Category: Practice

The Project Pipeline and Interruptions in the Writing Process

Maintaining a Regular Practice

War emergency pipeline from Longview, Texas to Norris City, Illinois. Pipeline approaching canal. Wooden plug in end of pipe will keep dirt and animals out. (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8d09020/)

It’s good to focus on a single project, but most projects hit periods when it’s inefficient to work on them. At those times, it’s good to have other projects to which you can profitably turn your attention.

The pipeline

In academia, it’s pretty common to talk about the “pipeline” of projects, a set of projects in different stages of maturity: some you’re just beginning; some you’re developing as a project proposal; some you’re actively writing/creating; some you’re editing; some are in the hands of other people and you’re waiting to hear back. Maybe you don’t have all of these at once, but having multiple projects keeps the overall writing process smoother for writers, whether academic or not.

Natural interruptions

There are good reasons to put aside a project for a time. If you just completed a draft, it’s useful to set it aside for at least a few days before diving into revision. If you’re collaborating with others, hiring an editor, seeking publication, or in the publication process, then there are periods when working on your manuscript may be inefficient, for example if you decide to change something that someone else liked, or you fine-tune something that needs major revision. And sometimes we just get frustrated with a project, and would benefit from taking a break from it.

Continuity of practice

Many writers have a regular writing practice. They write every day or almost every day. Their writing time is built into their calendar. This regularity of practice is a huge benefit to the writer, not only because it keeps the writing space in your schedule occupied, but because it keeps your neurophysiology in a more consistent rhythm: you’re used to writing, which helps you turn your attention to writing and away from other distractions.

When an interruption arises, whatever the cause, if you have other projects, then you can keep working without an interruption to your writing practice.

Switching focus from one project to another has some difficulties: you may need to remind yourself of what you were doing with a project that hasn’t gotten attention for days or weeks. In such moments, distractions have an easier time grabbing your attention, and the continuity of practice helps manage the switch between projects without the practice being interrupted.

Emotional stability

Interruptions can be frustrating and emotionally challenging. Waiting to hear back about a submission can be stressful. Waiting for colleagues to respond can be frustrating. There are also times when the frustrations within a project also motivate taking a break. Whatever the cause of the interruption, your other projects offer a chance to work on something that interests and motivates you. (Hopefully you have some projects that do interest you and motivate you; if you don’t that’s a different problem.)

Since a good emotional state facilitates writing, having these other projects present will help prevent frustration. To be sure, there are times when it’s important to work through frustration, and I’m not suggesting switching projects every time you get frustrated, it’s easier to work through the specific frustrations of one project when you have a good relationship with writing and you don’t feel trapped by your project.

Projects, big and small

The bigger the project, the more likely there will be an interruption. The smaller the project, the more often you need to start a new one. Often it can be nice to have some of both in your pipeline. The big ones let you go deep; the small ones fill the cracks. A combination of big and small projects will commonly arise for professional writers and academics. There are books, articles, requests (e.g., query letters, applications for grants/fellowships), presentations, and possibly blogs and social media.

Satisfaction and a flowing pipeline

Getting projects out into the world, whether small or big, helps me feel like I’m making progress. It helps me feel like my efforts are more than spinning my wheels. I mostly write to help other writers, and when I do help others, that provides positive feedback. (I consider writing editorial feedback to an author to be one of the forms of writing on which I work. I don’t limit my view of writing to only material for publication.) You may have other motivations — to entertain, educate, express yourself, etc. — whatever the motivation, if your pipeline is producing stuff, or at least moving toward production, that feels good. And, again, a good mental state facilitates writing.

So keep your pipeline flowing. Yes, focus on one project when that project is moving. And yes, start new projects, or work on others, when you come to an interruption.

How many projects do you have in your pipeline at present?

Originally posted on Medium: https://thoughtclearing.medium.com/the-project-pipeline-and-interruptions-in-the-writing-process-40a59fcd8de7

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How to Become a Better Writer

Daybreak

Effective Writing Practice

Writing is an invaluable tool with a range of uses, from informal texting with friends to carefully crafted social media posts to career-shaping communications. Writing is also hard. Many struggle to write, especially as the stakes increase. Texting your best friend is probably easy. Writing a novel as a hobby is a lot harder. And writing is even harder in more formal settings like school and work.

For the past 20 years, I’ve been working as a writing coach for graduate students and professors. In the course of that work, I’ve thought, read, and written extensively about how to write more effectively. In 2007, I started my first blog on blogspot. Since then, there’s a second blog on my website, an academic book co-authored with my dissertation advisor, a self-published dissertation-writing book, and an academic guide to writing literature reviews that is (as of March 2026) featured on the UC Berkeley library website.

In this, my first article on Medium, I invite you to join me as I explore the question of how to become a better writer.

What is a Good Writer?

How would you answer this question? The most common answer, I imagine, is that a good writer is someone who produces good writing. This answer leads to the question: what is good writing? But I want to pursue a different idea of being a good writer, one that isn’t as common.

The idea I want to pursue is that a good writer is someone who gets more out of the process than they have to put in: their benefits outweigh their costs. A related description is that a good writer is someone who gets what they want from writing. That answer focuses only on the desired goal.

If that’s our view, then to answer this question, we have to know why we’re writing and what we hope to get out of writing. The better you understand what you want to do, the easier it is to achieve that goal, and therefore the easier it is for your benefits to outweigh your costs.

Know Your Purposes

Why do you write? Do you write for work? For school? For pleasure? Are you writing to entertain? To inform or educate? To heal yourself? For a good writing exercise, write out the reasons you want to write.

Human motivation is complex. Different needs and desires drive each of us. We want success; we want to shape our social position; we want to get our professor or boss off our back. The child may write a thank-you note for a birthday present because their parents told them to, or because they’re really grateful and excited to write their thanks. The scholar might write because they want a job or tenure, because they’re excited to share interesting ideas, because they want to teach and help others grow, or because they want to solve some social problem. The novelist might write because they want to express themselves, audience be damned, or because they want to entertain. These are the kinds of motivations that first come to mind when we talk about purposes.

Another set of purposes that are less often considered are in how the writing is used. All the purposes discussed in the previous paragraph are for some sort of social outcome — one centered on writing as a tool for communication. But writing is not always for communication: two valuable roles for writing are to support memory and to support development of new ideas. By recognizing these various purposes, writers can more effectively apply their efforts.

Effective Writing Practice

Every writer is different, so precise details about what makes an effective writing practice will vary. But we’re all human, so we also share a great deal, too. Especially, we all share the potential for learning and growth; indeed growth and change are inevitable. This constant change means that our purposes change too.

With this in mind, I like to focus on the question of “effective writing practice,” to highlight both the immediate moments and the long-term picture. The idea of effective research practice invites both the question of how to use the next minute effectively and how to use the next year or decade effectively.

Please come check out my Medium account (https://thoughtclearing.medium.com), where this was originally posted.

Conservation of Momentum

In physics, “conservation of momentum” refers to the basic principle that energy (like momentum) moves around within a system, but is never actually lost. In writing, momentum is a much more personal, emotional thing and it can be all too easily lost, especially for writers who struggle with anxiety-related writing blocks. Writing momentum is valuable in that your whole neurophysiology begins to resonate with the project on which you’re working. If you have worked on your project every day, or at least worked with some degree of productivity, the ideas about what to do and where to go and different options and different issues are much more clear and present in mind than they are if you have spent the last week focusing on seeing tourist attractions while on vacation.

For a writer who has been writing successfully for a long time, there’s a lot of momentum built up.  The body and mind of such a writer have deeply worn patterns of behavior that are relatively easy to reactivate after some time off.  For a writer who struggles with anxiety and who is prone to writer’s block—me, among others—breaks in momentum can be very difficult.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been writing about dealing with anxiety blocks—about how to get past anxiety to engage with writing in the first place. That’s a subject with which I have extensive personal experience, having struggled with anxiety-related writing blocks multiple times in my life. Indeed, this spring, I suffered some minor health problems—just enough to derail me for a time, and I stopped writing.  And then, having lost my momentum, and struggling with anxiety, I found it difficult to get back into it. I have been rebuilding momentum, though, and I hope to get my writing levels and consistency back up. It can be hard to get momentum, but once you’ve got it, it eases the process. It is good to conserve momentum.

What does momentum feel like?

In my experience, momentum feels good. Momentum is characterized by recent progress on a project, when both the project feels good and the progress I’ve made feels like progress (i.e., I don’t feel like I’m just spinning my wheels, even if I have just decided to throw away a weak draft). When you have momentum, you think about your project in the spare moments. If you’re running errands, having momentum means that you may have some idea about your project while standing on line at the store, or while waiting for the gas tank to fill, or while riding public transit. If you have momentum, you might have dreams related to your project—even dreams that offer some insight. If you have momentum, you can focus more quickly and precisely on a specific project and zero-in on the details and concerns of that individual project. 

By contrast, if you don’t have momentum, it’s more likely that you will scan a wide range of possible projects, and even if you pick one project as the one to work on, you will be thinking generally about the project, rather than focusing in on specific issues.  To be sure, thinking generally about a project is a good thing, and is an important part of the writing process—you need to have a big vision—but when you’re making progress—when you have momentum—that big vision is implicit and your other concerns can flow naturally from that driving force. 

Momentum feels confident, at least on the small scale: the confidence to take some action to move the project forward. This is a confidence built out of regular process and practice: if you have consistently made steps that move the project forward, it’s easy to feel that you can take yet one more step.

Momentum is neurophysiological activity

When you do the same thing repeatedly, your body gets used to doing it. If you spend a lot of your time thinking about one specific project or subject, then, not surprisingly, you’re more likely to think about that subject given a free moment.  In idle moments, your thoughts are likely to turn to something that has recently been on your mind.  This is especially valuable, I think, if it is a good thing and something you feel good about, because then you build confidence and comfort. By contrast, feeling bad about your project is a way to build negative momentum: if you force yourself to suffer through work, that is likely to build aversion that reduces motivation and ultimately reduces momentum.

Ideally, you can approach your project with enthusiasm, and then work on it regularly and build good momentum.  Lots of people do this. If you have ever talked with someone who is genuinely excited about their work, then there’s a good chance you’re talking with someone that has developed good project momentum. If all you ever think about is your work, you may be boring at parties, but it makes writing easier. 

Momentum does not require obsession, however. Momentum requires a good balance—enough work to keep re-activating the appropriate neurophysiology, but also enough rest to allow those physiological systems to rest and regenerate.  For many writers, good writing momentum is something that involves three or four hours of writing a day.  Writing is not generally a work-all-day task. It is, indeed, only one part of the responsibilities of an academic or a professional writers in other fields.

Conserve your momentum

It takes effort to get momentum going: the first steps of getting started are the most difficult.  Starting a project can be hard because you’re not sure where to go. You may have the enthusiasm that goes with new projects, but you have to battle with making many many decisions about the direction for the work to take. That takes a lot of effort. Having made those decisions, and having the whole train of reasoning relatively fresh in your mind is a large part of the momentum you gather. If you don’t take action to keep that momentum—namely working on your project every day or almost every day—you will lose the momentum and have to invest the extra effort to get started again.

Restarting a project, too, takes extra effort. If you’ve left a project aside for a while, you may need to refamiliarize yourself with it. You may need to reconstruct or refresh your vision of what you want to accomplish and how you plan on accomplishing it. Again, once you get moving, a lot of the questions become clearer when they are freshly considered.  

I want to acknowledge that there are good times to set aside a project for a little while, despite the loss of momentum, but those spots should be picked carefully.  In particular, it is often good to take a little time away from a project after completing a draft.  Stepping away from a draft for a time can give you a new perspective, which is useful. The momentum that I have been describing does encompass a perspective and focus that helps you produce work. But when it comes time to criticize that work, it is good to shift perspective—to see the work with fresh eyes, as the expression goes. That’s a break in momentum, but it’s less problematic because it occurs at a natural break in the process, so it’s less disruptive than dropping a project in its midst. It’s easier to regain momentum at such break points because taking a break is part of the plan. Still, even at those break points, it’s pretty important not to let too much time elapse before you get back to work.

Building Momentum

Building momentum takes effort, but it need not be some grueling torture. If you are currently stuck and have no current momentum, every little step you takes helps build it.  You’re writing nothing? Write an e-mail to a friend.  That helps build momentum. You can write social media posts but not your work? Write some social media posts and remind yourself that it is writing, too. And then try to write a sentence or two about your work. There are two keys to build good, sustainable momentum: (1) do something; make some effort; if yesterday was unproductive, try to do just a little today; if yesterday was productive, try to keep that level of productivity going; and (2) do it gently, so that it is a process that may be difficult but is not painful.

If you’ve lost your momentum, you can build it again with patience and persistence. And if you have it, value it and build on it. Writing momentum helps you write, but it takes effort to maintain it. Conserve your writing momentum by writing regularly.

Book review: Write More, Publish More, Stress Less!

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice.
Dannelle D. Stevens
Stylus Publishing, 2019

I have often considered doing book reviews on my blog, or book recommendations on my website, but have not done so because I have trouble giving positive reviews. I’m critical. Even those books that I like best are limited enough that I can’t give a review without discussing negative stuff.  In addition to being critical, I also want to respect the work of others: I don’t want to give someone a low score, so I generally don’t do reviews. (But if you the reader would be interested in seeing me review something, let me know!)  In this case, however, I like this book so much that it’s very easy to recommend to scholars who are struggling to write.

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice. shares many of the ideas I think crucial, and uses them and does a great job of developing them into guidance for scholars. 

Just starting with the title, I was excited about this book. The subtitle’s phrase—“sustainable scholarly practice”—is one that I have used often in my own writing. A quick review of almost anything I have written about writing will show the importance I place on the view of writing as a practice. I usually talk about “healthy” and “positive” practice, but often use “sustainable,” too.  More recently, I have been writing about dealing with anxiety-induced writing blocks, so the main title’s “Stress Less!” is also in line with my current interests. The idea that a scholarly practice is “creative” is also an idea I have discussed recently in this blog. 

The book’s five key principles are:

  • Know yourself as a writer
  • Understand the genre of academic writing
  • Be strategic to build a sustainable writing practice
  • Be social
  • Explore creative elements in academic writing

Each principle was accompanied with excellent, detailed practical suggestions that present scholarly writing as a practice that encompasses a wide range of different but related activities.

To single out one aspect among the many that I like: Stevens talks about scholarship as a conversation, which is a central perspective of my recent book, Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice. She repeatedly cites another book that frames scholarly writing as a conversation—They Say/I Say by Graff and Birkenstein—which  I also like.

Following the five main principles, the book dedicates several chapters to different kinds of writing projects—personal research journal, book reviews, conference proposals and presentations, journal articles, and books—all of which offer good advice. After those chapters is one of the chapters I like best: the chapter on handling a revise-and-resubmit (with first author Micki M. Caskey). Using feedback well is a crucial part of scholarly writing, but it’s also an area where emotions run high, and many people struggle. A harsh comment can trigger paralysis. Caskey and Stevens provide good perspectives on how to approach feedback, and excellent detailed suggestions for analyzing the feedback and planning a response. This is the best advice on using feedback I have seen, including what I have written on the subject in this blog and in my books.

This is an excellent book, and probably can help almost any scholar trying to get their writing going in the face of pressure to publish. It offers a detailed view into the many activities that scholars pursue in order to succeed in academia—a real sense of the fabric of a productive academic writing practice—which makes it an excellent long-term resource for graduate students thinking about academic careers. 

Having said all that, I will offer a word of caution. I would hesitate to give this to someone struggling with anxiety. For some, I think it could be overwhelming. For me, at least, I would have found it overwhelming earlier in my career, and even now it triggers the social anxiety that was the main cause of my leaving academic institutions to work privately (with a relatively small number of people). There is great advice in here that, if followed, would definitely would lead to less stress in the long run, but if I were giving this to someone struggling with anxiety, I would be cautious to frame it as a toolbox—something from which to draw ideas when needed, without necessarily trying to use everything in it at once—to guard against getting overwhelmed by all the different suggestions.  

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 14: Grab low-hanging fruit

When it’s time to write, what do you work on? My previous post considered different kinds of writing and their value to the writer, even if they are not directly contributing to the text of some draft that will be shared with others. I want to follow up on that idea about different ways to contribute to the process of writing, again in much the same vein as the previous: it is valuable to recognize all the actions that help in the creation of a written work, both those that directly impact the work and those that contribute indirectly. For anxious writers, fear that time is being misused can lead to vacillation about where to expend effort, as well as anxiety that time is being ill-spent. Ironically, such vacillation takes time and energy away from writing (“I don’t know what to do!”), and can contribute to future anxiety (“I didn’t get anything done because I was feeling lost, and now I’m even farther behind!”).

Let’s take it for granted that the ideal is for a writer to sit down, immediately focus on the most important project, and write productively. But what do you do, if you don’t match this ideal?  Do you say “I need to try harder” or “I need more self-discipline” and then grit your teeth and try again tomorrow the same thing you did today? As I have suggested earlier, “try harder” isn’t always the right strategy, especially not for people who generally and regularly demonstrate self-discipline throughout most of their lives, but struggle with writing due to anxiety. In this post I am going to consider the choice between working on immediate productivity and working on long-term growth.

Immediate use vs. long-term growth

Speaking generally, in many skilled activities, there is a choice between applying the skill directly, and working on building the skill/ability. For example, consider a competitive runner: sometimes—at a track meet or race, for example—they directly apply their ability (i.e., they run a race); other times—during training—they engage in many different activities—weight-lifting, calisthenics, study of nutrition, etc.—that will help them when it is time to run. Or, for example, sometimes a musician performs to an audience, and sometimes they play scales, study music theory, etc. to build skill. 

A writer, too, benefits from separating the performance from the practice. There are absolutely times when it’s most beneficial to try to add to a manuscript that you will give to someone else for review. But there are also times when you benefit from activities that don’t directly contribute to any manuscript but that do help you develop your ability as a writer.  Seeing this potential benefit can free a writer from anxiety in making choices of where to work. A whole range of activities can help develop a better practice. Perhaps the most valuable is time spent writing to develop ideas and explore, but many other writing tasks can be helpful in the long term, especially if you start to view those activities as being part of writing practice.

All kinds of writing are writing

Writing, the skill, develops when it is used, and especially when it is challenged. This means that all writing can be an opportunity to become a better writer.  Writing a text message to a friend, writing tweets, writing e-mail—these common activities are all writing, and they all contribute to your skill and ability as a writer.  At a most basic level, this is neurologically inevitable: if you keep putting ideas into words on a page/screen, you reinforce the patterns that do that. This benefit may be small, but it is real, and just for this reason alone, it’s worth remembering that all writing contributes to your ability as a writer. There is a potential related emotional benefit: recognizing these simple and easy actions as writing, might counter the idea that writing is terrifying/terrible, peeling away at least one contributor to anxiety—you may still say “writing my scholarly work is terrible,” but at least you could say “not all writing is terrible,” or even, “I enjoy some kinds of writing; maybe I could learn to fear scholarly writing less.”  

Obviously, not all types of writing contribute equally to your ability. Basically, the easier it is, the less growth you get from it. Writing “see you at 6” is going to improve your ability about as much as walking to the refrigerator will improve your long-distance running ability.  In terms of building skill, the greater the challenge, the greater the potential growth. In terms of reducing anxiety, however, and building a long-term, positive practice of writing, the emotional dimension of those easy tasks is important. For the writer who has gotten overwhelmed by anxiety, it can be calming to have experiences with writing that do not cause anxiety.  If you struggle with writing anxiety, remember that all kinds of writing are writing and are part of your writing practice and can help you develop a better relationship with writing. For the long-distance runner, walking to the fridge offers little benefit, but for the person recovering from an injury, that walk to the fridge can be an indicator of potential future growth.

Recognizing benefit

To even think about the “most beneficial” course of action raises the difficult question of how to measure value. One particular issue is the question of the time frame in which to maximize that value. Loosely speaking, are we measuring benefit over a short time or over a long time? 

Consider, as a thought experiment, a writer who has to submit writing every day, and whose work is entirely judged by word count. Let us assume that this writer currently produces 1,000 words/day. And further, let’s assume that, instead of producing any writing for submission, the writer can spend a day doing skill-building exercises, that will increase future productivity by 20%.  If we judge this writer over a time frame of only one day, obviously it’s better to write 1,000 words than to do exercises and produce nothing. Similarly, over two days, the writer who writes both days produces 2,000 words, while the writer who takes one day for exercises and one day to write produces only 1,200 words.  In this example, the break-even point for doing the exercises is on day 6, after which the writer who did no exercises and the writer who did exercises on day 1 have both produced 6,000 words. In this example, the writer who took a day off for exercises is more productive over any period longer than six days.

This example demonstrates the fundamental potential in investing time and effort into improving your ability to write. The precise numbers in the example are simplistic, but the principle is important: actions that help you develop a better writing practice are increasingly valuable over longer time frames.  If you’re just thinking about the next week, you have less incentive to step away from your manuscript to do some writing exercise than if you’re thinking about the next year.

Valuing improvement

It’s overly simplistic to measure writing output in terms of word counts, but it’s also useful for this discussion, because it allows us to focus on issues of writing practice rather than on evaluation of writing quality. We can think of word count as an indicator of anxiety level.  Let’s hypothesize that a writer with no anxiety produces 1,000 words/day, and that the greater the anxiety, the fewer the words produced, and that there are some writers so anxious that they produce 0 words/day. For writers who are overwhelmed with anxiety, any slight reduction in anxiety corresponds with relatively large improvements in productivity: going from 0 words/day to 5 words/day is significant, and should not be scorned just because 5 words/day is small in absolute terms. In emotional terms, it’s the difference between utter paralysis and beginning to act in the face of fear!

This is worth stressing, because so many people struggling with writer’s block will dismiss real progress because it’s not enough progress. I’ve worked with many writers who, though they have been unable to write for months, get frustrated that they “only” wrote a few sentences. Yes, it’s true that you’re not going to build a prolific writing practice on the basis of one sentence a day. And yes, it’s frustrating to perform at a level far below expectations. But if you’re thinking about building a healthy practice, you have to be practical enough to value real improvement. Moving from 1 word/day to 2 words/day is real growth to be valued, even if it’s not what you’d like.

In dealing with anxiety-related writing blocks, you want to find every little thing to celebrate, and try to peel away as many layers of anxiety as possible. Focusing on growth keeps you from focusing on low productivity (at current).

Grab the low-hanging fruit

Beating your head against the most difficult tasks is not necessarily the best choice.  Don’t scorn activities that you can accomplish and even celebrate in a small way. Free writing, email, and other small tasks may not directly and immediately address your current projects, but if they can help you reduce anxiety and stress, they may contribute to your overall productivity. Of course, for them to reduce anxiety and stress, you can’t beat yourself up for doing them.

Small tasks that are easily completed—low-hanging fruit—can help you remember what it feels like to succeed as a writer, even if it is only small success, and even if it’s not what you hoped for. 

Conclusion

In the long run, you want to develop a writing practice where your efforts are rewarded with the manuscripts you need. If you battle with anxiety, that might seem inpossible, but with the right practice and perspective, you can reduce anxiety and improve productivity. There are many different activities that can help you improve your writing practice but that don’t immediately or directly help with your current manuscript. Remember the long-term goal of healthy practice when deciding where to put your efforts: sometimes it’s worth investing your time in some exercise that won’t help immediately. Maybe that’s some free writing that doesn’t lead anywhere, maybe it’s writing an e-mail that has been nagging at you but has nothing to do with your main project, or maybe it’s even some debate in social media. Such activities can help you reduce anxiety and develop a more positive relationship with writing, even if they don’t help with your current project. That social media argument doesn’t contribute to your manuscript, but it does practice your skill in presenting arguments—a skill needed by scholars. That e-mail can be an experience in writing despite anxiety, providing a model for the experience of writing despite anxiety. The free writing helps bring many new ideas into sight, and some gems might be found amongst the dross.

In short, sometimes it makes sense to work on relatively easy tasks that do not directly help you move your difficult task forward, but that do help you develop a better writing practice and relationship with writing.

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 13: See the value in different kinds of writing

One reason people struggle with anxiety about writing is that they think about other people reading their work. If someone else is going to read what you’re writing—even a friendly audience—the emotional stakes are higher. To build a healthy writing practice, it’s important to recognize that a lot of the practice of writing does not focus on communicating with others.  If you can focus your efforts on the other purposes of writing—especially the exploratory purpose (which I have discussed previously)—you can appreciate your own efforts more, and possibly feel less anxiety. 

A writer with whom I work recently expressed regret that they hadn’t gotten any writing done, and also said that they had made some notes about what they were going to work on once they did start writing.  Thinking about the need to add material to a finished draft, they felt that they didn’t work on writing and were saddened by it (adding a potential emotional barrier). But from the perspective of developing a piece of writing, and from the perspective of developing a writing practice, they did real work, and they should celebrate that effort and the progress they made.

Writing is not just communication

There are at least three good reasons to write that are not focused on communicating: to build skill, to remember, and to learn/work out ideas. There may be purposes that don’t fit into these three basic categories—some people might write for the pleasure of the activity, for example—but on the whole, most purposes for writing can be fit into these three categories, learning, memory, and communication. (If you’re one of those people who have fun writing, keep doing what you’re doing!)

Recognizing these different purposes can help writers develop a more effective writing practice and healthier relationship with writing.  While I have expressed these ideas in a few places in the past, I have not made them a focus of any single essay.

For many writers, especially those struggling to write, it’s particularly important to remember the second purpose—writing to learn/develop ideas—and not to focus on the third—writing to communicate.  Focusing on communication can distract from trying to work out ideas, and can also trigger a lot of anxiety, because writing for communication involves the possibility of rejection.

Writing to build skill

Like any skill, the ability to write can be developed through practice. And basically the only way to build the skill is to write. But there are many different ways to build writing skill because writing is a skill of many dimensions that includes the ability to develop ideas, the ability to find good words, the ability to write flowing sentences and coherent paragraphs, and the ability to sequence the presentation of ideas and examples. All of these skills develop when you engage in almost any challenging writing task. (Writing something easy—a shopping list, a text to a friend to set a time to meet—won’t do much to develop your skill as a writer.)

From the skill-building perspective, we can see much of what you write as helping you become a better writer, and thus helping indirectly with your most pressing projects, even if not helping directly. That time you spend writing your novel doesn’t directly help you finish your scholarly monograph (dissertation or book), and may contribute to avoiding the monograph, but it does help you write better, and thus provides indirect support.

The idea of building skill can be an avoidance tool—“I’ll start my real writing once I’ve gotten better at writing in general”—which is obviously not desirable.  But if you have a lot of anxiety about writing, then working on a skill-building task—free writing, notes about what you’re writing, etc.—might be better than simply avoiding all writing entirely.  Even the social media thread to which you contributed might help build some skill. If you are trying to reduce anxiety, viewing these activities as skill-building exercises can help reduce negative emotions that follow: the lament, “I wasted the whole day on social media,” can become, “at least I was able to write something and build a little skill.” If you put effort into arguing for something on social media, you are developing writing skill with structure and presentation of arguments. That skill can then be used writing in other contexts, too.  

Again, I want to emphasize that, of course, it would probably be best to work on your top-priority project, but if you are struggling due to anxiety, don’t overlook the value that comes from practicing other sorts of writing. If you are struggling due to anxiety, you can get a small emotional boost from thinking about how different tasks do contribute to your writing skill, and thus indirectly to your most important writing projects. Don’t turn your hours of social media writing into an extra emotional burden; instead remind yourself that it’s another form of writing and presenting arguments, and if you can do social media, you can also do your other writing.

Writing to remember

Writing is obviously useful as an aid to memory.  If you’re writing to remember, however, it’s not so much about communicating all of an idea—though you could say you are communicating to your future self—it’s more about creating an anchor for your memory.  But I’m not very much interested in this dimension of writing as part of a writing practice. Writing for memory can help development of writing skill, but when I’m interested in “writing,” I’m really concerned with not just the process of putting words on the page so much as I am in the process of creating things worth reading at least in part because of their originality. And I don’t really have a lot to say beyond observing that it can be helpful to take notes to remember ideas. (Maybe I’ll give this issue some more consideration in another post.)

Writing to learn and develop ideas

This is a kind of writing that I really want to emphasize (I have touched on it repeatedly in this series). Writing can be a tool to develop ideas about both the intellectual foundations and the presentation of your arguments. Many writers struggle because they think they have to work all the ideas out before they start writing. One common block is to say “I can’t start writing; I still have x sources to read,” as if writing were only done to record what has already been learned. But writing leads to learning, too.

Writing forces reflection and reconsideration.  When you have an idea in your head, it’s easy for that idea to remain unexamined, even unconscious.  When you try to write the idea down, however, the attempt to find words and the reflection forced by seeing those words on the page both bring into consciousness aspects that were more easily taken for granted. In this process, it is common to find problems that were previously unobserved.  

To use writing in this way requires a different perspective on writing than writing for communication.  In this exploratory kind of writing, the idea is to get something on the page as quickly as possible, in order to get a sense of how the whole package works. It is to provide quick reflection on plans.  Because it is not meant for others, it doesn’t need the polish that would be required of a draft that someone else might read. It can be notes, fragments, single words, lists, diagrams—anything that helps you figure out what you’re trying to say.  Strictly speaking, it’s not writing if it’s not words, but as a tool for exploring ideas, writing can be almost anything you put down on a page.

Writing for idea development is analogous to: 

  • a student using scratch paper on a mathematics exam to work out ideas
  • a musician’s experimentation with phrasing and dynamics while working through a new piece of music
  • a composer’s playing through melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic variations of a musical idea
  • an athlete experimenting with new skills during practice
  • a painter making study sketches, prior to work on a canvas
  • an architect making study sketches prior to committing to a design

Conclusion

There are a lot of activities that will help you develop a productive writing practice and finish important writing projects, and many of them do not involve working on a draft that you will ultimately share with others. As part of building a healthy writing practice, it’s valuable to recognize these less obvious contributions.  If you’re struggling with anxiety and self-criticism, it’s particularly important to recognize this value. Instead of berating yourself for the limits of what you did (“I worked on an artistic shopping list, not my book!”), look for the value of your efforts not just with respect to your current project, but as helping you develop as a writer, and perhaps most importantly, helping you develop a better emotional relationship with writing.  

Writing successfully means doing all sorts of writing that does not directly contribute to the production of a draft that gets shared with others. Most importantly, in my view, is using writing as a tool to explore ideas. People engaged in all skilled practices benefit from exercises that develop skill or explore possibilities. Writing is a skilled practice, too. The exercises that you do—writing experiments, writing not directly related to your main project—can help you develop healthier writing practice.  And the healthier your writing practice, the more productive you will be.