Writing Tips

So I decided to make a new page on my blog aimed at providing some advice and useful links in relation to writing as an academic.

Basically, my starting point is my own struggles during my PhD–I wasted 1-1.5 years in the beginning not doing much (well not wasting, but not doing much writing!).

My moment of revelation came when I picked up the book “How to write a lot” by P. J. Silvia and followed his suggestions to the letter.

In the end I finished my PhD on time by spending 2-3 hours every day writing. My PhD was a collection of articles, consisting of 6 articles, so the system works!

In the following I will summarize what I found to be the most useful advices to follow from “How to write a lot” and “Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: a guide to academic publishing success” by Wendy L. Belcher.

Before I go into details, I would like to say something about the importance of creating a writing habit.

Successful writers write!

Students and academics alike often have negative experiences with writing. From my own point of view, I find writing hard – making it really easy to come up with excuses for not writing…

Belcher argues compellingly that the main key to a positive writing experience is writing because most negative experience surrounding writing revolves around not writing (e.g. procrastinating).

The reason is simple: when you write you feel a sense of accomplishment and the pleasure of communicating ideas. Writing can thus be seen as an exercise: although not easy to begin with, it gets easier and more pleasurable the more you do it.

In fact, since one usually gets better at whatever one does regularly, if you do not write on regular basis, you will get better at not writing…

People who do not write often claim that they are too busy (who isn’t?). When this excuse creeps up on you, keep in mind that a lot of busy people have been prolific writers.

The fact is that if you pay attention to how you actually spend time you will see that you are not as busy as you think and, more importantly, writing does not take as much time as you fear.

The key is that no matter how busy you are; make a plan for writing.

As Belcher argues in her book:

• Successful writers do not wait for inspiration.
• They do not wait until the last minute.
• They do not wait for big blocks of time.

Successful writers make a plan for writing every day and they stick to it. In short, you have to develop writing into a habit (more on how to achieve that below).

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London

There is an important caveat however: in the article “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers” Chambliss argue that excellence is a qualitative phenomenon.

In effect, doing more does not necessarily equate with doing better or improving.

Rather, Excellence is mundane: ordinary actions performed consistently and carefully adds up over time.

The keyword here is carefully doing something consistently.

In the book “Hanging on to the Edges Essays on Science, Society, and the Academic Life” Nettle writes:

… if, as one colleague complained to me a while ago, you are putting in eighty hour weeks and still not getting your important goals achieved, then the answer is not to put in more hours: it is to put in fewer.

p. 221

Why developing a writing schedule/session is essential

I used to think that in order to write I needed long uninterrupted stretches of time because only then could I use my undivided attention on writing.

As everyone knows, such stretches of time is almost non-existent: rather you end of waiting for the weekend or vacation time.

Waiting then becomes a permanent state, with writing being something you will do after you have done everything else.

Studies have shown that you do not need big blocks of time to write (a common book referred to for this is “Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing“).

In fact writers who write a little bit every day produce more manuscripts than those who alternate weeks/months without writing with extended writing sessions.

Writing just 30 minutes a day can make you one of those unusual writers who publish several journal articles a year.

Pertinently, studies have also shown that people who write regularly have more creative ideas compared with people who write only when they feel like it.

Just as an experiment try to write for 15 minutes for a week or two (let’s face it everyone can set aside 15 minutes a day for this).

I’ll bet you will be surprised of how much you actually got down on paper each week (especially compared to waiting for inspiration or a big chunk of time that never come!).

In sum, writing daily works, writing in binges does not!

The problem with binge writing – where you do not write for weeks and then stay up all night (or the whole weekend) writing – is that the less you write the harder it becomes to write.

Part of the reason why e.g. students feel they need big blocks of time is because it takes them so long to silence the inner critic (who says “writing is hard”, “my ideas suck” etc.).

In the absence of the small but satisfying successes of daily writing, that critic becomes harsher and louder.

As Daniel Nettle writes in the book “Hanging on to the Edges Essays on Science, Society, and the Academic Life“:

Daily deep work [here writing] keeps the black dog away, for there is nothing worse for mood than the sense that one is not progressing

p. 220

If you have been writing every day you don’t have this problem (and if you combine a daily writing schedule with moderately easily achievable writing goals you are golden because you feel satisfied with both writing a bit and achieving a specific goal at the same time!).

The key is to establish a regular, reasonable writing schedule and then discipline yourself to maintain it.

To do this you have to be realistic when setting your writing goals.

And remember it is best to start small: if you are just starting up you should have a goal of writing 15 min each day for 5 days a week.

A more ambitious goal of writing 3-4 hours a day may be counterproductive because of the feeling of failure when not achieved.

Remember, it is better to write a little than not at all.

In the end, short sessions stack up in terms of word and pages.

Also, this is the key to transform yourself from a scholar to a productive scholar.

The blog-post How to Write a Dissertation argues that to become a productive scholar you need to change how you think and behave in the following manner:

Every time you sit down to work, every time—whether you are reading an article or working on your methodology section, you should have something you can hold in your hand to show for that time. If you haven’t produced something—a paragraph, three pages, a set of notes that correspond to the article you just read, a rough draft, some free writing, etc. then you wasted your time.

Pretty draconian, I know, but essential!

To sum up:

• Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write. Prolific writers make a schedule and stick to it.
• The secret is regularity, not the number of days or the number of hours. My own schedule: write Monday through Friday, between 08:00-09:00 and 11:00 (i.e. ~2 hours). 08:00-09:00 because I do not arrive at the office at the same time every day. In this period, checking e-mail is FORBIDDEN!!!
• As an academic, you’re a professional writer – allocating time to writing is therefore essential.
• Always write during you scheduled time, but don’t be dogmatic about only writing within this time.

Writing session

According yo Silvia, your allotted writing time should include (but not be limited to):

• Doing analyses
• Reading relevant articles
• Reviewing page proofs
• Reviewing submission guidelines
• Making figures and tables

Professional writing involves a lot of components: extensive literature reviews, careful analyses, and precisely worded description of research methods.

We will never “find the time” to retrieve and read all of the necessary articles, just as we will never “find the time” to write a review of those articles. Use your scheduled writing time to do it.

Writing is more than typing words: Any action that is instrumental in completing a writing project counts as writing.

You have to make up your mind about what qualifies as work in writing sessions.

Daniel Nettle, “Hanging on to the Edges Essays on Science, Society, and the Academic Life“, distinguish between work and not work in the following way:

• Work: collecting data, analysing data, writing code, drafting a paper, writing ideas in a notebook, or just thinking.
• Not work: background reading, literature searches, answering correspondence, marking students’ assignments, peer-reviewing a paper, sorting out my website, correcting proofs, filling in forms, tidying datasheets, having meetings.

The importance of setting clear and manageable goals

Clear goals are directly motivating – they enable people to plan, carry out instrumental actions, and feel proud when the goal has been accomplished.

To write a lot you need to clarify your writing goals

Silvia describes goal-setting as a 3-step process:

Step 1 – planning, planning and planning

The first step is to realize that goal setting is part of the process of writing. It is a good idea to devote a writing session to developing and clarifying your writing goals, e.g. once a month.

Planning is part of writing, so people who write a lot also plan a lot.

Step 2 – make lists

The second step is to list your project goals, i.e. the individual projects that need to be written. Examples include

• Revising and resubmitting a paper
• Starting a new manuscript
• Writing a book chapter
• Reviving that half-done paper you started years ago
• Developing a grant proposal
• Writing a book

What do you want to write? Make a list over projects you want to accomplish – i.e. a list over goals.

Step 3 – the more concrete the better

The third step is to set a concrete goal for each day of writing. When you sit down during your writing time to work toward a project goal, you need to break the goal into smaller units.

Resubmit a paper is fine as an overall project goal – but it is too broad to be useful when you sit down to write on a daily basis.

When you start you writing period, take a couple of moments to think about what you want to accomplish that day.

Examples of concrete daily goals:

• Write at least 200 words
• Print first draft I finished yesterday; read it and revise
• Make a new list of project goals
• Write three first paragraphs of discussion
• Brainstorm and then make an outline for a new manuscript
• Reread reviewers’ comments of my paper and make a list of things to change
• Correct page proofs
• Read paper … and include summary/relevant information in manuscript
• Reread “How to Write a Lot” for inspiration

Get in the habit of setting specific, focused, concrete goals for each writing day. They will prevent confusion about what to do and how to do it.

Prioritize

Silvia has a suggested list of priorities ranked by their importance, i.e. order of finishing.

1. Checking page proofs and copy-edited manuscripts – almost published so why wait?
2. Finish projects with deadline
3. Revising manuscripts to resubmit to a journal – a revised manuscript is closer to publication than a new one. Give it higher priority
4. Reviewing manuscripts and grant proposals – a bit controversial but the peer review process is only as good as the peers who do the review
5. Developing a new manuscript
6. Doing miscellaneous writing – a catch all category for unimportant writing that needs to be done, e.g. my blog.

Also, give priority to projects where you’re a non-writing co-author.

As you probably know, waiting for comments from your co-authors is a drag!

Ever written first draft, send it to the second and third authors for comments and changes and wait an eternity to hear anything?

The importance of self-monitoring

It is not enough to set a goal and make it a priority – you have to monitor your progress toward the goal.

Silvia argues that monitoring your writing progress has many motivational effects:

• First, watching your progress keeps you goals prominent, preventing them from slipping away. Keep you focused on on-going projects
• Merely monitoring your behaviour will help you sit down and write. Research indicates that self-observation alone can cause desired behaviours. You should keep track of whether you sat down and wrote or not. Typing a big zero in a spreadsheet when you miss a writing period is oddly motivating.
• Monitoring you writing will help you set better goals. After a while, you’ll even have enough data to make realistic estimates of how long it will take to write something.

How to monitor yourself

Silvia suggests that you make a spreadsheet with the columns day, date, and year. Essential variables are goals, words and project.

• In the words column enter number of word you write any given day. Since writing includes many tasks, not just generating text this column will have many empty cells.
• The purpose of the goal column is to mark whether you met you writing goal for that day.
• The project column describes the project goal worked on that day

I have revised this in a minor way by splitting the column goals in two. While the Silvia has just the goal to sit down and do something that furthers the overall project goal (and thus easy to achieve) I have split it down to daily goals.

In other words, while the Silvia uses the goals from Step 2, I use the goals from Step 3.

• In the words column enter number of word you write any given day.
• The goal column is a description of your daily goal.
• The reached goal column is to mark whether you met you writing goal for that day.
• The project column describes the project you worked on that day

Reward yourself when you finish a project goal.

Useful links

http://savageminds.org/2014/02/24/my-ten-steps-for-writing-a-book/

http://thesiswhisperer.com/2015/01/16/how-to-write-10000-words-a-day/

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/06/20/essential-guide-writing-good-abstracts/