By Beverly Delidow  »  Here's the question: You, in that office, in front of the keyboard, with the serious look and the blank screen - Are you writing? Or are you PRETENDING? 

Never done it, you say. I say, "Ooohhh, let me count the ways..."

1. You are re-running your last reference search because you are sure you missed something.

1a. Corollary: You actually do find a reference that may be important, but it is a journal you can't access. So you have to put in an interlibrary loan request. Retrieving your password for the library's request site takes fifteen minutes. After filling out the form you realize it will be a day or two before you receive the article. Hmmm. How can you possibly do anything more without this Really Important Reference? You may have to just wait for it. In the meantime, have a cup of coffee and congratulate yourself for finding the RIR.

2. You are spending quality time rummaging through seminar notes to try to find a thought that might be relevant that you just know you jotted down in 2003 ... or was it 2004? ... while you were attending a talk on subject not quite related to your work. Or was it on the program of that really strange play?

3. You are correcting the grammar in your outline.

4. You get distracted and start working on lecture slides for your next teaching assignment instead. But that involves typing some words, so you are writing... just not the document you should be.

5. After you have cleared all the miscellaneous papers from your desk and gotten a nice fresh glass of water and laid out a notepad next to the keyboard for jotting things down that will eventually be incorporated, you crack your knuckles like a concert pianist about to play a major symphony and YOU BOLDLY OPEN A FILE. You type four or five single word entries in an outline. Then you actually write an entire sentence. One that trails off pitifully like one of BoPeep's lost sheep and you can't get it back into the pen. You spend at least five minutes trying. This is HARD - you decide that to do something this HARD you absolutely NEEEEED chocolate. And not the bland minibites in your desk drawer. You NEEEED the special dark chocolate they have in the bookstore two buildings over. So you take a walk to "clear your head" and get your chocolate. And a coffee. And then you have to use the restroom. And then you check your email and phone messages so you won't be interrupted once you REALLY start your writing. By this time the 90 minutes you had cleared in your schedule to write are more than half gone and you can't remember what you were working on because on screen you have "OUTLINE" and four words that mean nothing and one sentence that appears to refer to events on another planet and what you jotted on your pad was "rnfuboomefertyf" - or something that looks like that and you have no clue what the heck you were thinking. 

You decide to "consult" a colleague. Maybe she's actually writing something and the effort will rub off on you.

Note: The reason I know all this - well, I've had a little practice, too ...

• Beverly C. Delidow, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Biochemistry & Microbiology at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.