good advice

I've been writing some every day this week, and it's been a drag. But I came across the following advice in a recent issue of the New Yorker. It's part of a "Talk of the Town" interview of the master stone carver who is inscribing the new granite monument on Roosevelt Island. Something about his work reminded me of the dissertation:

But he is really slow. He averages just fifteen letters a day...He quoted a family adage, from a scolding that a graduate-school professor had given his brother: "The work is hard. Do the work."

Did his brother get a PhD in Classics at the University of Michigan? Because that sounds exactly like something my professors would say.

I've added a new post-it above my desk with that exhortation. It joins another post-it I put up just a few days ago, after I had lunch with my friend Brianne. When I was fretting out loud over how to apportion the sections in my current chapter, she recommended, "Write it 'til it's done." Pretty good advice. I think I'll give it a try!