Paper Writing

Why is it that a 3-page paper you don't care about can be the most difficult to write, yet a 15-page paper can fly off your fingertips when you're really involved with the research? I think I just answered my own question.

I'm writing a paper...yes, on a Saturday night. It's an easy paper on an easy book for a non-academic professor and a completely non-academic class. I'm supposed to "reflect." You'd think that would be simple (as evidenced by this blog, if nothing else).

But I don't know. I enjoyed the book. I've got things to say. I think I just don't know how to write a "reflection" (first person and everything) for a class. Give me the interconnectedness of Dante's Inferno and Charles Williams' Descent into Hell, or let me learn about ancient Egyptian poetry and its connection to biblical passages, and I will throw myself into the research and produce for you a masterpiece. (Both of these are subjects I've written on in the past year.) But I'm floundering with this stupid, meaningless paper. Reflect. Swallow. Spew.

They should be asking me to do something more, something critical. Maybe that's it. It's hard to respect an assignment that doesn't reflect a belief that the scholar is, in fact, a scholar.