the tyranny of the blank page

I'm in somewhat of a blue funk about a paper that I'm writing. It's on cybersecurity, a subject in which I have been dumped up to my neck since early July. Now has come the time to draw a line, accept that I can't know everything, and just write the damned report. It doesn't help that every manager, analyst and his/her dog keeps making helpful suggestions which would involve more data collection.

Instead of getting on with it I have been engaging in avoidant behaviour, messing about on social media; you name it. But time is ticking on, and I have to have a reviewable draft by Monday morning.

Thankfully ellefurtle has broken the paralysis. She makes the excellent suggestion that I should explain the subject verbally to someone, because a verbal explanation will have a structure built into it. If I ask that person to take notes (and forbinproject has kindly volunteered) I can then use the narrative structure as the outline for the written paper. This is going to happen later today.

One might well ask why, knowing I have this mental block, did I move into a job which requires me to produce this sort of written output on a regular basis. Part of the answer is that I used to be able to write with ease, and lost it somewhere along the line when I moved into the zeros and ones world of programming. I'm hoping that the enforced change in behaviour will facilitate a change in mindset.