“The poet and the engineer (and the coral reef) may seem a million miles apart in their particular forms of expertise, but when they bring good ideas into the world, similar patterns of development and collaboration shape that process” (22).

Innovation. Dissertation. The two words link nicely together or rather we hope they will--that when we sit back, close the dissertation and send it on its merry way, it’s innovative, creative and offers a fresh perspective on something that someone’s going to want to read/listen to. Right? Right. I often wonder, though, how anyone can claim that something is innovative and fresh in the 21st century—doesn’t it feel like so much has already been done already?

Well Steven Johnson’s latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From, might offer some type of answer to this. In it he questions how we might “generate groundbreaking ideas that push forward our careers, our lives, our society, our culture?” I just recently bought Johnson’s book (along with Red Riding Hood, the new movie that’s coming out, and The Vampire Book: the Encyclopedia of the Undead—hey, no judgment it was only 98 cents, and I happen to buy any book that has the word vampire on its cover and now if you ever have burning desire to get up on your vampire knowledge I got ya covered!) because I’m curious as to how he might answer this question. I feel like the dissertation begs to “push forward” something for us, whether that something is our careers or our lives and an article I just read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed suggests just that. Schools look for innovative dissertations, and we want to give that to them.

But first things first: putting those good ideas down on paper. Sometime I think part of the difficulty in writing a dissertation is me: I’m my biggest obstacle. I’ve never had issues drafting something—ask my college roommate, I could whip up a pretty darn good 10-15 page source-based paper in five hours or less—and this has continued with me. My writing process differs slightly from most that I know because I write my way into everything. There’s no need for outlining, brainstorming, or rough drafts, I jump right into the first complete draft. This means, though, that my drafting process is probably longer than most, but it works for me. Normally. Until this dissertation. Now I’m struggling, and I don’t like it—not one bit. If I had one page of writing for every time I have written on a to-do list “work on dissertation” it would have been done before Christmas. Instead I’m working my way through #2 and a little thing called coding.

Perhaps struggling is part of the dissertation process, and if that’s so, I’m saddened that I’ve succumbed to the perils of it. I have good ideas I tell you! They are floating around somewhere in my head; I just need them float there way down to my fingers and out onto the page at a much faster rate.

Brain hear my call: I need #2 completed drafted by Friday (that’s two days from now) and a outline of a coding scheme. K? Well, ok then get those good ideas flying--not floating--on down to my fingers.