Writing and not writing

I have a paper to write. A big paper. An important paper. Actually, I have severals of these, all due in short order. I am procrastinating the writing of them. I dread writing them. So naturally, it is time to go to the library to gather more research. This is actually necessary... I think. But is doing more research and reading an excuse to avoid the pain of writing? And why is writing painful? Because it forces us to be exact, to pin ourselves down, to commit? And in the end, what is the goal of writing? Who benefits from writing? Is it primarily the writer, as either an act of either intellectual rigor and personal growth or confessional purgation? Or is it for the reader who can cannibalize the writer's knowledge or voyeuristically feed on his or her life? But already this veers towards the turgid, and away from the polished exterior of the ideal self-presentation of writing.