Just a message which will hopefully be a bit inspirational for anyone who is a bit low at the moment.

After 7 weeks of literally no work on the PhD (give or take a bit of sporadic editing) I have finally got over the depressing writers block overnight. I don't recommend the night shift - but since midnight I've been a revelation and actually got some stuff down and reorganised my writing. Although in effect I have only added 1000 words to my lit review - it has finally given me a bit of direction.

I have to admit that the only thing that kept me motivated was my supervision at 11am this morning - so it was more *necessity* rather than *divine intervention* that got me so inspired.

But still...work is work ... and I've got it done and now have a bit more of the bigger picture worked out.

If anyone is lacking inspiration - try waking up early for the sunrise... really clears the head.

Yay - well done!!! Oh I love that feeling - too bad it is so rare for me!!! Long may it last

Well done! I had writers block for nearly two months too, earlier this year. It was such a torment but then such a joy to start working again. We can do it!!!

The worst part is usually people think I'm just being lazy. My partner especially thinks I have some kind of problem with laziness and procrastination - but I think a lot of PhD students chalk off inaction as procrastination - but most of the time its a serious writers block where you can't see things objectively and can't possibly continue for a while.

My supervision today went really well and I'm really enthused about summer PhD work now.

I hope people read this and think twice before branding themselves as lazy.

thanks romersholm. you might be talking exactly about me

Thanks so much for posting and sharing with us! that's really inspired me and made me feel better!

I too had writers block for 4 months! I thought it was procrastination and laziness, but everytime i sat down at my desk, i just couldn't write anything.

nice to hear that i'm not the only one!!!

am happy for you! i don't know what am going through. i suppose its fear of the entire thesis as i don't mind writing anything else. just not my thesis. i end up finding something else to do. funny enough am able to do the reading alright. writing is the nightmare. yesterday i could hardly sleep til 5am. just worrying about my progress. i almost got up and started working on the thesis. am so desperate to feel that am making progress. yet i feel am moving so slowly.

I have to shake off my procrastination/block now!

12 days to hand in!

I agree that it is not necessarily laziness that causes the procrastination - I certainly don't see myself as a lazy person! I think what stops me writing is fear - that I don't know where to start, don't know what to do, don't think it will be good enough etc...

This happened to me AGAIN last week and up until yesterday didn't know where to start - then I just wrote an outline in bullet points and I realised that maybe I do already know what I want to say! Now I just have the fun job of 'filling out' all my bullet points... But anyway it did help!