Technique is everything.

I should be writing a paper.  Really I should.  I have about 48 hours, give or take to get another 10+ pages of ideas onto my word processor and edit and submit.

I don't remember having this much trouble writing papers in the past.  I guess I just didn't care before; it was just a matter of getting the fucking thing printed out so I could move on the next pain-in-the-ass assignment.  (Writing puts the "ass" in "assignment" =D...so does engineering)
This time I care, mostly because I need to get at least an 80 in my classes, and I'm sitting at 79.5......so close that it might as well be a 49.5.  It's not that I don't get the material....fuck, I totally understand it, I'm damned-near pulling an 80 before the final.  Shit, that NEVER happened as an undergrad.  It's just that putting a number to my comprehension is a concept that I'm re-adapting to.  (I'm guessing after my case study presentation, my grade is likely sitting closer to an 85 than an 80....so that's OK)

Bottom line, I'm having troubles because I'm having issues trying to figure out where my paper is going.  It's about failure, strengthening and weakening mechanisms in bone.  Thing is, in order to understand all of this, you need a little bit of background, mostly because bone is foreign to most material engineers and scientists.  I have 6 pages written, but it's all background.  Target for this paper is 10-15 pages.  I'm halfway to my upper limit and I haven't even hit the main arguments of the paper.
Fuck.

When I teach, I tell my kids to build an outline, organize your ideas, do your research and write.  Try to build an argument.  Cool.  That's the technique that I used to use too.  It seemed to work quite well in my undergrad, I don't see why it won't work now.  That's the technique I started with.  Problem is, that I'm halfway through my limit and I haven't built my case yet, and my outline has changed 4 times. 
Fuck.

Today, I learned about another technique, coined by J. as "Barf and Carve".  I think this is what I could end up doing.  Barf all your ideas on page, get them on paper, don't worry about length.  Then carve your ideas and your argument out of it.  Seeing as I have a feeling that I'm going to write more than 15 pages, this seems like a logical method.  I'm kind of headed there too.  As it stands, right now, I have about 10 more papers to read for the research portion and I should be able to put the ideas on paper and carve a good paper.  Maybe I'll try this.

Either way, although it may be rude for me to say this, but I think I have the biggest advantage over all the other students in my class (and my Prof for that matter) because English is my first language.  My second advantage is that my writing is very concise.  (Tangent, I sent my thought process to my supervisor as a weekly update, thinking it's  jumbled garbage....he said it was very concise and the ideas were well expressed.  I thought, "Hell, they should be, I teach other kids how to be concise".  Instead I said, "Thank you.  I try to write very concisely, makes interpretation easier")
With these two powers combined, I should be able to write one of the top papers in the class by default.  Yay me!  (In other news, I could totally blow it and end up licking my wounds)   But, I still have to go through the motions of writing the blasted thing. 

I'm going to try something different.  I'm going to "Barf and Carve".  I hope this works.