Writing is a journey, not just a destination!

As compared to last week, I feel chirpier and more content with my writing performance. I feel that I am making progress albeit it is a little more. I feel I am in better control of my writing fear. Whilst I have not completely eradicated it, I believe I have managed to alleviate some of my obsessive-compulsive behaviour with editing. Yes, I am ‘editing addict’. In the past I could not refrain myself from editing. Now I have managed to do less of it. I hope one day I can totally get rid of my writing fear and editing addiction. It will be a major milestone I aim to achieve, and when I did achieve this it will give me great satisfaction and confidence-boost. I know I can do it as long as I stay focused and have faith in myself. Now thinking back, I am really glad that I have been asked to prepare the PGCAP portfolio as it has made me think a lot about learning and writing.

Writing is like a project management, which entails managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. More specifically, writing requires you to organise your thought, tackle your writing fear, manage your time, positively respond to criticisms, either constructive or destructive, and so forth. To sum up, I am enjoying writing more than before, more than when I was writing PhD thesis. I only wished my supervisor was more encouraging with my writing. I, nevertheless, understand that she had many personal and work issues to deal with at that time. My passion for writing is growing as the process helps clarify my thought, question my existing knowledge about a topic (sometimes I thought I know plenty about a topic, which turns out to be not the case), and take a more critical approach when reviewing a concept (I need to consider the pros and cons or the various possible interpretations when reviewing a concept). Writing also helps me realise that the development of a concrete and sound idea is like wine making which takes time to develop and fine tune. The crystallisation of an idea is iterative, which often involves moving forward and backward in terms of thinking and writing, and experiencing trials and error.