Category: Practice

Becoming a Better Writer: Frankenstein vs. the Cloning Vats

About a month ago, after watching a video on how to practice music, I started to write a post on how to become a better writer, with the basic theme being practice and my intentions aimed at discussing some ideas about developing a good practice.  As I worked on that post, however, I got sidetracked into a three-post digression into discussing what it means to be a good writer because how do you become a better writer without knowing what a good writer is?

In my posts on what it is to be a good writer, I discussed three general dimensions of being a good writer: (1) producing good written works; (2) enjoying or feeling a sense of accomplishment when writing; and (3) having a writing practice that leads to growth.  The first of these three dimensions is the one that most people think of with respect to “good writers,” but the others are important, too, because of their relationship to the key factor in becoming a better writer (in all three senses): practice.

As I said, I started this series of posts about a month ago, when I had a certain vision of what I wanted to do.  But in the course of that month, things have happened that give me new ideas, or at least lead me to revisit old ideas.  This post is related to becoming a better writer—it is about one specific question in how to practice writing effectively—but it is a bit more specific than I was planning on.  However, I’ve decided to go with this because the idea for it was sparked by a recent interaction with a writer.

Re-animating old work vs. growing a new draft

This writer was talking about using previous papers as a foundation for a new draft, and spoke of “Frankenstein-ing a draft,” meaning to pick chunks of old work, and to stitch them together into a complete whole.  Reflecting on this plan of action (and looking through the old drafts to find pieces that could be used for the “Frankenstein draft”), I came up against a principle that I strongly believe helps writers use their time and effort more effectively.

Because the language of the discussion was one from science fiction/horror, I framed a comparison in terms of the genre: is it better to create a Frankenstein draft, or is it better to get something out of the cloning vats?  The idea of a Frankenstein’s monster is pretty clear: a body stitched together from several different parts, perhaps awkwardly.  My idea of “cloning vats” isn’t something I can associate with any single cultural work (a search for “cloning vats” turns up a lot of science fiction games). In this particular analogy, I’m imagining the “cloning vats” as a system in which old organic matter is recycled to provide the raw materials from which new creatures are grown.  In terms of writing practice, I’m really focusing on the choice between revising and rewriting—the choice between trying to reuse old material and trying to generate new material.

A newly grown draft will better embody new ideas

The first reason I recommend this is that we learn as we go: if you have learned something new or thought of something new, that new idea will be much easier to bring to life in a new draft than it will if you’re trying to stitch it into a Frankenstein draft.  The pieces from which a Frankenstein draft is built are a reflection of what you thought at some previous time.  Trying to make new ideas conform to demands of a draft built on old thinking can push you away from what you have learned.  

Perhaps most crucial in “new ideas” are the shifts in the purpose that drive any given draft.  In the specific case that inspired the post, the writer wanted to reuse material that was originally written to answer questions from professors. That material was admirably suited as answers to the questions, but not so well suited to the present need, which is to explain the foundations of the dissertation they are trying to create.  Even if the two drafts share most of their content, the difference between writing an answer to a question like “what methods can be used to research…?” and the question “what methods were used in this specific project” is a massive one.  One question asks for an overview of methods; the other asks for explanations of why specific methods were used.

Growing a new draft helps build skill at writing to the blank page

The second reason I recommend writing a new draft is that it’s more practice as a writer.  Writing a new draft is going to challenge your skills more.  This is not to say that there’s no skill developed in the attempt to build a Frankenstein, and I could be convinced that you learn just as much in either process. So maybe I shouldn’t include this as a reason to rewrite instead of revising.  It depends on which ability is more valuable to a writer: the ability to revise, or the ability to compose on a blank page.  Offhand, I would say that the latter is more important, but it’s a question that might be worth exploring: in particular, I’m thinking about my own personal problems with revision and my tendency to get frustrated with my own work.

Growing a new draft builds the confidence that you can write a new draft when needed.

A third reason I argue for the rewriting rather than revising is that, in the context of a larger practice of writing, or a career that involves a lot of writing, it’s good to start to think in terms of writing quickly and easily.  Writing is always going to be difficult, but the question is whether that difficulty is intimidating or not.  Speaking is difficult, but people speak when needed. Some people avoid public speaking, of course, but no one would argue that such avoidance places limits on the person in many career contexts.  Avoiding writing is a lot like avoiding public speaking: it’s giving up a valuable tool. Willingness to rewrite takes some confidence in writing ability, but it can also help build that same confidence.  In a way, this last point might be the most important in terms of becoming a better writer: it’s much easier to be a good writer if you think that sitting down to write will be productive.

Growing a new draft can be easier than revising old material

A fourth reason I argue for rewriting is that in my experience it can be easier than revising.  People are often intimidated by a blank page, and turn to an old draft because there is comfort in the completed work.  Many think that revising will be easier than writing anew, but in my experience that’s not necessarily the case.   Revising is hard work.  Writing is hard work, too, but bot necessarily as hard as many feel it to be.  Writing, the verbal expression of thought on the page, is not really more difficult than speaking, at least in the sense that the real difficulty in both writing and speaking is finding words to express ideas.  Writing is harder than speaking because writing does require consideration of punctuation and spelling and the such—but those are minor details that are secondary to the difficulty of finding good ways to express ideas.  With practice, issues of spelling and punctuation become less difficult and demand less attention, and interfere less with the main task of expressing ideas.  That people can produce a lot of words in a short time when they don’t worry about punctuation and such is evidenced by the exams that students write.  I’ve known plenty of people who struggled with writing blocks when given a lot of time to write, but almost all of them have successfully written essays in exams with limited time.  It’s not as if these people somehow lost the ability to write a lot of words in a short time, it’s more that there is some inhibition stopping them from writing so quickly. People who wrote 500 or 1000-word essays in 3-hour exams could also write 1000-word essays in 3 hours of writing time, if they made the same compromises they made in the exam: to write something, no matter how messy, and no matter that they may not be entirely confident.  If you believe that you can write 1000 words in a few hours, suddenly rewriting a 4000-word chapter doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating.

Context-dependence

Which technique is best, depends on context (not surprisingly).

For one, the less time you have, the more the reason to Frankenstein something, especially if you only have a very short time. If you only have a day to put together a presentation, then stitching together a Frankenstein makes good sense simply because it’s hard to generate  lot of new material in a very short time.

For two, I would say that Frankenstein-ing is more valuable when dealing with recent material.  The longer it’s been since you have written something, the more likely that you will have learned something that might shift how you approach that subject.  

For three, the quality of the work influences whether to try to re-use it: the better the work, the greater the incentive to try to make use of it.

But re-using material isn’t always a good idea because you don’t want to over-repeat yourself.  There are contexts in which re-using material is fine. Rough drafts or material written for coursework is fine for re-use (though perhaps lacking in quality).  Previously published material, however, may not be acceptable if you’re supposed to be creating something new and original.

Conclusion

Sometimes, it’s great to have old writing that you can reuse. Having fragments that can be patched together into some whole, however, awkward, can be immensely useful in a tight spot. But on the whole, being able to compose a new work readily, and having the confidence that you can do so, is the more valuable skill for a writer.  Don’t tie yourself to the limitations of old work if you can create something new that does a better job of integrating the old material.  And don’t assume that trying to piece together old work is easier: often it’s much harder and more frustrating because old work doesn’t capture any new learning since the old draft was written (especially learning about your purposes: is what you are trying to accomplish now, the same as what you were trying to accomplish then?).

If you want to be a better writer, try to write new things, instead of relying on your past work.

What is a Good Writer? (3)

My original plan for a blog post was to discuss practice and how practice can help someone become a better writer. But I got sucked into the question of what is a good writer and now I’ve written two posts already without talking about how to become a better writer because I felt I needed to discuss how to become a better writer without knowing what qualities makes a writer better or worse?  

In the first post in this series, I discussed different dimensions of writing that could be used to judge whether a person is a good writer—particularly use of punctuation and grammar, content, audience approval. In the second post in the series, I discussed internal, personal criteria for judging whether someone is a good writer—mainly, the writer’s own assessment of the process, with respect to both enjoyment and sense of accomplishment: if you can say that you feel a sense of accomplishment when writing, then maybe it makes sense to say you are a good writer. Similarly, if you enjoy writing, we might say you are a good writer.  Acknowledging these criteria does not eliminate other criteria for judging good writing, rather it highlights some dimensions of what it means to be a writer that are important if you want to become a better writer.

In this post I will discuss being a good writer from a slightly different angle: not on the basis of the material you write, and not on the basis of your experience of writing, but on the basis of the impact of your writing process on your life. And in this discussion, I want to segue to the theme of practice and the role practice plays in becoming a better writer, which I had intended as the center of the posts I intended to write on how to become a better writer.  

Healthy and Unhealthy Writing Practices

When I was in graduate school, repetitive strain injuries were just coming into wide recognition, and prevention was not yet understood. I knew several fellow students whose career in academia was interrupted or slowed by such injuries.  That, I would say, is a good example of an unhealthy practice, and someone who has such a practice is not, according to this criterion, a good writer.

Another example of an unhealthy practice might be a practice that creates emotional difficulties.  I’m thinking specifically about the explanation of procrastination offered by Neil Fiore, a psychologist who worked with doctoral candidates, in his book The Now Habit. Fiore’s basic argument is that procrastination arises from resentment—he writes about students who set expectations for their writing practice so high that there is no room in their lives for anything else. Such students, he argues, come to resent their work, which triggers procrastination. By contrast, students who maintain a better work-life balance are more likely to feel good about their work and therefore keep working.

There are other ways to have an unhealthy practice.  If your writing depends on drugs or drinking, it creates a dynamic that is hard to sustain over an extended period. (Perhaps it is worth distinguishing between someone who uses a drug to write—e.g., “I can’t write unless I’m drunk/stoned/etc.”—and someone who is dependent and also writes. The former might lead to the latter, which is not good. The latter, of course, is a problem of a more general impact than just a writing practice.)

Generally speaking, a practice of writing (or, indeed, of anything else) can carry the seeds of its own future. In one path of growth, a damaging practice means that each successive session of practice becomes increasingly damaging and moves the practitioner further away from health. In the opposite path, each successive session, free from injury, allows the opportunity for a positive engagement—whether that positive experience is learning something new that helps improve skill or technique, or a sense that you have done something well, or perhaps even some enjoyment of the experience.

In the long run, a healthy practice will support itself and the practice will become more rewarding. Regardless of your skill level, practice still takes effort, so I wouldn’t say that practices become easier. Indeed, without some fairly significant investment of effort, it’s not much of a practice, and won’t tend to help skills improve very quickly, so practice should involve some difficulties. However, with greater skill comes an increase in the reward for any given effort.

In this sense, I would argue that one way to be a good writer is to have a healthy practice that supports itself, rather than an unhealthy practice that sows the seeds of its own destruction.  Of course, if you have a good practice (and are a good writer in that sense), you’re likely to develop skill over time and become a better writer in the other senses, too.  With practice, you are likely to experience growth in numerous different aspects of your writing.  This is, I think where I start to segue to my original subject of how to become a better writer.  

Having touched on different ways of being a good writer (ability to create good written work; self-perception of the process; sustainable, growth-supporting practice), I want to start talking about how to get better at all of these.  The key is practice: if you practice, you will get better (at least assuming that the practice is not self-destructive). Practicing will even help you develop a more effective and more sustainable practice, if you keep that as one of your goals.

Practice is activity sustained over time

One session of effort isn’t really a practice. Practice is something that is sustained and maintained over an extensive period of time. If we talk about a doctor’s practice, it is not any one case we refer to, but the whole career of treating different cases.  For a writer, we can draw a parallel: the practice is not any one written work, but rather the sustained effort of writing many different things over a long period of time. (I suppose I wouldn’t want to exclude someone who consistently and regularly worked on one single work over a long time—that would be a practice, too. If your practice is more about your personal benefit from working on a project—it’s a hobby rather than a career—then the regular activity is what matters, even if nothing is ever completed.  But that kind of practice won’t help with at least one skill that is valuable to writers: the skill of making the necessary compromises to finish and let go of a project.)

It’s only with a regular and repeated practice that you develop in a significant way.  Sure, there are people who pick up new skills quickly, but to really refine a skill—to practice it at a high level—it’s necessary to keep at it.  This makes perfect sense if we think about the physiological basis of our experience and thinking: both the physical and intellectual aspects of any practice are rooted in our bodies.  Practicing something not only develops physical motor skills related to that activity, but also develops the neurophysiology that supports those patterns of thought.  Writing is not clearly linked to any specific physical activity—there are different ways to write—but still the practice of trying to express ideas will consistently activate any neurophysiology related to word choice, for example.

For the neurophysiological benefit of a practice, the activity has to be repeated. The efforts have to be repeated.  A marathon runner wouldn’t hope to become a good marathoner by working out really hard one day a week.  A writer who hopes to write well while only writing one day a week is setting up a good opportunity for frustration and failure—a once-a-week schedule gives enough time between practice sessions that you can lose touch with what you were trying to do in the previous session.

What makes a practice effective?

Realistically, when I started this series of posts, several weeks ago, I had some specific ideas in mind for what I wanted to say about practice.  Then I got sidelined into these three posts about what makes a writer a good writer.  I don’t remember right now what those specific points are, but I do still want to talk about how to become a better writer.  And as I write that, I do remember that one impetus for starting a post on practice was watching a video about how to practice a musical instrument, which led me to start reflecting on the question of what makes a good practice and what kinds of practice would help a writer become a better writer.  Those concerns are going to be the subject (I think) of at least one following post, in which I will discuss ways in which practice can support the different kinds of good writing.

Summary

To summarize my three posts on what it means to be a good writer: there are different criteria that can be applied.  The most obvious criteria for being a good writer are those associated with the creation of good writing.  This is, I think, the main consideration when people talk about being a good writer, but, as I mentioned previously, assessment of written work is context dependent, and there can be substantial disagreement on what counts as good writing.  In addition to this main group of criteria, I also argued that one can be a good writer because one has a good experience of writing—this kind of writer is good at writing not because of the quality of what is written but because he/she/they feel good when they write.  And finally, in this post, I argued that a “good writer” is someone who has a good writing practice: a good writer can be someone whose practice of writing leads to them getting better as a writer.  And that is the question I want o pursue in my next post: how can practice help?

What is a Good Writer? (2)

In my previous post, I was motived by a desire to discuss how to become a better writer but got no farther than exploring the question of what a good writer is. I discussed a few different criteria—the ability to write according to formal conventions, the importance of content, the importance of persuasion, and the ability to produce material in a timely fashion.  But it occurs to me that these are all objective or external in the sense that they can be judged by anyone: if you write something, other people can judge whether it has good punctuation or good content. Different people might not agree on whether the work is good, but they have documents/evidence on which to make such judgements.  But with respect to the question of what a good writer is, there is another criterion of crucial importance that is purely internal and subjective: the writer’s own experience/self-assessment.  What is writing like for you? Is it a good experience or a bad one? From a purely personal perspective, the question of being a good writer could be reframed in terms of whether or not you yourself feel like you are good at it, and whether or not you enjoy it.  These two are intertwined, but I’m going to separate them in this post.  

This internal assessment of being a good writer is very important. The key to becoming a good writer is that you practice, and your experience of your practice  will have a huge impact on how frequently you practice, and thus on whether you can become a better writer.  There are, I think, two aspects of this: enjoyment and accomplishment.

Enjoyment

Given the freedom to choose, people are going to spend more time doing things that they find enjoyable than they will doing things that are boring or tedious or painful. If an activity is painful or unpleasant, it’s likely that it will be avoided.  If we learn through reward/punishment, or are motivated by pleasure/pain, we learn/are motivated to avoid the punishment/pain.  

If writing is experienced as painful or a form of punishment, you’ll probably spend less time trying to write.  You may struggle to write at all.  There is a pretty large subset of people who view writing through this negative lens. One book I read argued that the defining emotion felt by writers is fear. A dissertation-writing book I read argued that dissertation writing is “dull, dull, dull,” because, apparently, it’s necessary to emphasize just how bad that process is. I don’t think that’s an unusual perspective because there’s a decent number of dissertation books that focus on “surviving” dissertations. It’s not hard to find people who think of writing (academic or otherwise) as an unpleasant and unwelcome task.  For that matter, I was one such person: I hated writing when I was young.

For a lot people, writing becomes so fraught with anxiety that it is too painful to start.  Such anxiety can lead to a negative feedback loop, where anxiety about impending deadlines makes it difficult to even think about the task, which leads to not writing, which leads to further anxiety as the deadline continues to approach. And then, at the last second, the work has to be done in a panic, which is hardly a recipe for developing warm and comfortable feelings about the process.

Part of being a good writer, from a personal perspective, is whether writing is good for you: if you enjoy it, that it, in itself, a reason to say that you are a good writer.  There are plenty of people who actually have positive feelings about writing, and about the benefits of writing, so it’s not as if finding writing a rewarding, positive experience would be that much of a surprise.  Writing, which combines challenges with the opportunity for growth and success, has the characteristics of activities that lead to the “flow” experience described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the experience that many people (in Csikszentmihalyi’s research) consider the best in their lives.

The more that you feel pleasure in an activity, the more likely you are to do it, and “doing it” is the key for practice: if you “do it,” then you are practicing, and if you’re not “doing it,” then you’re not practicing.  So there is a potential positive feedback loop here: where pleasure leads to practice, which leads to greater ability, which helps make the process enjoyable, which leads to more practice.  But that’s moving aside from the focus on the internal experience of writing, and the idea that one criterion for being a good writer is to enjoy writing.

Speaking personally, I don’t know that I would consider writing one of the best experiences in my life, but I wouldn’t say it’s painful or unpleasant, even though it can be difficult.  There are moments when writing can feel exhilarating, and even when I feel like I’m doing well enough that it feels good.  I would say, however, that the good feeling I get is not so much pleasure in the activity itself, but the sense that I am dong something well, which brings me to my other point.

Accomplishment

The idea of accomplishment or success is one that can easily be focused on outward success and recognition, a criterion that can be used to identify a good writer (though may not necessarily do so: there are writers who have had commercial or popular success who are, by other criteria, poor writers). There is a different kind of success, however, that is more personal and internal.  A personal sense of accomplishment is often rewarding, even if that accomplishment is not recognized by others.  There is no question that such a personal sense of success can be supported by external feedback, but it need not require such feedback.  In many areas of endeavor, the idea of setting a “personal best” is common. It’s not really an idea with a clear correspondence in writing—a personal best is usually measured with respect to some single measurable dimension—but even without such a clear measuring stick, a writer can feel a sense of accomplishment.

You can believe that you have done good work, even if you have not found anyone who will agree with you.  One way to be a good writer is to believe that you have done good work.  There are plenty of stories of writers (and other artists, for that matter) who struggled to find anyone who would recognize their work, but who were, in time, recognized for their brilliance.  This is, possibly, the most important dimension of being a good writer: if you believe that you can accomplish something, you are more likely to try to accomplish it rather than avoiding it. Therefore a sense that you are a good writer—that you accomplish something when you write—is very valuable.  The belief that you are doing work that has quality and value is a crucial support to a writer. I often wonder whether self-confidence is not the most important determinant of public success, especially in academia (which is the kind of writing I think about most).  

This sense of personal accomplishment is only one mode of being a good writer, and it’s certainly possible for a writer to have self-confidence that disagrees with the assessments of others. But this essay is not going to try to reconcile the gap between a writer’s self-assessment and the assessment of others.  Despite the fact that external assessments might not meet personal assessments, believing that you accomplish something when you write is one important dimension of being a good writer.

Conclusion

I’m going to wrap up this second “what is a good writer?” post here. In pursuit of understanding what is a good writer, I argued that a “good writer” can be someone who thinks they write well—perhaps they take pleasure in writing, or perhaps they think they accomplish something.  This internal assessment is possibly more important than any external criteria simply because the internal assessment is a crucial source of the motivation to continue practicing, and practicing is the key to becoming a better writer.

When I started this essay, I was thinking that it would wrap up the “what is a good writer” part of my prospective series on practice and becoming a better writer, but I’m considering whether there isn’t another dimension that I have not discussed–the question of how you write and the impacts of writing, for example, if your writing posture leads to repetitive stress injuries, are you a “good writer?” If you can only write when you’re drunk, are you a good writer? If your writing practices lead to the disruption of personal relationship, are you a good writer? I’ll have to think this through.  Maybe my next post will consider whether good practices are criteria for identifying a good writer. Or maybe it will move on to talking about practice and becoming a better writer.  When I do get to talking about how to become a better writer, the idea that one can enjoy and feel a sense of accomplishment in writing will be a subject of further discussion.

Taking Small but Useful Steps.

Some writers get stuck by anxiety about what to do next or anxiety about how to do their work. Recently I was working with a writer who does fine, once working, but who gets stuck by anxiety.

We were talking about analyzing some qualitative observations. Our discussion was focused on analytical and theoretical concerns, so we didn’t discuss the practical point I’m suggesting in this post.

If you are struggling with writer’s block of some sort, or you feel stuck when you are trying to write, especially if anxiety is an issue, it can be useful to focus on taking the smallest steps that you can that also make progress.

The writer and I were talking about analyzing statements made by people, and our discussion was concerned with dealing with the bridge between the statements and the analyses. And so what we didn’t talk about the specific practical difference between (1) trying to develop and present an analysis based on a whole corpus or even a sizeable chunk of a corpus, such as an entire paragraph, and (2), trying to develop an analysis based on a single sentence or even a single word.

Often, by focusing on the smallest possible unit, you can define a piece of work that is small enough that it doesn’t seem intimidating.  Focusing on one sentence or one word and trying to explain why it is significant to your work can be much easier than trying to explain a whole paragraph.

Not all words or sentences will be good choices for such focused attention, but if you’re struggling to deal with a larger mass of text—a whole paragraph or more—then one way to approach that text is to simply focus on one feature of interest–one word or phrase or sentence—and explain why that feature seems significant to you.

This is one possible suggestion as an alternative to trying to engage a larger text en masse. It’s a way to get moving and to engage with a project when anxiety might be problematic. In the long run, the whole corpus must be analyzed and discussed, but in the immediate moment, every individual step matters, and if you’re concerned about your progress and struggling with anxiety, taking a single small step can feel like making progress and that can reduce anxiety. And reducing anxiety is often the real key in starting to write.

Being a Beginner

It’s difficult being a beginner and trying to identify and negotiate the unfamiliar issues of unfamiliar work. It’s frustrating being unable to act effectively. Especially if there are other areas where you are used to acting effectively. As a result of years of practice as writer and editor, I have developed some facility with words and with writing. Although writing is often difficult in the sense that it demands effort and concentration, I can generally work quickly and effectively.  And that efficacy makes writing feel extremely easy compared to unfamiliar tasks, even though writing is still difficult.

When I write, because of my experience, I can sense the potential of a plan to create a coherent piece of work. I can make decisions about scope and focus, and I am not troubled about the possibility of making those decisions wrong.  I am confident that I can always write another draft (indeed, I will probably write another draft of something tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on…), and this confidence in the process is a powerful emotional shield against the frustrations of the process. If I decide to throw a draft away, it’s not a problem, it’s just part of the process.

Recently, I have been working on making videos (and diagrams/images to supplement visual presentation of ideas) to expand the range of media in which I work.  I have experimented with basic videos in the past, posting several quickly made dissertation-related videos during the early months of 2018. The quality was unsatisfactory and I dropped the project to focus on finding a publisher for my book. Having found a publisher, I see my publisher suggesting I make some videos to help promote my book.  “Make a simple video,” the material suggests, “It doesn’t have to be fancy.” That framing of it—a simple video, doesn’t have to be fancy—is kind of inspiring or at least reassuring. But then I start work.

This is a field in which I am mostly a beginner.  My experience as a writer helps me with writing a script. Beyond that, I’m largely lost and kind of overwhelmed. The tools of the process are unfamiliar to me. Visual imagery? Soundtracks? I’m a rank amateur. But here I am, making a stab at it because it sounds like a good idea.  And because I’m a rank amateur, every step is frustrating. Mistakes abound. Doubts multiply. Every step is uncertain, uncomfortable.  Even trying to write scripts/outlines/storyboards…I mean I don’t even know how to apply words here. My instincts about how much to say in written form fail me when I contemplate the temporal structure of video presentation: I know how word counts relate to desired reading time, but I don’t know how word counts relate to speaking/listening time.  I’ll learn this, and other things with practice, as long as I practice. 

And images. I don’t work in visual media; I don’t really rely on images or diagrams when I think about the processes of writing and research. So I’m trying to imagine images that might help me convey ideas, which is hard, and then, when I get an idea, I’m trying to use unfamiliar tools to capture what I imagined (I’m mostly working on the computer, which is difficult, but produces better results than I do drawing by hand). And what I do create doesn’t look all that good to me.

Being a novice is difficult emotionally. Doubts about how to precede receive no emotional support from past successes in the same area of experience. Because of the doubt, the work is more tiring and more frustrating. I procrastinate—indeed, I’m writing a blog post instead of working on a video right now, even though my video still needs to be made. I try to focus on making a video, and my attention goes to other projects that are related. In response, I try to keep refocusing on the practice—the repeated attempt to make something connected with a video. Not on the weaknesses of the specific piece that I’m working on, but just on the process. On taking one step after another. On exploring. On making mistakes so that I can learn from them. On making drafts that I throw away, so that I can experiment with things to see what seems to work (very little, so far!) and what doesn’t.

Being a beginner is frustrating. But when the goal seems worthy, if you can step into a practice where you experiment, make mistakes and keep practicing, you will improve your ability and then, whatever abilities you have will be amplified by your practice-based skills.

Work on one thing at a time until finished

As number one on his list of 1932-1933 “Commandments”, Henry Miller wrote “Work on one thing at a time until finished.”

It’s an extremely valuable dictum, despite the difficulties I have putting it into practice.  There are two elements to it that I really, really like, and one element that is really hard or imprctical.

The first element that I like is the idea of working on one thing at a time.  At a very immediate, moment-to-moment scale, working on one thing at a time is the only way to go.  Over very short time frames—a few minutes, perhaps—the only real options for working are: 1. to work on/write about one thing with focus, or 2. try to decide what to work on/write about.  There is good value in spending time trying to decide what to do, but at some point it’s necessary to stop thinking about what to write, and to start writing.  When you do start writing, you want to focus on writing one sentence at a time—there is a larger goal, but it’s built up of the small steps.

The second element that I like is the “until finished” part, which is also the part I don’t like.  What I like about the “until finished” idea is the focus on finishing.  There is a place in this world for journal writers and free writers to write for the sake of writing or for the self-discovery involved, but if you want to get a degree or get published, you have to finish things in a timely fashion. When your focus is on the question of finishing a project, you’re less likely to get stuck with a project that is too large to complete, and less likely get stuck endlessly revising. Focusing on completion doesn’t guarantee finishing, but it does shift the approach somewhat from “what is the best work possible?” to “what is the best work I can accomplish in a reasonable time?”  Perfectionism is less likely to lead to paralysis if one of the criteria for perfection is “completed !” or even “completed on schedule!”  

The “until finished” aspect, however, has two problems: 1. it can be hard to know what “finished” is, and 2. it’s often impractical to focus exclusively on one project over longer periods of time. The first of these points is related to the question of not knowing enough. People looking for answers may feel that a work is unfinished if it leaves a lot of questions unanswered or raises more questions than it did answer, but answers always lead to new questions, so it’s possible to think a work is unfinished, even if outside reviewers might judge it as an interesting and valuable project. Secondly, the idea of working on one thing at a time is perhaps impossible (or impossible to define) in the context of a research career. What counts as “one thing” in a research career? Is a research career just a series of independent projects, each “one thing” taken one at a time, or is it a larger program that leads to a series of specific projects?  I think the second is more realistic for most scholars and grad students: They are driven by a larger question, but one specific research project only speaks to some of their questions of interest. (Whether seeking a professional or academic career, the researcher needs to consider the specific research project in the larger context of the career.) Miller, whose “commandment” inspired this post, wrote fiction, and perhaps it is easier to segment a career in fiction.

The “until finished” idea can be impractical, too, because finishing a work often includes delays when you can’t work on the project. For someone seeking an academic career, it’s valuable to be able to start working on a new project before an old one is complete because of the many delays that go into executing many projects. Publication, for example, is loaded with delays during which a work is not necessarily “finished” but you can’t work on it. During those times, it’s good to have some different project to work on, but then what do you do when it’s time to go back to the work in publication? Having multiple projects at different stages of development can help a scholar use time more efficiently.

But when you have multiple projects and demands on your time, it’s much easier to get overwhelmed. It’s much easier to spend time wondering what to work on next, instead of just working on one thing. And it’s easy to lose time switching between projects instead of focusing.  That’s why, in terms of developing a regular practice, it’s good to work on one thing at a time until finished. Miller called that a commandment. For me, it’s more a goal or a principle for which I strive, but with deference to practical concerns. For me, it’s a particularly useful goal that helps me focus on my writing when it is time to write, and helps me prioritize and act, rather than get stuck debating what to work on and overwhelmed by the many things that I could or should do.

Listening to Yourself

Recently, I saw a motivational quotation on the order of “Do what you love and it isn’t work.” It struck me as unrealistic and unhelpful. It fails to capture the difficult and intimate interplay between love and work—whatever kind of love we may be talking about.  Love calls on us to do things that are difficult, even unpleasant or painful. Often we surmount difficulties and minor discomforts for our proudest achievements and best experiences. But it’s possible to face too much difficulty, and too much pain, and then love can be destructive.  To have a healthy relationship with the things we love—whether people or activities or otherwise—it helps to be able to listen to ourselves and make good judgements about how much difficulty is the right amount of difficulty.

Passion often lies where there is great difficulty. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that the best moments in people’s lives occur in activities that present significant challenges—the “Flow” state that Csikszentmihalyi has researched occurs in difficult activities, not easy ones. The activities that he describes as flow activities are ones where there is a danger of failure and a possibility for growth.

Shortly after seeing that motivational quotation, I was out for a run. (I’m not sure I go fast enough to call what I do “running” anymore, but I’ll call it running.) While running, I was thinking about the practice of listening to myself and the value of self-knowledge, and thinking about that in the context of writing and developing a writing practice, as well as the context of going running.

Going running is difficult and it is also something that I love.  When running well, I feel better than I do at any other time.  But I’m liable to aches and pains.  Tendonitis is a frequent issue, as is tightness or cramping.  Understanding these pains and being able to self-diagnose—listening to myself—helps me decide when to run harder and when to stop and engage in some treatment (like stretching).  You don’t want to keep running if running is going to cause more damage or prevent damage from healing; you do want to keep running if the exercise will help resolve the problem. Being able to listen to yourself helps you make a good judgement.

This ability to listen to oneself is valuable in all cases where love leads us to a difficulty: do we continue to follow our passion, or do we pull back because our passion is causing damage? 

To develop a successful writing practice, it’s important to listen to oneself, and to understand which difficulties are a sign to stop and tend to yourself, and which are just difficulty and discomfort to work through.  

This is true at both the physical and emotional levels. Physically, to write, and to work on writing has real dangers—I have known more than one researcher whose work was brought to a near standstill by repetitive stress injuries.  RSIs are better understood now than when I was in graduate school, so fewer people are crippled by them—partly because we better understand the danger and the danger signs (as well as appropriate responses).

Danger of overwork also exists on the emotional level, I believe. It is possible to turn a work practice into something so unpleasant that it becomes hard to work.  The idea that obstacles to writing stem from psychological issues is hardly a new or inventive one. Two sources where I have seen this idea are Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit and Keith Hjortshoj’s book on writing blocks, both of which discuss different psychological issues that inhibit writing.

Whether the pain is physical or emotional, being able to listen to yourself and correctly diagnose the severity of various discomforts can help you develop a more effective writing practice.  And that understanding can help your realize a project that is important to you and also difficult—a project of the sort that is often called a “labor of love.”

A labor of love requires a positive and beneficial practice that provides sufficient rewards to justify the difficulties involved, and part of that requires the ability to listen to yourself in order to understand what the costs are relative to the benefits.

The “do what you love and it isn’t work” trope fails to explain or understand the idea of a labor of love, and so cannot support such a work. If you think that doing what you love means that you don’t have to work, then you will almost certainly interpret all difficulties as a sign of something wrong—perhaps, even that you don’t love what you’re dong enough.  A more realistic view of what constitutes a good relationship recognizes that significant difficulties are part of the best things in life.

For me, the difficulty and frustration of not knowing what to write, of feeling that my ideas are weak or of limited interest, of not knowing how to make a coherent argument, of feeling that my hoped-for and intended argument has totally fallen apart, all of these are real pains. There is real difficulty and distress related to these things.  But is it suffering that will cause long-term damage? Knowing yourself and listening to yourself helps prevent engagement from becoming unhealthy.  

Doing what you love takes work. It involves real frustrations and difficulties. That work and those frustrations and difficulties are not necessarily signs that you’re doing something wrong or that you don’t love enough.  That’s where listening to yourself is about: by listening to yourself, you get information about your processes and you can use that information to develop better, healthier practices.

In this post, I have focused on listening to yourself with respect to managing a writing practice, but as a final note, I want to point out that for a writer being able to listen to yourself—hearing your own voice, and trusting your own judgments—is crucial not only in managing the practice of writing, but in finding material to write.  To write original work, there is no other source than your own voice—but that’s a subject for a different post.

Trusting the Process in Writing

For some writers, there comes a point where it can seem like there’s nothing to write about, or at least nothing worth writing about.  At that point, one option is to simply stop writing.  But, of course, that might not be a good option.  Another option is to skip the big picture and reduce the process to a matter of small steps and to trust that a process of engagement will help you open some paths of development.

Trusting a process is difficult, especially when a deadline looms.  It can be hard to accept that you might benefit from engaging in some apparently trivial task, especially if you feel a lack of basic ideas worth writing about.  But again, if the issue is a choice between being blocked—stuck feeling that there is nothing that you can write or that you want to write about—and trusting the process, then trust the process!

You won’t find something worth writing about by avoiding your project.  And you won’t find much satisfaction in just stopping.  Just stopping leads to the certainty that your project will not be accepted.  Trying to get published? You need a manuscript. Trying to get a degree? You need a manuscript.

Trusting a process can be annoying.  You might ask, “If I can’t find a big issue to write about, what’s the point in engaging with some small tangential task?”  Or you might say “that suggestion is so trivial, it won’t help.”  Such complaints have some validity. There is no question that there is better efficiency found in working on something when you have a clear vision of what you’re going to do.  But, again, the context needs emphasis: saying that it would be better to have a clear vision of your goal doesn’t help if you have no obvious route to gain such a vision. If you are feeling stuck, and feeling lost, trusting the process may be the only alternative that leads to productive activity.

There are usually a large number of minor tasks that a writer can pick up to start engaging with the process.  There is always value in trying to make a one-sentence statement of purpose for a project.  A writer who has lost a sense of direction can particularly benefit from taking the step of writing a one-sentence statement of purpose, and even better if that task is engaged repeatedly: write that one-sentence statement. And then write another one-sentence statement. And another.

A similar task is to write an outline for the work you want to write—this is, in a way, an inversion of the previous task: writing a one-sentence statement of purpose focuses on the over-arching structure.  Writing an outline focuses on the pieces that make up the structure.  It’s certainly possible to write an outline without having a clear sense of what your final argument will be—perhaps you have a few examples that you want to discuss, or a few issues—even if you don’t know exactly how they are related, you can put them into some outline.

If tasks like doing a statement of purpose or an outline seem intimidating, there are also tasks that are more granular.  Pick one sentence from an old draft and focus on that one sentence. What is good about it? What is bad about it? What could you do differently? Pick one idea from an old draft and write about what you hoped for with that idea and what problems you have faced. 

Or pick some publication in your field to which you can contrast your own work. Why is it like yours? To what extent are you interested in the same issues? And where do your interests differ? If you don’t know what you want to write about, you might find some subject of interest by looking at what others have written and thinking about how you want your work to compare.

Or, if you have empirical data that you have gathered, go back to that data and ask yourself again what the data shows. If you have empirical data, you should be focused on writing what is there in the data.

I’m a big fan of having a clear vision of where you want to go—an overarching sense of purpose and sense of direction are powerful guides for a writer.  But it’s possible to lose sight of those goals in the midst of a project. If you are wandering around the conceptual landscape wondering where to situate your writing, don’t scorn taking small steps. Small steps may seem meaningless or worthless—there’s little clear direction in writing about an idea you’ve rejected, or about an author whose work you don’t think you can use—but the process of engaging them earnestly can at least give you more information to figure out where you stand in the conceptual landscape, and where you might want to go.

Taking small steps that seem pointless may involve taking steps that are almost no help whatsoever. Maybe some of the small steps you take lead directly to dead-ends.  Those steps don’t directly contribute to the draft you’re trying to create.  But such steps do contribute to the process—they may not help a draft directly, but a series of such small steps helps delineate the project: every step you take that leads to a dead-end also helps set limits of the project, and seeing limits on the project can be useful in understanding what is and is not part of the project.  And the more such small steps you take, the more likely it is that you will hit upon some idea that is valuable and interesting.

Engaging in a process of taking small steps can be frustrating, but if you’re paralyzed or confused, it’s a very useful process for getting out of paralysis and at least limiting confusion.  Stuff is complex, so I’m not going to claim that you will ever be able to eliminate confusion. But the more that you engage, the greater the chance that you will find something that you do feel confident about.

Of course, you need to engage with some energy. It’s not enough to look at an article or passage from an old draft and just say to yourself that you don’t want to use it—you won’t learn much that way. You have to try to explicate in writing why you don’t want to use it.

If you’re feeling lost or paralyzed and you have stopped working, don’t put pressure on yourself to find the big answer. Big answers are really, really hard to find.  Instead, try to take tiny steps: work over old material and ask whether you like it and how to adapt it. Pick something to read and to write about. Make a quick, simple outline. Write one sentence about something.  Trust the process of working on your project because a process can help guide your actions in moments when you are having trouble seeing a larger sense of purpose.

Persistence

In the last week or two, I’ve been hitting a rough spot in my writing practice. I don’t feel like I’m making progress on anything…more searching for something to work on, for all that I have several tasks that require my attention.  I’ve not been particularly disciplined in working, either: I do sit down to work and do some writing, but when I get stuck I have very little patience to push on in the attempt to make more progress.

This is less than ideal.  It would certainly be preferable to be consistently productive, consistently disciplined, and consistently focused.  But that’s not how it is, and there’s nothing I can do to go back and change what has already happened.  My best hope is to do better in the future.

Even looking back, I still keep attention on the little that I did do—I may not have done much, but I’m happy to say that I have done something. That’s a place to start—I didn’t completely get stopped.  It’s nice to be able to look back and count any positive progress or outcomes, even if that positive progress was small. And, from the perspective of practicing—the perspective concerned with writing as an activity carried out habitually and regularly for the purpose of improving skill—the fact that I engaged with the practice of writing at all is a bit of a win.  Being able to look back at a period of time and try to identify positive actions taken can be useful. Having practiced a little is better than not having practiced at all.

But even if I had gotten nothing done for weeks previously, I can still look to the future with some hope: perhaps I wasn’t regular in working in the past, but with persistence, I can develop such a practice. All it really takes is persistence, and some reasonable moderation.

If you want to develop a long-term practice, it’s important to recognize that there are ups and downs in any practice. There are days when things come more easily than others.  And on the days that things don’t come easily, it’s important to remember that those bad days help set the foundation for the good days.  Persisting through bad days helps keep projects moving, even if the progress is minimal in the immediate present. Persisting helps keep up the momentum on a project, which is valuable.

I was speaking with a writer who had a death in the family.  This quite reasonably interrupted the writing practice, but what then is the next step? Well, persistence, of course. Getting back to the process is what’s important, not looking bad and regretting the lost time.  Given the significance of a death in the family, it’s totally reasonable to lose time to grieving and to family gatherings to celebrate the person and mourn their loss. If some extreme and unusual event prevents writing, well that’s ok, too. But all the while, one can maintain an underlying idea of persistence—the notion that in the long run, it’s necessary to persist through the interruptions and distractions., but also that, if one maintains the long-term practice, then those unusual interruptions won’t actually pose a danger to the larger practice.

Keeping any eye on the importance of persistence is crucial after an interruption because after an interruption, there are two common responses, one is to shrug off the interruption and get back to work.  The other focuses on the interruption and on the lost time, and often turns that focus into critical self-judgement that then inhibits future work.

The persistent attitude can be flexible—it can decide to return to an interrupted project because that’s the place of persistence. Rather than letting the bad result—slow days or days with no work—dictate future behavior, the attention focuses on what can be done to keep moving. One small step at a time, but persistently!

Giving Thanks

This coming Thursday, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving.  Despite the fraught history of the holiday, I like it because I believe in the importance of giving thanks.

Gratitude is good. It is all too easy to take for granted the good things that we do have and to focus our attention on things that worry us. It is, indeed, quite natural because focusing attention on potential danger is a survival skill: if you’re starving, your attention focuses on finding food, and if you’ve had enough to eat, your attention focuses on other potential threats. Being aware of danger is important, but it also takes a toll on the body in the form of stress. Gratitude, by contrast, focuses the attention on those things that are going well and on things supporting us—on things that are good in our lives, but that can be taken for granted because they are familiar.

The good aspects of the familiar can fade into the background while the rough spots in the familiar move forward in prominence: if one eats the same nutritious food every day, for example, at some point the repetition and monotony get more attention than the good fortune of having nutritious food. Or, for example, good health can become familiar and taken for granted, and is then only appreciated once it has been lost.  A practice of giving thanks can help focus attention on those things that fall into the background of the familiar. I believe that gratitude can help reduce stress, boost emotions, and help us remember our positive opportunities, and I believe that there is empirical evidence for this, though I don’t have any citations to hand.  

For the US, the story traditionally told about Thanksgiving is the story of the Native Americans helping the Pilgrims, and this story opens the difficult and problematic history of how European colonists and their descendants treated the native populations—a relationship that is still fraught today.  Thanksgiving’s association with this difficult history, and the Thanksgiving story which presents the relationship between native and pilgrim as so innocent and pure, are all problematic.  But that history is problematic every day. I don’t believe that appreciating Thanksgiving—a holiday for giving thanks and showing gratitude–a harvest festival—should be prevented by the difficult history of race relations in America. (And I certainly don’t want Thanksgiving to become an excuse to forget that history the rest of the year.) Basically, no history should stop me from giving thanks for what I do have. Indeed, in giving thanks for whatever good I have, I become more sensitive to the plight of those who do not have the same good.

When I am thankful that I have clean air to breathe, then I have greater sympathy for those who do not. When I am thankful I have clean water to drink, I better appreciate the plight of those who don’t.  When I have food to eat, a home in which to live, good health, hope for the future, I have things to be thankful for, and in giving thanks, I have more feeling for those who don’t. I’m thankful for all these things and more—friends, family, teachers, colleagues. I’m thankful for music. I’m thankful for the beauty of trees, leaves, flowers, clouds, the moon, sunrises, sunsets, etc., etc.  There may be a lot of things that I could complain about, but none of those are so dire that they should stop me from appreciating what good I do have—perhaps if my life hangs in the balance, then it might make sense to focus my attention on things other than giving thanks, but as long as my troubles are a little more distance, giving thanks only helps me find a foundation from which I can try to deal with the problems.

Giving thanks is central to most religions that I know of. And harvest festivals or other festivals that celebrate the good things that we have are common.  Religions often have stories like that of Job, where even the person beset by ills, is called upon to show gratitude and appreciation. The religious focus on giving thanks could be seen solely through the perspective of the spiritual relationship with the deity. But if we think about the role religions play in society, we might wonder whether those religious calls to show gratitude are some form of public mental health: worshippers are kept healthier by focusing their attention on the things for which they are grateful. But that is speculation.

In any event, despite the difficult history of race relations in the US, I appreciate Thanksgiving because I like giving thanks.

Thank you to my readers for reading.

I hope that you can find something to be thankful for.

I have categorized this under “practice” because giving thanks is something that can be practiced with benefit.