AcWriMo: what i do while drafting / what i do in revising
there is a lot that goes unsaid and untaught in the world of academic writing. i feel that most advisors/supervisors/director of graduate studies/even some first year seminar leaders take the stance of "you should already know how to do this" or "i'm sure you've learned this before". as someone who works with writers all around the world at all kinds of universities in all sorts of disciplines: NOPE. it is much more rare that i meet someone who was given a comprehensive toolkit for academic writing than someone who was given nothing. so, if you are trying to figure it all out, you are definitely not alone!
academic writing is a collection of skills that in theory, have an order of operations:
read
draft
revise
submit
but there is also a LOT of flexibility within that - some people bounce between the first three stages frequently, some pass through them with relatively equal time spent in each, and some move through it differently depending on the project, or their own brain at the time.
one thing that i do find consistently though is that i work with writers who are, consciously or not, spending a lot of time drafting (ie, generating new words) and working with facets of their writing that would actually be more easily addressed in a revision stage. what do i mean? great question!
for example, you could be writing along and you start to really notice your transitions (or lack thereof). maybe an advisor gave you feedback on another draft about transitions, or you saw a twitter thread about them, or someone mentioned them in passing - but you're thinking about them in an early-ish draft stage. so you spend a lot of time learning about transitions (here's one of my favorite resources on them!) and you spend a whole day crafting the transitions for a section of your new chapter.
now, there's nothing wrong with that! sometimes it feels good to practice a skill or go deep on a new facet of your writing but also, you might have just spent a bunch of time creating the world's most beautiful transitions only to complete restructure that chapter in a few weeks, and have to redo them. it's not that you should NEVER work with your transitions, but rather that there are more and less efficient times to do so.
so here is a very rough, moderately personal list of what skills i tend to focus on in early draft phases, and what i tend to do in later revisions! feel free to take what works and leave the rest, but the aim here is to be explicit so you can check your own workflow and see if there's anything you want to experiment with!
things i do during drafting (mostly)
freewriting
rough restructuring (taking big chunks and rearranging them)
trying to figure out WHAT i'm trying to say
figuring out the scope of what does and does not belong in what piece i'm working on
things i do during revision (mostly)
checking on accuracy of quotations / facts / etc
argument (how strongly am i arguing something, what kinds of arguments, etc)
transitions
sentence structure
writing the introduction and conclusion
writing abstracts
checking for flow
most of us are not used to revising work even once, much less multiple times so that balance can feel really off if you're not used to it! but revision is where a bulk of the work to take a piece from "some thoughts about something" into "a cohesive argument" happens! and more people should talk about that.
all i have is freewriting
i'm a big fan of freewriting - you only have to watch one or two coaching calls to know that i really believe in practicing writing, even if it's messy, stream of consciousness, little bits of flotsam that you store in folders in your Scrivner or Notion or Evernote or notebooks. but, sometimes that means you end up with tons and tons and tons of informal writing, and it can feel really overwhelming.
and so, here follows some of my best tips and strategies for transitioning from freewriting into something a little more formal"
try a side by side rewrite. one of the most frustrating thing for me is trying to edit freewriting into something more formal, so what i usually end up doing is having a blank document on one side, and the freewriting on the other, and i rewrite the freewrite into something more formal. it feels more like translation that revision, and that helps unblock me a little.
try a dictation-type translation. when i'm working to get things into actual sentences, i often speak more formally than i write in that draft 0 pass. so sometimes i will turn on voice - to - text (lots of different ways to do this with various tech setup) and use that as the basis of a more formal pass on my writing.
use a paragraph recipe - when i'm trying to get things into paragraphs, i often will use a paragraph "recipe" to help organize my thoughts - they're a little simplistic, sure, but thinking functionally (this sentence links back my evidence to my main idea, for example) helps to give me a roadmap, and then i can smooth out the writing once it's more formal.
try a phrase book - sometimes, i need a few ideas on how to make different kinds of sentences, and phrase books really help with that. my favorite is they say, i say , but i also like how dr. helen sword talks about sentences in this book, too, and there are a lot of suggestions in this thread too! (but you gotta be in the community to see it ;))
reverse outline the freewriting - sometimes i go through and i reverse outline my freewriting, or highlighting the most useful parts of it. the more i can trim down the freewriting, the easier it gets for me to wrestle with it
[something better here]: using brackets while drafting
Drafting (the part of writing when you're putting words on paper, whether it's the first time, or seventeenth) is really hard work. You're making SO many choices every minute - which word, which thought, who to cite, if you cite, if it's clear, what you mean - and it can be really overwhelming. If you add in a brain that has a few different trains of thought running at the same time, or perfectionism, or any other brain pattern/behavior/emotion that's the least bit distracting, and drafting can be even more overwhelming, if not nearly impossible feeling.
And although academics talk a lot about how to make time for the writing, how to make space for it, how to schedule it - there is so much less discussion about how to actually write. So today, here's a tactic I use with a lot of clients: bracketing.
Now, this isn't something I invented but it is something that I used (and still do use!) extensively when writing up new ideas (or revising old ones.) Basically, it's a way to capture thoughts that you have about the writing while you're writing so that you can keep going.
For example, here is a paragraph in an early (draft 0 or 1) version of one of my dissertation chapters. Everything in ALL CAPS was something I needed to cite, expand on, or clarify, but I kept going so that I could see what I needed to change.
While the stakes of human turned meme are clear (STAR WARS KID, NUMANUMA), the animal also faces risk here. The replicated image changes perception of breeds (in the case of the Persian) and separates the body of the animal from the representation of it. I DONT KNOW WHATEVER - what does it mean to be voiced by a human.
I used ALL CAPS to signal these changes, but I later switched to brackets ( {[ }] ) because they were easier to search for and replace. The important thing was what I was doing - signalling a place I wanted to come back to, capturing the important thought, and then going on so that I could stay in the world of the draft. If I stopped to look up the memes I wanted to cite, or figure out exactly what I wanted to stay, I would usually get distracted, start reading when I was supposed to be done with reading, feel absolutely frustrated and angry when I couldn't figure out what exactly my argument was. In short, I'd stop writing and do something else, instead of noting and then carrying on.
Here are just some of the uses I've found for bracketing text while drafting:
Making note of where to add citations
Capturing thoughts like "is this clear enough" or "do I need more here"
Leaving myself instructions like "come back and write a better transition once you finalize case studies" or "link this back to chapter 2 once you write it"
Noting details I wanted to confirm, like publication year or author name
And the benefits weren't just limited to keeping in the flow of writing while drafting! Brackets also helped me:
Turn some of these tasks (like "find citation" or "add quote from archive here") into the small steps I could put on a list and check off
Ask better questions when readers gave me feedback, because I already knew which areas I worried might be unclear
Note places where I would add other literature or sources - I have a tendency to overcite and bury my voice, so brackets helped me see where I wanted to add citations, and then if people said "This needs more support" I would have some good guesses about where to add. And if they DIDN'T say that, then I didn't spend a lot of time adding in citations and quotes that I just needed to take out.
Not all the thoughts we have while drafting are bad - but some of them can definitely take us out of the task of writing and into places where it's harder to get back in the flow. Hopefully using some brackets can help you stay with your thoughts AND stay in the writing! And if you have other uses for brackets - or other techniques that work in the same way, please share!
are you covering new territory?
i think while i write when i’m doing any kind of scholarly writing. i definitely have outlines - can’t live without them - but there’s a certain magic that happens when i’m drafting that helps me clarify what i actually mean, and how i want to say it. the problem is that when i really let myself think and draft in all directions, i can end up with a draft that can be really repetitive, covering the same idea in a few different ways, or with more citations, or in different case studies…
so over the years, i’ve developed some ways to build in reflection during the drafting process to help catch some of those flights of prose-fancy, but one question has quickly risen to the top as a multipurpose question:
am i covering new territory?
your writing is like a map. it shows people how to get from some ideas to other ideas - hopefully yours! and just like a map, it has some important features, like boundaries (what’s included and what isn’t included) and major landmarks (how can people orient and relate what you’re saying with what they already know?). and sometimes, we get stuck filling in the same part of the map with more and more detail - adding more citations, reading more literature to make sure that we’re citing what we need to, adding more examples that further illustrate the same ideas.
the “am i covering new territory” question can help you see that retreading - it doesn’t mean you won’t ever return to that area of your map, it just is a sign to move to a new area so that you can have a more complete map.
outlines can also be really helpful here - if you’re adding more and more detail to the same section of your outline, that might not count as new territory! even the most schematic of outlines can give you a sense of the overall boundaries and region of your writing-map, and help you see what areas need more.
when drawing a map, you need not start at the edges, or the top, and work your way from one side to the other. maybe you start by labeling all the major landmarks, and then you decide where to draw the boundaries. maybe you start in the center, and radiate outwards. maybe you get everything to 10% detail, and then 30%, and then 80%. the “am i covering new territory” question can help in all of those scenarios - a way to make sure that your whole map, your whole argument, is getting attention, a reminder to keep an eye on the whole even as individual parts get your focus and attention.
may you all cover new territory this week!
habits as a practice: how to ease up on some all or nothing thinking
this year, a little bit on a whim, i decided to commit to morning pages - three pages of handwritten text in a notebook before (in theory) i start my day. i was looking for a practice that was easy, portable, and helped me bring a little bit of mindfulness into my days. so i got my notebook and today, i have fourteen little entries.
to be honest, it still feels really high stakes - like one cold or bad morning could knock me off my game and i would lose the habit and my goal for the year all at once! unlike the habit of say - brushing my teeth - this one definitely feels fragile and like it needs a lot of attention to get it right. it feels automatic to brush my teeth - it does NOT feel automatic to do my morning pages right now.
but, i know that there’s a life cycle of habits. there are some - like teeth brushing, that feel rock solid, but that that only comes after some time and practice. those are grown up habits - you trust them to be there, even if, you know, you fall asleep on the couch and stagger upstairs and forget to brush one day.
but then there are new habits - fledglings! - they’re just out of the nest and they need a lot of time and care until they feel like they can stand on their own. and when i work with clients, we often talk about adding in some purposeful care around these fledgling habits until you trust them to fly on their own a little bit more.
it’s really easy to just add habits to the list of things to do in a day - want to be more mindful? add a meditation habit! want to exercise more? add a morning workout habit! before long, your whole day can be just a list of habits, an endless to do list before the actual to do’s of your work day.
i encourage you, instead, to think about your habits like a practice - some are solid, some are strengthening, and some you can retire for the moment. the goal isn’t total completion every day of the whole list - the goal is to use the tools you need, when you need them, and to learn how to best work it in to your day and your life.
the difference can sound miniscule, but for me, it’s less about “did I do my morning pages, yes or no” and more about “what can i do to make my morning pages feel intentional so that i get the full benefits of that as a practice in a more holistic way?” my life will go on if i miss day 16, or 245, or the entire month of july - but every time i come back to my notebook to write down my thoughts and empty out my brain, that habit grows up just a little bit.
here is a habit inventory sheet i use with clients to help them see which habits are needing what kind of care - may it be useful to you this week as you dig into what things you’re growing in your own routines!
curiosity as fuel: a March Madness post
i write to deadlines - i always have. i don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, either - sometimes a deadline is just the amount of positive stress to get you through a block, to convince you that something is important, to get you started.
in fact, i am writing this on a deadline (self imposed, but sure) - but i’m also thinking about what else is fueling my writing practice, and what fuels can be sustainable over longer periods of time. because, i have a bold claim:
it isn’t the schedule, or the word count, or the writing habit that makes a writing practice sustainable, at least over the long term. it’s the fuel.
i cannot tell you how many clients come to me upset that they cannot write, or otherwise work on, their project every day. they’re caretakers, or they’re teaching massive loads, or they just don’t have a schedule that opens up space for them in that way. and they are, to a person, convinced that they’ll never be successful because their schedule doesn’t work.
what if we framed it around fuel? your schedule, your routine, your habits - those are all just parts of the car, but they’re going to sit there (or not work as well) without fuel, or without the right kind of fuel.
i think about deadline pressure as jet fuel - it’s powerful stuff! it will move you a long way in a short amount of time. but rockets are not every day vehicles - the wear and tear on that rocket after being shot that high and that fast is substantial. it’s not that it doesn’t have a purpose, or that using it is bad. it’s just not the most sustainable option.
when i talk about curiosity as a fuel, i think about it more like wind or solar power. it requires a fair bit of tech to be set up correctly - just like any writing practice requires a fair amount of learning, skills building, and patience. but when you have the right conditions, and the right projects, renewable energy doesn’t take from you - it doesn’t cost you any extra to make the gears turn, just tapping into what you already have.
(please forgive the simplicity of the analogy i know that renewable energy has all kinds of caveats and complexities!!!!)
what does using curiosity as a fuel look like, in practical terms? it looks like:
not guilting or shaming yourself to get to your desk, but inviting yourself to it
finding newness and freshness in your topic, in your reading, in your skills
letting the changes in your schedule, your time available, your projects serve as creative constraints rather than roadblocks
how would it work to write 3 days a week instead of 5?
what would it be like to write in 15 minute bursts whenever i could?
what would need to change about my workflow to make those changes possible?
viewing each project as a chance to learn or do something different
becoming more efficient in research
learning a new subject area
trying out a new drafting tool
writing in a new voice
writing with a collaborator, or by yourself
focusing on elements of style
viewing writing as the solution to the puzzle: “how can i best convey this information to this group of people?”
it’s not that you’ll never ever use deadlines again - we all will. but thinking about your writing as something that grows and changes with you, and can be a source of continuing engagement, of new learning, of growth. it isn’t the schedule or the collaborator or the word count goal, ultimately, that is the magic ingredient (if there was one perfect schedule or system someone would have found it and trademarked it, and sold it back to you at prohibitively expensive prices!!!!) - all of those things are tools that you can learn to use, and learn when they match your circumstances.
no two pieces of writing are ever the same - and you could view that as a frustrating fact of academic life, or as the result of a bottomless well of curiosity, allowing you to grow and change and develop your writing practice into something that is fueled sustainably.
writing for all seasons: a March Madness post
there is a lot of talk in the academic writing communities about maintaining a publication pipeline. the idea is that at anyone one time, you have multiple projects in various stages of completion so that you never have a lull in your publishing output. if you’re currently working hard on drafting one publication, another one is out for review, and you’re starting to research or collect data for the third. advice definitely varies by field and discipline as to how many manuscripts you should have in each stage, but everyone agrees - everyone needs to have multiple projects working all the time!!!
and it’s not that i disagree - from every professional standpoint, but i find that the idea of a pipeline really stresses the productivity aspect. you have to keep the pipeline full! never let your well of material run dry! always have something on the go so that you always have something coming out!
instead, i prefer to think about it as a garden. there are some plants that are new seeds, freshly tucked into the soil, there are some that need some pruning, or weeding, to thrive, and there are still some others that are ready to be harvested and shared.
now, practically speaking, that isn’t much of a difference, but i do think that the framing matters here. when things are in a pipeline, it’s easy to see yourself as needing to spend equal amounts of time on all the various pieces - six projects, six writing sessions! or to otherwise need to keep things full because you can’t let it run dry!!
but if it’s a garden, you’re doing it to nourish yourself. you’re respecting that some things take time to grow - you may only need to water your seeds once a week, but you have to do some active weeding in your cucumber patch as it’s really growing. you are hopefully growing things to share - but some things can be just for you, too,. sometimes people drop by to work on a plot with you! but it’s a practice - you are attentive to both the process and the product.
so in this schema, here are my categories for a writing garden, to mix, match, and remix for yourself as you see fit!
seed catalog - these are the ideas! you keep a notebook with all the things you could write about - all the projects you could do that need to have some planning to bring them into existence. i recommend that everyone keep some sort of record of these ideas when the happen upon you - you never know when you might need to answer a question like “what are you thinking about working on next?”
planting/seedlings - these are the projects that are in their first phase- you’re figuring out the requirements! how much time will they need? how much research? what kind of support? a very important phase that’s easy to shortcut or underestimate - but the more planning and nurturing you do in this stage, the better! the right match between project and resources is essential for it to thrive.
growing - these projects are on their way! in different fields, this can have different action steps - maybe you’re collecting data! maybe you’re drafting! maybe you’re in an archive - but the idea is that you’re putting in the time - regular waterings! weeding every tuesday! these take the majority of your attention - but each project needs something a little different. and anyone who has started TOO many gardening projects in the the early part of the season, only to be overwhelmed by labor in the late summer knows that it’s important to keep some constraints - not everything can be getting all your attention all the time.
harvest - projects that are getting ready to share. these could be publications you’re getting feedback on, or polishing yourself - it’s sort of like looking at a bushel of tomatoes and deciding whether to make sauce, or a lot of tomato sandwiches. sometimes you do all that work to grow something, only to need to change the outcome. but making sure that you’re putting what you’ve done to work - sharing, cutting up and distributing into other projects, teaching, important lesson for yourself - it all has value.
fallow - sometimes, a project has a fallow time. you could be waiting after submitting to a journal, or blocked by a problem in the data, or waiting on some research. letting a plot lay fallow is a purposeful time of regeneration, even if it doesn’t look like much. having some areas, some ideas, some skills, or some projects that are resting can be really useful - and essential if you want your garden to be sustainable over the long term. you can’t just plant and plant and plant in the soil and expect that everything will grow equally well - you need to give back in terms of nutrients, and rest.
a pipeline implies that there’s a product and that’s the main goal - but a garden is an ecosystem, the way you take care of it matters. the season matters. the amount of time, and light, and water - it all makes a difference. and matching up your resources with your goals is the most surefire way i know to make sure that your writing practice becomes something you can do sustainably, and that is one way to make sure that your garden, so to speak, serves you (and your community!) season after season.
AcWriMo2020: revise on purpose
so much of what i support clients with in the world of academic writing is normalizing a longer writing process. so many people go to grad school, in part, because they’re good at writing. and when the writing product changes from a 20 page term paper to a 200+ page thesis, it can seem like everything you knew before doesn’t work now, and you are, in fact, bad at writing.
and usually, it isn’t that the client is bad at writing - it’s that they’re not used to writing in an iterative way, and they almost always have no real experience with substantial revision. sure, they might have proofread a paper a time or two, or cleared up some unclear sentences, but they’ve never substantially reworked a piece following feedback.
and if you are used to writing pretty complete drafts and only lightly going over them for minor errors, it can be completely bewildering to sit with a sh*tty first draft, or a draft that needs substantial work, and know what to do next. how do you take a pile of incomplete sentences and turn it into something readable? how do you complete rework an argument without starting over?
the answer: you revise.
there are as many ways to revise as there are to write, but here are a few of my most favorite/useful techniques, and a few reminders to help ground this process:
in order to revise, you have to know what you’ve already written. i like to go back and annotate my work like it was a piece by a stranger - i’ll ask questions in the margins, highlight the main point of paragraphs, maybe even make an outline of the ideas and the order that they’re presented. people often skip this step - and it really helps to get this overall view before you start to do any big structural changes.
take all the topic sentences (first sentence and/or most important sentence) in each paragraph and reorder those into a better/different flow. can be less cumbersome than moving around whole paragraphs.
know that it might take SEVERAL passes of revision. i often ignore all the mechanical things (grammar, sentence structure, spelling) until my last few passes because if i move everything around, i usually end up rewriting things anyway.
do targeted revision passes: this one checks for subject verb agreement - this one focuses on transitions - this one i’m focusing on clearing up my argument. this can help when you feel overwhelmed with all that needs to change in a draft.
change the font style and size when doing a final pass to check for typos. this can move the words around on the page and help you see it with fresh perspective.
use the read aloud function in your browser or word processing function to check for any sentence weirdness.
use the “save as” feature to save different versions (and use a consistent file naming system!) and help yourself keep track of what changes have been made.
but most, most important:
revision is part of the writing. budget time for it. budget energy for it. it takes a lot of brain power! there are so many decisions to be made! so make sure you’re giving yourself credit for it, and not internalizing the fact that you are revising as punishment for being a bad writer. it isn’t. it’s what makes good writing great.
AcWriMo2020: get feedback on purpose
I signed up for a writing group through the university writing center on a whim - I was cleaning out my inbox, a nearly obsessive form of procrastination for me, and saw the notice that groups were forming soon. It was the fall of my fourth year (of a five year program) and I needed some motivation. I had a draft of my prospectus that needed polishing, a schedule that was becoming more and more freeform as I advanced through the degree, and more and more pressure to research, write and publish as much as possible. Though it went through several permutations, my writing group was one of the most persistent, helpful, and supportive spaces through my candidacy. But most importantly, it taught me how to get feedback on purpose - and how to find the feedback I wasn’t necessarily getting from my advisor. Here are my best tips for finding, running, and tweaking a writing group!
If possible, let someone else do the organizing. Many universities, departments and student groups offer writing spaces. If you're nervous about putting your writing out there, joining a pre-formed group, or bigger, more established program can feel more comfortable that connecting with a close peer or colleague.
Interdisciplinary groups can be amazing! I was initially very skeptical that my group would be able to offer me anything, because the members were so far away from me in a disciplinary sense. But actually the insights of their Cultural Anthropology and Early Judaic studies trainings were incisive and thought-provoking. Because they weren't as familiar, if at all, with the literature and conversations I was referencing, they were relying on my writing to understand my topic. Any problems I was having concisely or clearly conveying my ideas were much more apparent to their fresh eyes. Colleagues can often read between the lines and fill in details or context that you have not included, leaving you thinking that your argument was clearer than it actually was. My writing group challenged me to be more judicious with my secondary literature (do you really need this to support your argument, or are you just name dropping?) and more forthright with my own contributions, and my work was stronger for it.
Different writing groups can serve different purposes. During some summers, my writing group was just people with whom I gathered to write, never sharing drafts or talking through our work. I also had incredibly focused writing workshops with graduate students in my department, where I had to articulate how and why this fit into the larger field. I often showed rough drafts to my interdisciplinary group, as they weren't close colleagues and I could feel more comfortable sharing less polished work, and full chapters with my graduate student colleagues before they went to faculty members. Having multiple spaces pays off.
Be clear about what you need. When sending my drafts to my writing group, I took care in the email to explain what I needed my writing group to do. Sometimes I needed help understanding if the sections flowed together, after putting together a month's worth of free writing. Other times, it was more helpful to ask if the argument was clear and well supported. I most of the time instructed that they ignore copy-editing tasks, unless the errors were glaring and felt so inclined - I had other places and resources for that, and I wanted feedback on the ideas. But nothing is more frustrating that spending time carefully rearranging sentences for flow and style only to find out that this was a very rough draft and the writer wanted feedback on structure. Clarity can make sure that you're getting what you need, and respecting your group members' time.
If possible, record your sessions and the conversations. I am a person who needs to "talk it out." I loved seminar spaces and the chance I got to explain my thinking, as I am often much more concise and compelling in person than I am in writing. I got in the habit of recording (with permission, of course!) my writing groups, where we discussed my ideas and writing. I usually didn't transcribe those conversations, but would play the back as I was editing or going through and processing their feedback, because often there were important phrases I said that I wanted to steal from myself. Capturing that verbal processing was essential to making the best use of those meetings.
Ask others to restate your argument. After a sprawling conversation where my group helped me to hash out the main points of a chapter's argument, my group member had the foresight to take a few minutes after the meeting and write down her version of my argument. This was incredibly useful for me, as it gave me a chance to see the space between the argument in my head and how it was communicated. Even if it is just verbally, or in the margin notes, this can be a useful tool for writing in the early stages.
And here is a fun set of questions to use with your writing group, writing partner, or even with yourself to guide the kind of feedback you’re looking for!
Questions to ask your feedback partners (or yourself) to pay attention to!
Argument:
Is my argument clear? Can you follow it?
What do you wish you knew more about? Less?
What parts of my writing are most compelling? Least?
Is my intervention clear?
If you had to summarize my argument in two or three sentences, what would you say?
Field:
Do you understand how my research builds on our field?
Is it clear how I’m using field-specific terminology?
Is my intellectual lineage (who influences my thinking) clear?
Do I make my intervention clear without being cruel or overly accommodating to other scholars?
Am I missing any key citations or movements in our field?
Do I explain each secondary source or concept in relationship to my argument?
Copy:
Are the sentences clear and easy to read?
Are there any words that don’t seem to mean what I think they do?
Is my tense consistent?
Are my citations formatted in a consistent way?
The more you can specify WHAT kind of feedback you’re after, the more useful the feedback (hopefully) will be! Knowing what you need to help you see your writing clearly can be a hard skill to master, but once you do, it’ll serve you for a long, long time.
Scheduling writing
Many of my clients (most of my clients) (all humans everywhere, probably) lead busy, full lives. There are a thousand things competing for their attention and writing can sometimes seem like the least urgent thing in the room. But, there's a difference between urgent and important.
Urgent: things that need to be completed soon or there will be dire consequences. Urgent things are often public, and they often impact other people. These are the fires you're putting out on a daily basis.
Important: things that have a high value. It will matter if you do not do them. They're the big goals, the huge milestones, the end of the road.
But the two aren't always together. For example, if your cat escapes from your house, locating them would be both urgent and important. Submitting grades on time for your students is both urgent and important; it impacts your students (and your evaluations) if they're late, and doing well in your teaching assignment can have a long term impact on your career.
It's easy to understand why urgent and important things have to be prioritized. But if you're running your schedule solely by what is urgent, things can fall off your plate. Long term projects, far away deadlines, and your overall goals can slip out of focus when you're only dealing with the tasks and roles that are demanding your attention day to day.
Writing tasks often fall into the important, but not necessarily urgent, category. How many of us have put a conference submission deadline on the calendar months in advance, only to wake up that morning without an abstract? I struggled during semesters where I was teaching, working, and being a human to prioritize my writing - there were simply too many other things to do, and those deadlines were a long way off anyway. But then, a therapist introduced an idea to me that changed my life:
Schedule your writing.
As part of a "Dissertation Stress and Anxiety Management" support group, we were asked to track our activities and moods for a week, down to the half hour. If you spent a half hour checking Twitter, you noted it. If you slept for 12 hours, you wrote it down. It was eye opening for several reasons, but most of all, it exposed a fatal flaw in my own scheduling.
You see, I went into the exercise feeling confident that I would "do well." I was busy! I took care of important tasks and kept multiple projects up and working all at once. I rarely spent whole days procrastinating (or resting, but that's a subject for another time.) But what I realized, when I looked at the week written out, was that I spent all my time dealing with urgent tasks as they came up. I worked to the deadlines, letting others' schedules dictate my time. And I wasn't writing. I wasn't moving any of my long term goals forward. I was busy, and productive, but I was avoiding the writing because it was big, and scary, and not due yet.
So the therapist shared how she balanced her own dissertation writing with her clinical hours - she blocked out 3 hours, twice a week, as her "Dissertation Class." She was great, she reasoned, at making meetings and seminars - she would never schedule over that commitment. So, why not treat the dissertation work the same way?
She put it on her calendar, and she respected it. She didn't schedule meetings over it. She wouldn't move the time around, even by an hour, no matter how busy or behind she felt. And if she ever felt compelled to skip, or move it, or otherwise not work during that time, she would run the "class" test.
"If this were a class, with other people in community with me, would I skip it?" And if the answer was no, then she went to work. Having just six hours a week blocked off made a massive difference in moving her writing forward. It gave her time to focus on important things, not just urgent ones.
Make it work for you.
Maybe you have plenty of time for writing - but by the end of the day, you're too tired to work out. Maybe you're blocking plenty of time for your academic goals, but your professional development and career planning is falling by the wayside. You can use the same principle! Make a list of the things that are important to you, and work backwards to block time off to work on them.
Sign up for conferences or workshops around your professional development - having a commitment "on the books" can support your growth.
Look at your schedule for time you're not using as well as you could - would scheduling in a fitness class or walk around the neighborhood that you treat as immovable help you be more active?
Take an inventory of your life in its totality - where are you hitting your goals? Where could you put more focus? Does your schedule give you protected, dedicated time to work on your long-term objectives?
It can be hard to focus on important things when they aren't urgent - but eventually, they become urgent. Your dissertation chapter is due in a week. The conference abstract is due today. You are graduating next month. Your health is suffering, or your mind is anxious. Blocking time off, in the amounts and places where it works for you, in advance will help you focus on both the short and long term picture.
Plan out your time mindfully. Respect the time you set aside - you are a priority. The urgent things can (sometimes) wait until you're done.
A list of things to do when you don't want to write.
Change locations.
Open up a new document and write in that.
Try writing longhand on a piece of paper.
Reread what you have and annotate it.
Do a chore you've been putting off.
Brainstorm titles.
Format citations.
Reread part of the text that inspired your thinking.
Send a paragraph to a friend to get their quick take.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write an impassioned essay about how much you hate writing. Then try again.
Imagine how you would explain an idea from your work to your parents, or to your students, or to an alien new to the planet.
Answer the question: who needs what you are writing?
Writing is hard, and it is easy to wait until you feel inspired to write. But, if you can get in the habit of writing when you say you will, no matter how you feel about it, you can begin to test the hypothesis that you need to be inspired to write. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be new words on the page every time. It doesn't have to go in the final draft. But endeavoring to keep your appointments for writing with yourself is a habit worth building.
Learning to write, again.
Pals, I used to be so good at writing. In grade school, in high school, in college, heck, even in my masters program, I was great at writing papers! So good, in fact that I could often put off my papers until the last minute (or at least, a far later minute than my teachers and professors intended), show up at my computer and have ideas just ready to be typed out! The words flew out of my fingers onto the page! The feedback was great! I was so good! But then, all of the sudden (it felt like), I was very bad at writing.
I wrote a little bit about how I came to see myself as a "bad writer" in this post, but today, I want to offer some practical advice for those who are finding themselves needing some encouragement around something hard that maybe once was easier.
Be patient with yourself. Frustration is a natural response to feeling like you aren't meeting a standard, and trying to will yourself to feel otherwise (or feel in any specific way, period!) is usually counterproductive.
Remember that you're raising your writing level, and that with growth comes growing pains. Anyone who has ever trained their body to do something physical, or practiced a skill, or rehearsed a performance, knows that the progress curve is not a smooth one. Number of hours put in does not necessarily equate to a smooth line of growth from point A to point B. It's okay to have to work on acquiring new skills - but it can feel uncomfortable, repetitive, and frustrating. Try thinking about it more like practice and less like perfection from the go.
Build in new networks of support. I am no longer a solitary writer, even though I used to be. Lots of people - from writing center staff, to writing groups, to friends, to family, as well as editors - read my writing now. That doesn't mean I'm a bad writer, that just means I am looking for feedback actively.
Which brings me to my next point: look for feedback actively. If you ask for feedback in a proactive way, from peers as well as supervisors, you can control that process (and sometimes even shape the kind of feedback you get!) Feeling in control of feedback usually feels better than waiting for your work to be torn apart by supervisors or peer reviewers or editors at some unknown point in the future.
Let yourself imagine writing as a skill you will always practice and improve on, rather than a goal to be "achieved". There is no magical checkpoint where academic writers suddenly cease having to work on their writing - not even tenure! You will always be working to make your writing more clear, more concise, more accurate, more engaging. Acknowledging that we will always have to keep working can help ease the "I was already good at this!" frustration.
It is hard to feel "bad" at something that used to get you a lot of praise and validation. It can be a massive blow to the ego (it definitely was to mine!) to feel like I was not good at something and to have to "go back to the basics." But viewing my writing as a craft has helped me to see that there is no good or bad writing; writing is a skill that we're always deepening, honing, and improving because it's the only way to get what you know out of your head and into the world.
Book Review - Air & Light & Time & Space
No one ever taught me how to write a dissertation. The last formal writing instruction I received was as an undergraduate, and as so many of us have learned the hard way, a 15 page term paper is a completely different proposition than a dissertation.
Dr. Helen Sword interviewed a hundred different successful academics about their writing habits, and then opened up the survey to a wide community of academics at all stages to get a wide range of perspectives. I appreciated her data-driven approach; the book is a mix of her cogent, insightful writing drawing themes and commonalities out of successful approaches, and individual author profiles. Many other books espousing a "way" to write as an academic feel anecdotal -- and while there is a lot of merit in sharing how things work for you, or how things have worked for you and all the people who subscribe to your method, it is still a trial and error proposition.
If you're looking for Air & Light & Time & Space to lay out a step-by-step, data proven, fool-proof plan to become a productive, happy, academic writer, you're in the wrong place. But that is exactly what I appreciated about Sword's work. She instead identifies four key habits of the writers: Behavioral, Artisanal, Social, and Emotional, and showcases the diversity of successful practices in each area. Imagined as the foundation of a house, she stresses that different combinations of strengths can all produce productive writers. This model is generous enough to account for people who don't, won't, or can't write everyday, or who always work alone, or never work alone, or hate writing, or love writing. Rather than outlining a perfect system, she enumerates the elements that make a successful system. The difference produces a book that feels inclusive, rather than guilt-provoking.
Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
By Helen Sword
She provides a self-assessment quiz on her website to see how you stack up in each area: http://writersdiet.com/base.php . I recommend it taking it - the results are illuminating, and they're helpfully ranked in terms of frequency, just in case you want to see how common, or rare, you are! And I recommend the book, because it empowers you to build a writing routine and set of habits to support writing as it fits in your life, offering options rather than enforcing rules.
For me, I'm working on writing more consistently (on regular days, if not every day!) and taking steps to build up my artisanal skills on my own writing (even editors have to learn how to self-edit!) And I'll be using this with my clients, to identify not how far they are away from an #AcWri ideal, but what methods resonate and appeal.
A letter to my past self: before starting a fellowship term
Dear Past Katy, on the eve of her fellowship,
This is the only four month stretch that you have without teaching obligations or your own courses during your entire graduate school career. You've been asking everyone you know for advice for weeks about how best to structure your days, how to be productive, how to get up every morning and do the work. You have all the books about writing every day, writing stylishly, writing in 15 minutes a day: none of it is resonating. And you're freaked out.
Instead of picking the most appealing program and forcing yourself to stick through it through sheer force of will, treat the whole semester like an experiment. Test out different hypotheses: does writing a set number of words no matter whatever, every day, produce a finished chapter faster than writing while teaching did? And instead of using "chapter draft completed" as the only metric, start measuring other factors: does this routine support regular exercise? Does it support regular meals of mostly vegetables (and a few cookies)? Does this routine improve my sleep? Make notes. Track changes. See what works. Progress looks like more than just completed drafts.
Say yes to the opportunity to volunteer at the shelter down the road. It will do you good to have someone expecting you, and to see the visible impact your hours make.
Break the habit of working during lunch as soon as you can. Your lunch breaks with a novel, magazine, or TV show away from your desk will stop feeling luxurious eventually, and start feeling like the needed break they are.
You initially imagined clocking in at 9 am and clocking out at 5 pm, spending the hours in between in quiet, fulfilled productivity at your desk. But you forgot that your brain makes connections and puts things together on its own rhythm. Reading in the park, drawing out an outline in your notebook before yoga class, having revelations in the shower and hopping back on your computer to write them down before bed are things to be embraced, not to be embarrassed of. Give yourself the space to think, because that's a big part of writing too.
You're more productive when you work with other people. Your ideas get better when you talk them out with friends and writing group colleagues and your partner and your cats. Find your communities and build them up - they'll eventually hold you up, as you will them.
You don't stop being a teacher because you're in a period where you aren't in front of a classroom. When you get blocked, imagine making slides to explain the concept to a class. Actually, make the slides and record the narration. It will be the most clear first draft you've ever written.
Set out clear expectations and timelines with your chair as soon as you can. Even when it's uncomfortable, stick to your agreed communication schedule. Deadlines are guidelines, but when all the parties are in the loop, everyone can adjust their calendar and workflow.
Even when the chapters are behind - they will be behind and, rarely, ahead of schedule - don't work through planned yoga classes, volunteer hours, family dinners, TV nights with friends, or sleeping hours. The work rhythm will eventually even out, but the ebbs in self-care and connection are much harder to correct.
Your mind will eventually start wandering to other projects. You will daydream about other books, articles you could write, blogs you could start, a bakery you could open. This is a natural by-product of staring at the same ideas all the time, and not a sign that the dissertation isn't working. So write a few pages on those ideas! Read a few books! Talk to friends about it! Your dissertation will still be there, and the thrill of new ideas and the hope of a future beyond the dissertation will be sustaining.
You will feel like a bad colleague and friend for not attending every talk, presentation, or panel on campus during the semester. Faculty will imply that your fellowship does not excuse you from participating in the department culture. Strike the balance for yourself. If you were taking the semester to do field research, no one would expect you to be an irrelevant talk just because your department was a co-sponsor. So pretend that you are. And remember to extend the same courtesy to other colleagues who disengage during their fellowship periods.
Have fun. Play around. Enjoy the flexibility. But then let yourself off the hook for not loving every minute of your "academic life" as a "scholar engaged in writing and research full time." There are many ways to write a dissertation, and many ways to be an academic. There are even more ways to use a PhD. This is just one model.
Love,
Future Katy
Continuous Integration, or How to Be Less Precious and Share More
Continuous Integration, or CI, is a term used in software development, which loosely refers to the idea that everyone working on a project should be committing their work to the shared, public facing version of the product daily, if not multiple times a day. The rationale is that if everyone works on their own parts of the project in isolated silos and only shares that work at the end, the changes that it won't integrate well with other parts of the project are high. It is much easier to make sure that little parts play together well and fix it if they don't than it is to trouble shoot massive integration issues.
As academics, it often feels like we work alone forever, only to turn in huge chunks of completed work to have them ripped apart. How many of us have worked on a chapter draft, conference paper or journal article for months on our own only to have it savaged by some reviewer or reader afterwards? Why not take the core idea of CI and start to share smaller, in progress chunks to head off problems earlier? What follows next is my argument for this kind of a practice, in response to concerns I've heard from clients:
My advisor will only read polished drafts. Of course they will only read polished work! Advisors are the busiest people on the planet, they will have you know - they don't have time to read rough drafts or sketches. This is exactly why you should share work around with a wider net of people before that polished draft is turned in. Here are some people you can try sharing with:
Writing Groups, formal or informal
Writing Workshops - these are sometimes hosted in a departmental setting, sometimes by reading groups, but most students have access to a formal or informal version of workshopping opportunities.
A writing coach - trained coaches can look at a draft, even if they aren't in your specialty (sometimes, this is even better!) and let you know if it makes sense, if the structure is clear, etc.
Your own self. Set aside time to re-read work in progress at the end of the day, or at a regular time during the week. You'll be surprised what you can catch yourself.
My rough drafts are really rough. No one will understand them. My rough drafts are essentially long outlines with some sentences, and of course, those aren't helpful to share with other people. But what I call a Draft 1, or the prose version of my long outline, is helpful to share. I warn people that I am NOT looking for proofreading, just for feedback on the ideas, structure, and sequence. This spares me from people only going through and looking for Oxford commas when I really need them to tell me if it makes sense.
My argument only makes sense in total - it isn't helpful to read less than that. I'd actually counter this and say that if your argument only makes sense when taken as a whole piece, you aren't doing enough to signpost and connect your argument together for your reader. Of course, arguments are nuanced and they build and grow, but if it truly does not make any sense without the supporting pieces, it might be helpful to examine how you're building an argument. Having outside readers read smaller pieces can really help with that.
So much of writing is a lonely process - we research alone (mostly,) we draft alone, we revise alone. Making smaller milestones and sharing your work out more frequently can take some of the pressure off the big check ins with advisors and committees, make you feel less isolated, and improve the quality of the writing overall. It is much easier to fix small problems early than big problems later. Sometimes it is totally frustrating to hear that something isn't working, or to have to redo a whole site that you just spent weeks building. But, better to get the feedback early from a big team of people you trust than to have it come at you in a higher stakes way. Take a page from the software world and continuously integrate small pieces of your work into the bigger whole - it'll pay off.