What's 10,000 words between friends?

Can one call their research their friend? I think so, in fact I think sometimes you must. My friend I had written 10,000 spectacular words about in the shape of a literature review. It wasn't finished, but then when is writing ever finished, but it did have content and flow and structure and 10,000 little words strung together over weeks of drafting and redrafting. In my big brave decision to alter the direction, albeit slightly, of the PhD I now find myself in the unenviable position of having to write another literature review.


Part of me is secretly pleased about this. I am, when it comes down to it, a total swot. I like studying, reading, writing and thinking. I enjoy deadlines. I want to have to put pen to paper and produce something promising. However, there is another part of me that has 'the fear'. The fear that I'll get stuck at the reading, or at the first sentence, or I'll never find a closing paragraph. To those of you who write regularly you will know that 10,000 words isn't really all that many; not once you have headings and the ideas take over and you churn out twenty pages just to define one of the words in the subtitle. 


I suppose my real fear is not that I have to write 10,000 words. It is not that I will probably lose a plethora of evenings and most weekends in order to do so - and just as the sun is coming out. It is because I want it to be good. One of the best pieces of advice I saw given to a writer was 'it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be written.' I wholeheartedly take this principle on - but just not in this case. I don't just want it to be written. I want it to be bloody good this time. I want the argument to be clear from the start. I want to find things in the literature that not only excite me but that I can use as leverage to excite others about my research. I want to know that I have the building blocks set and ready to bear my weight. So really, I had best get on with it then. There's just a couple of articles to read first, and then there was that chapter in that book, and I'm sure I saw an abstract about something somewhere...