Inger Mewburn at The Thesis Whisperer wrote a brilliant post recently on getting writing finished.

The ‘Out The Door’ rant « The Thesis Whisperer

In his superb book “Writing for social scientists” (which should be renamed “Writing for everyone”), Howard Becker talks about the importance of being the kind of writer who can get stuff “Out The Door”. He suggests writers need to think more like companies who make gadgets like phones and computers. Electronic consumer goods companies have similar problems to writers, but they have shipping schedules they must stick to if they want to stay in business. The engineers will want to delay shipping until the product matchs the vision in their heads, but the marketing people will be happy with ‘good enough’. Even if the new gadget is rough around the edges, the marketing people will still make the engineers get it Out The Door.

Mewburn goes on to discuss how different personalities will struggle with different aspects of finishing. Because the first step in solving a problem is correctly identifying what the problem is.

Go read it. It’s well worth your time.