writing – Heather Hoyt

This is hard

14 Oct 2025Posted in do somethingTagged dissertation, education, phd, research, school, writingLeave a comment

I’m writing a dissertation for the first time in my life, and it’s harder than expected. Not that I expected it would be easy. I am making progress, but it feels like it is often a few steps forward and a few steps backward. Instead of going straightforward in a line, I am winding myself through a maze with quite a few inevitable dead-ends.

Sometimes I write thousands of words and then immediately think how I am going to reframe the whole thing. And often, despite working on a chapter for weeks, I don’t have much to show for it at all, but I know I’ve been working, and I know that the work was necessary. Sometimes you don’t know where to go until you’ve explored around a bit.

But I’ve also felt terrified of my dissertation. I wondered at that, because I’ve written book-length projects before, and I’ve written academic papers, and there is nothing about this dissertation that I haven’t really done before. Except for one thing: I have a committee who will read this. I’ve never had a committee before, and they are made up of exceptionally talented people who are all more intelligent than I am. It’s intimidating, even though I know that they are there to help me.

I have written over 20,000 words on my dissertation, but I do believe I will rewrite and redo almost all of that, so it’s as if I’ve written nothing. And yet, the next 20,000 words will be a whole lot easier because of that foundation I have.

I think one conclusion is that when things take longer than you expect, it’s not necessarily your fault. Maybe you are doing something wrong, and maybe there are quicker ways of doing it, but you learn a lot from going the wrong way for a while. You build yourself up by making mistakes. Projects are not straightforward, and in the turns and curves and backtracks, they become much richer and more interesting.

Courage is better than confidence

9 Mar 2025Posted in inspirationTagged confidence, courage, good enough, graduate school, learning, life, mental health, teaching, writing1 Comment

I’m currently teaching an in-person class. I’m new to teaching, and I’m doing the best that I can, but sometimes I don’t have a lot of confidence in myself. And that’s okay.

Because confidence isn’t particularly motivating. I can be very confident that I can do something, but still not want to do it at all. I can feel capable and skilled, but that doesn’t meant I get up and do it.

Courage can be what motivates me to actually do the thing.

Getting a PhD has taken a lot of courage. I had to apply, and I had to get letters of recommendation, and pick out a writing sample that I thought would be good enough. And now I submit to conferences and teach classes. I reach out to committee members, and I meet with my advisor regularly. I get harsh feedback sometimes, and I keep going.

But I don’t feel particularly good at any of this. I know I’m good enough to be here and do this thing, but I still have a lot to learn. I keep on growing.

Courage helps me in those days when I know I’m struggling, but that I go out and I try anyway. I have courage when I raise my hand to ask a question sometimes. When I meet a new person and have to engage in small talk. When I want to go home and crawl in bed and not face the things in front of me, but I instead get up and do my best.

If we wait until we are confident, then we don’t give ourselves the time and the space to learn. My best research is not when I figure it out on my own, but when I bring the beginning of an idea and share it with others. When I’m not confident, and I’m ready to learn and change, and I learn so much in that space.

So don’t seek out confidence. It will come when it’s ready, and it doesn’t ever need to be there at all. Instead, seek courage, to get up and try even when you don’t feel like it.

Weight

16 Sep 2024Posted in fracturedTagged academics, deadlines, decisions, goals, life, research, writing1 Comment

I recently finished a rough draft of a paper and sent it to my advisor. I had meant to finish that paper in the summer. Then school started, and I thought I should be able to finish it by the end of August. And then August ended, and I no longer had a deadline, just a heavy weight that I had not completed a draft yet.

I felt so behind, and I did not want to work on this paper. I was stuck. I felt guilty for my lack of progress. But I needed to work. So I decided I was just going to sit down and dictate it. I turned on the dictator, and I talked.

I had to stop talking midway through because I had kids coming home from school, but then I kept typing until I was 4,000 words in and I had a very messy word vomit rougher than rough draft.

The paper got a whole lot easier. I was able to go through and make that word vomit into something that actually resembled actual research and argumentation.

I still need to do more research (there is always more to read). I still need to improve my arguments. I still need to proofread and actually put in proper citations.

But I think I hated working on that paper not because I hated the subject material or the argument, but because it reminded me that I had disappointed myself. I had expectations that I didn’t meet.

When I finally finished what I had wanted to do for so long, the paper wasn’t so bad anymore.

I’m not sure what to do about that in the future.

Lower my expectations? But sometimes if I have high expectations, I can get a whole lot done.

Just get things done, so I’m not missing deadlines? This is the best case scenario. I’m always happier when I’m ahead of schedule instead of behind schedule.

Maybe have multiple deadlines in mind in the first place? I mean, the deadlines were my deadlines. The actual deadline for this paper is towards the end of October (for a final draft, not a rough draft), but I don’t necessarily get kicked out of graduate school if I miss that deadline. So maybe my own self-imposed deadlines need to have a different flair: I need to realized that sometimes I have overly optimistic deadlines, realistic deadlines, and life-gets-complicated deadlines. And set all of those different dates for myself, so that when I blow past the overly optimistic deadline, I don’t feel so much guilt.

How to come up with ideas

17 Jan 202417 Jan 2024Posted in essayTagged creating, creativity, ideas, writingLeave a comment

Fill up the blank space. Just go for it. Release yourself of expectations of doing something good and just do something. Starting with something horrible is easier than starting with nothing.
Make connections. I like to connect different ideas that seem unrelated and something new and beautiful starts developing. A singular idea is usually rarely new–but it becomes new when connected to something unexpected.
Journal and notetaking. If you don’t write down your thoughts, then the thoughts are forgotten.
Read, watch, listen. Keep reading and experiencing, all different types of stuff, and pay attention.
Criticize. Figuring out what you think is wrong can be a good way to discover what you think is right.
Ask and answer questions.
Talk with others. I get really good ideas when I’m talking with people. The combination of their thoughts and my thoughts together can go in really unexpected places.
Randomness and play. Sometimes you need to stop looking in order to find something. Embrace the random. Use random generators. Play around. And a new idea might come out of it.

Running as fast as I can

16 Mar 202216 Mar 2022Posted in do something, essay, my lifeTagged goals, life, parenting, planning, productivity, running, self-care, self-help, writing1 Comment

I don’t like to run. I did track in junior high, and my best event was the 400 meter, which is a horrible event. You have to run fast and long. (It is slightly better than the 800 meter.) I wasn’t fast. And I don’t like going on long runs. The longest I have ever run is a 5k, and I did that once.

But I do like to pile things onto my to-do list. I want to work on everything now. My current projects include finishing my inspirational self-help book, writing a new novel, writing a new inspirational self-help book, leading a writing group in my community, beta reading for another writer, building up my Instagram account, doing a writing workshop, and updating my blog. That’s just writing stuff. Then I am working to finish the Khan Academy calculus bc course, keep learning how to code in R better, and read nonfiction in the areas of rationality, philosophy, and economics, including finish reading that macroeconomic textbook because I didn’t do well in macroeconomics in college and it bothers me. I am also renovating a house, and today I painted the laundry room walls and flooring, and I need to put that room back together. I need to mud and tape my whole house and paint it. And I need to prune my apple tree and work on my yard, including taking care of my birds. I am trying to be a good neighbor and want to go visit others more. I volunteer at the school. And I need to keep my house clean, which includes dusting on occasion and doing a lot of laundry. I also am trying to touch my toes, do more push-ups, and drink 64 ounces of water every day.

And I want to be a good mom, pay attention to my kids, teach them piano, and read with them. And I have a husband whom I really like.

It’s sort of a lot. But not really. Because I don’t have to do all of that at once. I can only do one thing at a time, after all.

Sometimes I need to simplify and slow down. But that doesn’t mean I need to give up on my goals–a lot of them can be pushed to later. I can prioritize by realizing what season of life I am in right now, and then being patient with myself when I can’t do everything right now, but I can do everything over time.

Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided to enable you … but be diligent unto the end.
Doctrine and Covenants 10:4

I don’t need to remove things from my to do list for forever. Just for right now. I want to pace myself by not trying to do everything every day, but just a few most important things every day.

Today, I’m not worrying about my novel, or my writing workshop, or reading my macroeconomics textbook. Those things can happen later. Today, I am focusing on working on my laundry room, finishing the draft of my inspirational self-help book, and taking care of my kids, one of whom has pink eye, and another one who threw up last night (but he’s fine now). I’m writing this blog post as they happily play with Duplos.

In the evening, I’m going to watch one of my favorite TV shows with my husband and work on the Semantle and Nerdle puzzles for the day, because I don’t need to be productive all the time. But hopefully things like entertainment and spending time doing nothing on my computer can be minimal: because while I want to avoid running too fast, I do want to keep running instead of getting distracted and forgetting what direction I’m heading.

Where are you running to? Are you going too fast? Do you need to pick up the pace a bit? What can be put off until later and what needs to happen right now?