3,000 Words

I have one more week until a major paper is due. I call this paper "major" because 1) I've been working on it for a very long time (and I include all the thinking and drawing and drafting into my "very long time") and 2) my advisor is my professor for this class. There's something about having my advisor as my professor. I had him during my very first semester here, and I remember feeling like I had to do really good work because I wanted to make him feel okay about advising me. You know, to make sure he was confident that he wasn't going to spend the next 4-5 years advising someone who was, well, way below-average.

After having spent several hours considering how to write this paper I began writing. Weeks ago. Making my decision about how to write this paper came after writing about 1,000 words each for two other paper proposals that were shot down. As I worked on it today, I looked at my parking lot document (I keep a separate document with all the stuff I remove from my working draft just in case) and saw there were 3,000 words in there. That's how many words I've tossed. That's approximately 6 single spaced pages in Times New Roman 12pt font. I may be a bit over the top when it comes to writing. But I'm a drafter. I write draft upon draft. It's how I work through my ideas, make changes, hone my craft, and also a way for me to freak out and deal with my imposter.

Yep, 3,000 words. Tossed. All that for a 6,000 word paper.