*hurty brain bits crunchy crunchy foo*

I'm finding the primary drawback to a set of research projects where the findings all come together at once is this: it's been at least a year and a half since my head has been in a scientific-writing sort of space, and getting the first chunk of Results written is... excruciating. Guess I'll keep launching my head at that wall and waiting for something to break. I'm hoping that I can bust up the wall enough to get a slight bit of inertia going, that I can get far enough forward to feel I've made some progress, and then get to that space where I really write, i.e. the revision process.

(However, if my skull cracks first, then I'll kick the roomie off the game console and beat up on pixels for a while)

In other news, happy birthday to novapsyche, the ravishing young whippersnapper who's finally catching up to a bunch of the rest of us. ;-)

*boggle*

Okay, so I'm in a bit of a writing groove (still the first iteration), and I sit back for a second and look at what I've put together so far. Boring as all get out, true, and feeling rather amateur in the language usage (no surprise there, that's why it's the first iteration). But then something else strikes me (all together: *WHAM*)... in this first draft, I do believe the entire body of text won't sum up to more than about 4 pages, single spaced.

4 pages? Maybe 5? Abstract-background-results-discussion?

Am I doing something wrong?

No, I don't think so... maybe I'm just so used to the double-spaced boilerplate that typifies so many other manuscripts that I'm feeling like I'm underdoing something.

Then the other realization hits: 22 months of work, approximately $27,000 in materials alone (reagents, animals, etc.), and a dozen meetings. All of that condensed into 4, maybe 5 pages of very straightforward (if scientific) text.

*sigh*

And people wonder why I'm not necessarily so thrilled at the prospect of staying as an academic researcher.