The Birth of a Paper

Writing a Seminar paper is a lot like giving birth to a baby.
Going into it, I get an urge to clean, only this time, not the kitchen, it is shelves of the library. I scour them for everything I can find related to my topic. I waddle out of there, my hands low, wrapped around the big belly of books that reach to my chin.

When the labor of writing sets in, there are lots of deep breathes, moans, squeaks. Inbetween expulsions of words, I get up and pace, looking for nourishment to fuel my task, to stretch my sore muscles. My back aches, my hips are sore. Sleep comes in fits. No diversion works for long, back to the pushing, relentless and seemingly never-ending, until in full bloom the paper emerges, full of the red squiggly lines, mucus of misspelled words and grammar mistakes. It needs to be cleaned off. It needs to be wrapped in the proper format.
Then exhausted, I sleep, snuggled up to dreams of concepts that came to life as the paper's ideas were born.