The magical side of scientific writing— Part 1
The writing process is an emotional one, it’s long, exhausting, and sometimes irritating. It tests our endurance and how much we can really take. Do you want this? Fight for it. Write, read, rewrite, reread, check, correct, check again, tremble of excitement, tremble of fear, you’re insecure, you’re the king of the world, you find an error in the middle of the paragraph. Now what? Read it again to make sure. Then read it back to double-check.
It’s a technical paper, it’s a scientific one, outsiders look at it like it’s just another PDF with a bunch of words all warped with some facts and evidence. What? “Facts and evidence”? There’s something very deep, very emotional about that kind of emotionless, unexciting papers. It reminds me of when ballerinas train for a recital. Bloody feet, sore legs, heart racing… But when the lights go up on that stage, it’s all gone, and all the audience sees is the graceful dancer flying through the stage, pirouetting infinitely, so effortlessly… Just like research plans, just like a thesis, just like papers and conferences. They’re oh-so-effortless with their big words and references everywhere. But no.
Scientific writing is magic. It looks effortless, but it requires hours and more hours of unanticipated work and contingencies. It seems mind-numbing, but the first thing it does is wake the mind intellectually. It feels emotionally disconnected, but within the letters, the words, the paragraphs… There’s the touch of someone who is committed enough to put his/her own personality and interests aside for the greater good — whether it be innovation, improving quality of life, finding the cure for a disease, or a witty solution for a common problem.
I’ve been into creative writing most of my life, I’ve written thousands of poems, hundred-page stories, short stories, descriptive essays, and all-you-read creative-wise. However, I must confess: the most emotional type of writing that I’ve ever engaged in is, without a doubt, scientific writing. Perhaps it’s the challenge of facing a required effortlessness in that kind of writing. Perhaps it’s the fact that I find it funny to engage in a personality-drainpipe writing genre. Perhaps it’s my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and chronic perfectionism that gives me a long-lasting fix at the moment I turn a bunch of copied/pasted references into a symphony of mashed-up letters that make sense hand-in-hand. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a getaway from real, up close, and personal writing, and maybe scientific writing isn’t emotional at all, and maybe I’m just projecting my own emotional detachment on science.
Either way, one thing is certain: scientific writing is painfully defiant. And I… I’ve always loved a good challenge. And when it comes to working… I’m sadomasochistic for sure. That’s most probably why I’ve fallen deeply, madly, undeniably in love with research. That’s most probably why I dream of doing it again. That’s most probably why I expect nothing but a yes to the scholarship.
My life, the direction of my future is now in the hands of a group of people who must consider that the passion and potential within my research proposal are better or worse than someone else’s. It’s a silent competition where the competitors will never know their opponents, where the winners will be cheered and the losers… It will be as if they never existed.
And now, the time has come. All the bad nights, cold sweats, dry lips… The only thing that lingers is the tears, an unidentified agony that I cannot silence… At one of the biggest moments of my life, where there are endless possibilities, there’s a cavity waiting to be filled once more. Now, all I am left with are the expectations, the positive visualization, the sadness and void within myself, the feeling that I’ve lost something precious and irreplaceable with whom I might reunite, or maybe never again… It’s in those hands, it’s in those eyes that one of my biggest dreams lays. And it’s those hands and those eyes that have the power to either fuel or shatter my heart of already-broken hopes and dreams.
