At times during the dissertation process, you will understand that you should be writing, but for whatever reason, you don’t feel like it. Like any creative process, writing requires open space, an open mind, and a willingness to engage with your project on a deeper level. Sometimes, you just don’t have all these factors in place. When you feel like you want to make progress, but just can’t bring yourself to write, consider finding what I call "lateral routes" to your desired goal. These "lateral routes" are other work that you can complete which will bring you closer to a finished dissertation. They might include: returning phone calls, connecting with your advisor, editing what you’ve already written, making notes on an article, running more analyses, etc. etc. The most important thing is to stay in touch with your work and to keep making progress- of any sort- on it, even when the progress is not exactly in the area you think it should be.
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