There are two things I am particularly passionate about, one being writing and the other one being rally (if you couldn’t tell by the title of this post already). Maybe people have the perception that writing is like writing in Nascar or Formula 1, where you need to flatout the accelerator and just go as fast as you can. Need to write that, no matter what, or the word count is important, the number of pages or whatever.
In fact, I tend to believe that it seems more akin to Rally than anything else. How? Well, putting it lightly, it’s not always goint to be pedal-to-the-metal, and going high speeds. Actually, most of the times it’s all about the breaks and slowing down, keeping control. That is important people: control, and not actually going as fast as you can.
Well, of course, going fast is needed, after all it’s rally, and you are writing most of the times with deadlines and you need to PRODUCE, because we live in a capitalist sociaty (yeah, screw it), so SOMETHING must be done. In thesis cases, writing must be done. But the trouble I believe is that oftentimes people don’t just stop and consider what they are writing, or even worse…
The worst part is when they disregard everything they’ve written so far and want to restart it from the ground up. Trouble is, different from video-games, you can’t just open a menu and the suddenly restart at the beginning. Unfortunately, reality is way more cruel than video-games, but it doesn’t mean we cannot learn something useful from them! The issue seems to be with perfectionism. We are always striving to be the fastest, having the best lap. Equally true, we want to be remembered, have the greatest score but then… for what? What’s going to change, if anything?
So then, writing and riding (rallying in this case) became way more interesting and pleasurable for me when I let go of the need to be first place and then replaced it with being relieved to finish in some other place and usually not-in-the-best-conditions-possible car, due to some bump on the road or sudden crash.
In writing we will fail, we will crash (but hopefully not burn), and we will always reconsider how we could have done that metaphorical curb with words better. But it’s never going to be perfect. Of course, after it ends, we can always come back and see the errors and consider what could have been done differently, but then…. At least it was done, anyhow, somehow.
In the end, the finish line is important, not in how much time, or in which state the car is in, but finishing (in one piece) is what really counts. In this regard, I very much believe that Rallying and (academic) writing are somewhat linked together.
(Afterall, you can always re-print that version after it’s been shipped, or rerun that lap after you’ve finished it. But remember, only after you’ve really finished it. Not in midterm, not before. Just finish it.)