Every other week during the semester the Institute staff meet to discuss the various projects and initiatives of the Institute, and the responsibility and concerns of the Fellows. But before those bi-weekly meetings, we Fellows — in desperate hope and ragged solidarity – also informally exchange techniques for moving our dissertations along, share strategies for carving out time to write, and commiserate over the slow growth that conjuring words often is, all whilst shoving as many free sandwiches into our faces that the boundaries of respectability allow. As Lauren, former vaunted Fellow now making her mark elsewhere, reminded us: writing is hard work and must be practiced. Amen, sister. But what if you have a problem sitting yourself down to write? Ok, forget sitting, but what if you are the sort of person who despite the best dissertational advice given, still resist engaging the writing process? And let’s be honest, every one of us has at times, been this person.
I am quite often a reluctant writer, always an anxious public speaker, and an ever unsure academic. So how then do I manage my responsibilities as a Communication Fellow and doctoral candidate? Anxiously and uncertainly for sure, but also strategically, using the tools that I have learned as both a Writing Fellow and now as a Communication Fellow. I detail here a few of the strategies that have been most useful to me in the long process of transforming my dissertation into a solid, nearly breathing, stack of words.
First, some things that haven’t helped move my writing along: panic and fear; frantic consultation of books on writing your dissertation in minutes a day; renewed, but ever-weakening, resolve; deadlines whether short or long term; contracts, bribes and ultimatums.
What has helped are those approaches (typically WAC based) that involve manipulating the “stakes” attached to my writing – while both lowering and raising the stakes can move writing along, the trick is knowing when to use which strategy. Unsurprisingly, when my anxiety is at its highest (typically in the early stages), lowering the stakes works best. I have found that moving away from the blank screen to be a crucial part of dialing down the stakes. It is a lot easier to tell yourself, though, that the initial quality of your dreck writing doesn’t matter, than it is to actually believe it, especially when you must procedurally “save” your work somewhere in the computing environment. To help convince myself of truly lowered stakes, I often begin new chapters or sections, by writing my thoughts and notes long hand. Scribbling on a notepad, especially in pencil, offers some freedom for thoughtful exploration and eases me down winding conceptual paths that still feel private and protected. Later transferring these notes to the screen then eases me into the revision stage (another stage of writing I tend to avoid like the plague). And apparently, I am not the only one.
Another low stakes strategy I rely on involves “speaking onto the page” as Peter Elbow advises in his latest book and recent Symposium talk. I also use this technique in the workshops I do in BPL courses to illustrate the directive role of the audience (e.g., asking students to write a letter or email to a close friend or family member). One specific exercise asks students to answer a question drawn from their assignment multiple times, but for two different audiences of their choosing (e.g., investors, shareholders, consumers, job seekers, management, their mother), and then we compare/discuss their responses. I highlight the diversity across and within those audience categories and the ways students do and don’t tailor their responses to a specific audience.
In the early stages of my own work, mentally shifting the audience away from an academic discipline or department, has also helped me make conceptual headway by both reducing the mental and emotional stakes attached, and by engaging the processes and benefits, associated with unplanned speech.
On the other hand, these coaxing methods are usually only strong enough to get me out of the early writing stages, but not bridle me to the revising and editing tasks, the last 100 miles that I am walking now. Stay tuned for part two of this post in which I discuss, and solicit, more walking strategies. But for now, what are your strategies for baiting the writing hook?
