and prostate cancer. Any of you PhDs out there, shave your beards and show your brilliant mustaches throughout this November to raise awareness, as I'm also doing it. Other than that, let me update you regarding my thesis progression.

Speaker 1: 4:42

I had a meeting with my supervisor back in the third week of October and he was really impressed with my progression. My supervisor shared his thoughts about how dedicated I was on a case study where I explore about the concept of the third space, contextualized for my research through the inscriptions carved in Greek and Aramaic, an old Mesopotamian language spoken in the Middle East, to determine the level of human mobility between Palmyra and other cities that connected with it. Although he challenged me across several aspects he was unsure about, and I provided arguments and evidence to clarify, I was really happy that the case study and the thesis overall has been a success, but obviously I'm still finishing it, planning to submit my dissertation in June 2025. So, for those who had a supervision meeting recently, and if you had positive appreciation from your supervisors, then I congratulate you for your achievements. Now I'm currently in Portugal, spending some holiday time outside of my part-time job in Nandos, but at the same time, I'm dedicating myself to progress on my dissertation, researching the data I collected so far to resume my writing. What I'm writing is a case study on the religious and civic buildings of Tura-Europas in Syria, where I'm analyzing data about the hybrid art and architecture of those civic and religious structures that were built and refurbished from the Seleucid to the Roman empires in that city. While I regenerate my energies, I must not put a stone on my thesis, even though I want to relax in my home country and spend some quality time with my brother and my mother, who are also on holiday and will stay until December, while I'm only until the 18th of November.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So by the time you're tuning in to this late night solo session, I'm already on holiday and, with this brief introduction, it's now time to kick off a new late-night solo talk of the Iceberg Explained series. This solo session resonates with everyone who is doing a PhD and the struggle of writing is real and sometimes we enter into a place where our writing ideas come across difficult, somehow becoming annoying throughout our dissertations. Many of us experience it in different ways and we even share it with friends or on social media. Whilst you hear this session, some of you will probably identify with the points I share during this late night talk. On the other hand, some PhDs know how to challenge this problem and even say that it is BS and an excuse to prevent writing productivity and progress throughout the dissertation. So grab your drinks, have a seat and let's introduce the following session Writer's block.

Speaker 1: 8:44

We've all been there, myself included. Writer's block is that annoying feeling that stops us from putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, affecting our writing skills and research progress at any time writing skills and research progress at any time. It's a totally normal obstacle that we feel and makes it really hard to come up with ideas and then to write or type them down in our PhD dissertations in a way that makes sense and is ready to submit by an established deadline. In other words, it's like our thoughts get stuck and we can't seem to get them down properly to present to our PhD supervisors. In a blog post by Anna Welpingers, she talks about the different factors that can lead to writer's block, and I think this really resonates with all of us when writing our PhD essays, whether you're in STEM or Arts and Humanities. These are juggling many decisions at the same time, which consumes your time and doesn't give your time to research and write. Trying to plan out the structure of your dissertation, come up with simple or complex sentences, set deadlines for yourself, deal with personal issues, eye fatigue from staring at a screen all day and the lack of mental calibration that affects our cognitive process and writing abilities, especially when we don't have much constructive feedback from our supervisors. Anna suggests that the type of feedback we receive, such as taking a long time to explain it and anonymity, not being clear across all the points and inconsistency, might affect our writing performance and the quality of our chapter's drafts with cohesive, clear and consistent quality writing. This is totally normal during the PhD, as Anna says that not every PhD candidate gets clear feedback from their supervisors and that we just have to bear with it. Additionally, it can make us feel like we're not producing quality writing during the research, causing the so-called writer's block when writing things that are interesting and clear as possible to present to our supervisors and then to the examiners during the Viva Voce, or even when publishing a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal. While Anna has given her experience with writer's block, we don't actually know how many different emotional stages it can take, as it differs from one student to the next. So where does this interesting term come from?

Speaker 1: 11:39

Historically, the term writer's block is thought to have been coined first by Austrian-American psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler. In the late 1940s, bergler wrote a series of articles about writer's block in psychoanalytic journals. His texts led to the publication of his article in 1950, does Writer's Block Exist? In the journal American Imago 7.1. To prove his claim about the concept writer's block as his own, bergler argued that this term was an erotic inhibition of a lack of inspiration and productivity from creative writers. They suffered and endured writer's block in order to restore their well-being and start writing words again to perform productivity, for example. Bergler's argument about writer's block was a simple equation Words equals milk. Well, when creative writers wrote words, milk was produced, and when the writers had their milk dried up, writer's block occurred. However, the concept of writer's block is even older than Bergler's claim. In fact, such a concept goes back to the ancient world, when the Sumerians developed their own writing system on clay tablets. There were gods that even quote-unquote aided writers to write their works, such as Babylonian deity Nabu or the Egyptian god of writing, thoth.

Speaker 1: 17:38

Plausible evidence of experiencing writer's block comes from ancient Greece and Rome. Writers such as Plato, hippocrates, epicurus, thucydides, seneca, catulus, diodorus, siculus and many more documented events that they eyewitnessed, as well as events that were addressed by third parties. In other words, to make their Greco-Roman audiences well-informed, ancient Greek and Roman writers needed to polish their writing style to make it well-read and also be heard when speaking in public, and, of course, they also faced mental challenges to create fanciest writing pieces. During the Greek and Roman periods, their inspiration came from gods and goddesses and the Muses, for example. Greek and Roman writers got their writing inspiration while worshipping the gods Hermes, mercury, athena, minerva, apollo and the Muses Calliope, cadmus, erato, euterpe, thalia, urania, cleo, melpomene and Polyhymnia. The point here is that their view of writer's block was based on the behaviors and decisions of their Greco-Roman deities and Muses in order to get new ideas and inspiration to write something for their audiences, and it also depended on whether a muse or a deity attributed writing skills as a gift to a talented writer.

Speaker 1: 19:14

In the 5th century BC, greek physicist Hippocrates would call writer's block as a melancholia, a humoral diagnosis that our bodies would respond to symptoms of feelings of discomfort preventing him and other Greek writers from writing anything. Hippocrates wrote an intriguing observation that melancholia would affect writers during springtime, recommending wine mixed with water as a unique cure for melancholia, anxiety, yawning and rigor. Roman writer Seneca also shared his thoughts about writer's block, expressing in his letters loathsome feelings of sadness, disappointment and unease. To prevent his inner voice from speaking its own mind and corrupt his, seneca addressed a simple yet expensive and lavish diet to cure the melancholia. He believed that the expensive and lavish foods would lift his writing spirit, unlike cheap and readily available meals that would lower the humor. This intriguing issue of melancholia blocking writers around issues with food, continued throughout the centuries.

Speaker 1: 20:32

During the 15th century Italian Renaissance, catholic priest Marsilio Ficino thought that melancholia was a condition of the soul influenced by astrology and food. Like Seneca, ficino blamed food, providing an extensive list of the types of food that could have a negative impact on writers and their writing skills. This included dry, hard burned, salted, bitter, stale, roasted and fried foods. Stale, roasted and fried foods. Ficino also advised limiting consumption of food along with wine and avoiding eating certain types of food, including rabbit, beef, old cheese, pickled fish, beans, lentils, cabbage, mustard, radishes, garlic, onions, leeks, blackberries and carrots. Oof, here was probably a food activist advocating anorexia for the writers of the Renaissance period. Many writers might have followed Ficino's advice, and many of them probably died of starvation for avoiding these food types. Nonetheless, ficino recommended fruits, sweets and a good time of resting that could cure melancholia and also other symptoms that could affect writing, including anger, fear, misery, sorrow, worry, purging urination, physical exertion, fasting, frequent sex and cold, dry air. Wow, he was on top of everything. After all, he was a Catholic priest and, for context, the 15th century was the period of the Inquisition, and so anything that could corrupt any Catholic worshipper and the Catholic doctrine should be avoidable by means of prosecution and public acts of faith.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Moving on to the 17th century, english writer Robert Burton published a book about fighting against melancholia. It's quite ironic, though, as he himself suffered from this illness that affected his writing skills. The name of the book is quite long and so I share half of it the Anatomy of Melancholy, what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics and several cures of it. The rest of the book's title I'll leave it in the description. In a nutshell, it is a manual guide to cure the melancholia of writing, as Burton told at the time that he wrote it to keep himself busy and to avoid melancholia and a complex range of emotions alongside with it, such as lumpiness and annoyance.

Speaker 1: 23:24

In his book, burton also talks about the types of food to avoid, and it's not that far from what Ficino said back in the 15th century. Burton indicates that the cure for it was basically starving until you die, which is more than an extreme thought. Types of food include beef, pork, goat, venison, rabbit, milk, chicken, fish, cucumber, cabbage, melon, honey, ginger, pepper, sugar, any types of bread, wine, beer and all types of fruit and pulses. Ficino was crazy with the cure for melancholia while giving his thoughts to avoid certain types of food. But Burton was even crazier than his predecessor by voiding the writer's groceries list of many types of food which it was of easy access. He probably thought that all the people of the 17th century were writers. But oh well, times were different back then.

Speaker 1: 24:37

In the 19th century, things would start to make a turn about the feelings of melancholia would start to make a turn about the feelings of melancholia blamed by food consumption. To keep writers alive but also inspired to write their works, english romantic writer Samuel Coleridge recommended looking out for the raindrops sliding across the windows, even though he stated that there was no cure for melancholia through this method. Was no cure for melancholia through this method? English doctor George Bluntford had a different approach, recommending eating a variety of foods including wine, milk, rum, eggs, cafe sherry and beef tea. This doctor was really into something. He knew which foods could cure writer's melancholia. And melancholia as a synonym like for writer's block, was no longer used.

Speaker 1: 25:29

In the late 19th century onwards, the word blocking emerged in writing as a philosophical placeholder. In the 1890s book the Principles of Psychology by American psychologist and philosopher William James, blocking turned to be an euphemism as a way of describing a cognitive struggle that in a stream of impulses in people's thoughts, which also included how writers performed when they're affected by that psychological blocking. Affected by that psychological blocking. James' book, the Principles of Psychology, wasn't a psychological analysis of blocking itself. Instead, it was a collection of anecdotes about how human consciousness, wills and experiences that obstructed human thoughts. Moreover, james argued that blocking isn't a psychological disorder, but rather a process of voluntary action that temporarily delays humans to make decisions and take actions. James believed that actions made by us are driven by our own impulses and that blocking becomes a result of our impulses conflicting with what we can and can't do. This also applies to writing and writer's block, as it's an impulsive act driven by our human will to write.

Speaker 1: 26:57

During the 20th and now in the 21st centuries, writer's block has been a trend in pop culture, for whatever reason we call it, when we stop writing anything because of a stop in our thinking stream. It was defined as a psychological characterization by psychologists and psychoanalysts like Bergler to describe how our behavior and thinking regarding writing can change. Fun fact, burglar also blamed food consumption as a factor for writer's block, blaming the lack of breastfeeding impacting on the mental health and creativity of writers, thus provoking writer's block. Hence his quote words equals milk. Moreover, writer's block became a popular trend in literary fiction, with writers using James' blocking concept into their own writing context, such as novels. And in terms of novels, blocking is somehow a common feature for novelists to write texts that are cryptic and nonsensical in a literary sense. Novelists nonetheless claim that it's a product of writer's block, making readers feel like they're experiencing a real-life situation. Over the course of the 20th century until today, many books have been published that challenge the idea of writer's block, including Writer's Block, written by Zachary Leder in 1991, the Midnight Disease, the Drive to Write, writer's Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W Flaherty in 2004,. And Consuming Silences how we Read Authors who Don't Pub publish, by Miles Weber in 2005.

Speaker 1: 28:46

With all the experience of facing writer's block, that affects all of us when writing our PhDs, when running dry of ideas, we must have a moment to reflect about it when having a break away from our research and ask ourselves the following questions. Away from our research, and ask ourselves the following questions Is writer's block a moment in which we lack writing too much, or is it about writing too little and assuming that we haven't produced the much of research we wished to conduct? Is writer's block a cognitive dysfunction of or an academic intellectual confusion? And lastly, is there such a thing as writer's block. Let's have a think about these questions and try to answer them together throughout this late night session. I provide three impactful reasons why we have this stigma and what we can learn from it to produce quality PhD research and writing.

Speaker 1: 29:48

The first point I want to draw regarding writer's block is our internal struggle in thinking about what we perceive as the best way to write. This often comes down to a question of how we think we should be writing after we've done research. Professor Rachel Cayley at the University of Toronto says that our inner struggle with thinking comes from having too many ideas to write, leading to a mental block about how to start writing them in a structured draft. With so many ideas racing through our minds and us trying to figure out where and when to start writing, we end up feeling stuck and unable to make progress on our PhD dissertations. The issue is we spend too much time trying to work out the best way to start writing. We get too deep in thought and eventually losing time in not writing bits of research straight away rather than jotting down the collected data first. On top of that, it's about finding the ideal way to kick off an amazing argument before sending it to your supervisor.

Speaker 1: 31:01

Thinking about the best way to start writing may lead to feelings of failure, self-doubt and anxiety in our PhDs. For instance, in a study carried out in 2015 by Zorbas showing the prevalence of writer's block among first-year students at the Faculty of Education at Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey, he asks a series of questions that take into account different factors, including socioeconomic backgrounds, gender, study at the department, family income, background and profession, writing habits, reading books and activities performed during secondary school. The study shows that different students have trouble writing their first paragraph in an assessment, getting a kind of brain fog in their writing skills without knowing what to write, or even getting stuck while writing on an aspect that leaves them unable to write anymore. Some students in the study have different levels of writer's block, while others have writing and reading habits that prevent writer's block and increase vocabulary and knowledge when writing an essay. Writer's block and increase vocabulary and knowledge when writing an essay. Zorbas argues that the main reason for writer's block in his study is that students who don't read or write as much as others have trouble with their writing, no matter who they are and their background. His study doesn't focus on PhD students, but it's still worth noting that it suggests that struggling to think clearly while writing your PhD dissertation could be a sign of writer's block. If we struggle to get started on our sentences, it can affect our thinking and the feeling of being unable to write ideas down on paper.

Speaker 1: 32:57

Another issue about what we might perceive as writer's block is having very high standards in our writing style. As PhDs, this is a striking feature on our writing skills. When reaching the level of studying for a PhD degree, within our minds we expect in ourselves to excel our writing skills flawlessly to show to our supervisors, and so we create high standards in what comes to write a perfect chapter draft. However, we write with grammatical errors, unclear sentences and misleading research data, which is part of the PhD experience. Moreover, when we begin developing our writing skills, thinking about not making any writing mistakes can lead us to writer's block.

Speaker 1: 33:49

For example, you start your first year of your PhD and obviously first impressions count. When you start working with your supervisor, whether it is the first or the second time, in those first impressions, writing skills is a must. And then you start thinking that you must be perfect and you establish high standards in what comes to your writing style and structure. High standards in what comes to your writing style and structure. You start to write your first draft with a rich vocabulary so that your supervisor would think that you're showing an excellent written structure at the beginning. Here's a reality check. Finding perfectionism or having high standards in your writing during your PhD is completely out of the question and leads to feelings of writer's block Because, despite having great ideas, you're more than likely to have unclear sentences and words that don't fit the context of your research analysis and overall argument. Along the way, you'll find it hard to write more ideas while keeping thinking about having high standards in your writing. Also, your supervisor has practice and experience and has done a PhD and easily notices that you're trying to impress with eccentric words and erudite-level sentences. Having high standards throughout your writing skills in your PhD not only leads you to writer's block, but also have negative impacts on your research abilities to write chapters and the flow of your ideas.

Speaker 1: 35:27

If I recall one of my late night solo sessions about the challenges of the first draft, it's not required to write an excellent draft, since it is a draft and mistakes will go along the way. Even on my pilot and first episode of the PhD launch, I made mistakes. In my PhD, my supervisor asked me to write two pages about the concept of hybridity and third space. I ended up writing more than two pages, but I learned the lesson that it was just a simple activity given to me to quote-unquote loosen up my ideas to be expanded following the first feedback, along with some mini-courses that Swansea University offers about writing skills and tutoring with academic writing. The point here is expecting yourself to perform well throughout your PhD.

Speaker 1: 36:20

Writing and having writing standards is okay, but at the same time, not to exaggerate. Too many high standards are unrealistic and unreasonable, as it can take you plenty of productive time for research and writing, and you'll always be prone to feedback and advice to take different writing methods and outcomes during your PhD, even after you become a doctor. Letting go of them and establishing standards that go accordingly with your time schedule and writing style can lead to positive performance and you'll become mentally balanced and happy while writing fantastic chapter drafts. Along with your supervisor's constructive criticism. And since us PhDs have standards in writing and in other aspects of our life, we also have standards in what comes to invest in quality clothing that keeps us warm, cool and stylish, but sometimes having standards in what comes to establish a budget, to buy what we want is necessary, and so buying second-hand clothing is the best option. That's why I proudly present this late night talks sponsor PreWorn. Prewarn is the largest secondhand clothing brand in the UK and one of the largest across the world. With their unbeatable prices of clothing ranging from suits, shoes, jackets, coats, dresses and so on, many consumers go to PreWarn to buy the best clothing brands, where you often find them expensive to buy from an original or retail store. You will find 10,000 plus clothing brands like Ralph Lauren, brooks Brothers, burberry, valentino, the North Face, levi's and many more, with an excellent rating of 4.7 out of 5 in customer rating experience from more than 3,000 reviews on Trustpilot and 35% of customers' returning rate. And if you're tuning in to this late-night talk, you'll get 10% off from your purchase by typing PHDLaunch10. Off from your purchase by typing PHDLaunch10. Check out their website, prewonltd, and use my discount code to get your well-deserved 10% off to look stylish across all seasons so that people around won't even notice that you're wearing second-hand clothing. Now back to the topic.

Speaker 1: 38:55

The third and last point that might be related to feelings of writer's block could be our apprehension in writing. This can happen when we're writing a paper or a chapter draft and we think our writing skills aren't up to scratch. The term writing apprehension was coined by researchers John Daly and Michael Miller to describe a complex set of attitudes, emotions and behaviors that reinforce each other. If you're a PhD and while you're writing your dissertation and you feel anxious about your writing skills, you might worry about negative outcomes like rejection, criticism, embarrassment or looking foolish toward yourself and your supervisor. Also, writing apprehension could be described as a kind of a psychological resistance, where any PhD writer isn't able to write or is constantly interrupted throughout the writing process. This is often because they avoid writing, have negative thoughts about the worth of a particular writing project, or feel general anxiety and negative emotions that make them agitated during the research and writing process. This can then lead to what we perceive as writer's block.

Speaker 1: 40:17

Moreover, as the PhD degree requires a lot of high-quality writing and indeed having writing standards is okay, as mentioned above, many PhDs still feel unsure about their writing skills. They wonder if their writing style is effective and clear enough for their supervisor to understand when reading and evaluating their arguments. This can lead to a fear of failure, even if we make a tiny mistake in our academic writing in a chapter draft or a paper. Fear can lead to anxiety and negative feelings about not writing enough and professionally within the image we create of a quote-unquote, perfect PhD dissertation. This fear of writing apprehension can result in self-procrastination and feelings of being blocked and unable to write. The self-procrastination and blocking also come from the fact that there are other things to think about after the writing is done. These include revision, adding footnote citations, bibliographical references, changing the written language in some areas that the supervisor has recommended you to make them clearer, seeking help from writing editors to edit your drafts, which also includes a second opinion about your writing style and structure other than your supervisors, and so on. All of these factors can influence how your PhD writing style and structure are seen and thus having feelings of being apprehended when writing any piece of information while thinking about the right academic words and syntax.

Speaker 1: 41:58

But focusing too much on writing apprehension isn't just about getting blocked. It also means you're less motivated to write or looking to other people for help with your PhD writing. On top of that, not looking for advice to improve our PhD writing skills can make us even more apprehensive about writing our dissertations. It's possible that we don't know about all the resources our universities offer to help PhD candidates improve their writing, since we're too focused to write and send the drafts to our supervisors, which is fair enough. On the other hand, as time goes by and we get more feedback on our different chapter drafts, we start thinking about consulting someone who can help us. This can be time-consuming if we lack time management skills. If you're looking for help from someone who specializes in academic writing, there's a good chance your university has an academic writing center. These are great places to go if you want to get feedback on your writing style and structure. They can also give you feedback on what you need to work on and then talk it through with your supervisor after they've given their feedback.

Speaker 1: 43:18

Jacqueline Burkett says that any student, whether they're doing a PhD or not, who doesn't get help with their written structure from an academic writing center will end up feeling more and more afraid of writing, leading then to writer's block and stopping them from improving their writing skills. For example, throughout my PhD program, my supervisor always advised me to consult the Center of Academic Success CAS for short. During the first year and a half of my PhD, I consulted one writing expert a very few times, since I needed to conduct more research to present results and I was more concerned in writing more drafts around my main argument. However, as I'm currently in my fourth year, I've been consulting CAS more often to get my written structure and style properly done and acceptable for both my supervisor and, eventually, my examinator. I realized that I should have listened to my supervisor in the first place to consult CAS more often at the initial stages of my PhD to prevent accumulation of drafts that must be revised Nonetheless. I also think that, even with the accumulation I got from the first year until now, the feedback from my supervisor influences my written structure, which is strange in a way, because it prevents me from having feelings of writer's block and keep actively writing, even if it sucks at that moment, when going back to those drafts I yet have to check upon.

Speaker 1: 44:56

After sharing some important points from many others that exist and which are associated with writer's block, are there any solutions that can help PhDs to improve their writing and prevent writer's block? First of all, writing is a fundamental skill in liberal arts education that allows us to express our ideas and feelings on paper, to be read and written further with new ideas and thoughts from anyone have moments where we don't feel the will to write anything, or maybe even write a little, or even not knowing how to start writing a text, feeling blocked at that moment. However, there are solutions that help PhDs to keep actively writing and improve their writing skills. These are some I think it's worth sharing. Seeking help from writing experts other than your supervisor is one of them. As I stated previously, writing experts like Cass from Swansea University, where I ask for consultations, offer a different perspective on how to make your written structure more connected to your main arguments and more understandable for yourself and your supervisor. They give their feedback from a writer's perspective on where your writing is unclear and needs to be checked to fit around your main argument, but not an academic view of your research topic. Remember that writing experts have also other undergraduates, masters and PhDs to help, and so their advice is time-limited to help with your dissertation as a whole, as they also push you to do it by yourself, along with the feedback of your supervisor, who evaluates and challenges your research arguments and evidence. Rereading and reshaping your writing structure is also another solution to prevent writer's block, which keeps you not thinking about writing the perfect chapter with Eurodite-level words. As I mentioned above, perfectionism in writing doesn't exist, and thinking about it makes you feel blocked from writing anything. Also, you're always prone to feedback from your supervisor, and he or she makes you keep writing, helping you out of pressure on the run.

Speaker 1: 47:31

Next is free writing, meaning writing anything that is not related to your research topic. In other words, in this day and age where bloggers write anything about any topic of their preference, you could either start a blog about your preferred topics, your hobbies, or begin journaling your thoughts, your personal and family issues that are affecting you, your achievements, goals and so on, to keep yourself actively writing, and even you may write words on your life journal that you never thought in writing them on your dissertation. Journaling becomes also a stimulus to engage into writing, even though you could make it a hobby, reminding yourself that words come up and you're able to write and improve your writing skills. Taking small breaks and planning a limited number of words you want to write for a day can also help you to make your writing clearer and prevent writer's block. Small breaks, like having a toilet break, can help to release the stress of your research and return fresh to resume your writing.

Speaker 1: 48:40

It might seem odd what I'm saying, but saying this from my personal experience. I often take toilet breaks to release some stress in trying to find ideas to make my research flow. After releasing my stress, my new ideas come to my mind after I leave the toilet, writing them afterwards to keep the harmony of my research. As for the limited number of words, you can set up 500 words in a day or write 250 words in an hour or a thousand words in a space of four hours. Setting up a number of words per day will depend on your mood and how much you want to write.

Speaker 1: 49:23

Socializing also helps to not only clear the stress of your research, but it also can help you to have some time to share your concerns about your research or talking about life with someone. You can talk with a friend by having a coffee or lunch at the campus and talk about either the research or how you spend your days when you're not researching. This surely can break away from sitting at the desk and just writing without any breaks, and your brain will respond differently when you have new ideas to write after socializing with a friend. Last but not least, if you have trouble writing your chapter drafts, you could use AI as a support to give you some ideas to begin sentences. The use of AI often comes in handy if you're blocked on your writing and don't know where to start, and so when typing some words to AI, such as make an outstanding starting sentence about XYZ, and the AI does the job. Nevertheless, ai is an automated tool that gives automatic responses that are a bit close to what you want to seek help, but does not give the full answer. It is up to you to shape it to your own writing context and structure.

Speaker 1: 50:46

So back to one of the several questions I said at the beginning Does writer's block even exist? My honest answer is that writer's block only exists if you want to, since the skill and magic of writing produce for life. We write every day, regardless of what we do. Obviously, there are instances where we feel an internal struggle regarding what we desire to write in our research topics, and it's just not common. It's a normal thing, but that shouldn't be an excuse to avoid writing and leave it for tomorrow, because that's nonsense. As people tend to say, don't leave what you have today for tomorrow. That is something that must be practiced every day to keep our thoughts and ideas written. And I also leave the thought that the obstacle of writer's block must be challenged by ourselves, diminishing the fear of whatever outcome it'll appear.

Speaker 1: 51:49

Writing isn't perfect, as it's open to many interpretations and challenges that us, as PhDs, must face and provide clear and concise arguments supported with scientific evidence. At the same time, you'll realize that you're achieving a big accomplishment, which is becoming a doctor of philosophy within your field of expertise, pushing yourself to overcome any obstacle that affects you, in which writer's block is included. Ultimately, what I can say to overcome feelings of writer's block is to keep writing and exercise your brain muscles to craft more sentences and improve your written structure. And even on the days when it feels impossible to write, remember that you're not alone in this struggle. And with that, it is a wrap-up of another fantastic late-night solo session of the Iceberg Explained series.

Speaker 1: 52:52

Thank you all for being with me in this session about the issue of writer's block and my honest thoughts about it. By the time you're tuning in to this late night session, I'm already spending my holiday in Portugal with my family and friends, returning back to Swansea on the 18th of November to return back to university and my part-time job and, of course, producing more content and late-night talks with brilliant-minded PhDs. If you've enjoyed this session, you can check out other ones and my late-night talks with PhDs on Spotify, apple Podcasts and many other podcast platforms, as well as on my website, phdloungecouk, where you can also follow my socials Facebook, phdpodlounge, instagram at phdlmf and xphdloungecast. And if you're a PhD or want to make any collabs, then you can send me an email at luigphdlunch at gmailcom. Thank you all for tuning in. It has been a pleasure, thank you.