Are you waiting until you know enough, are clear enough, or are smart enough to smart writing? If so, you're making a big mistake. Read on to find out why, and what to do about it.
New ABD (and Professor) Deadly Mistake #4: Writing
Too Little, Too Late
 Most
professors know that you should be writing as often as you can—daily
if possible. Unfortunately, dissertation-writing
graduate students often aren't aware of this advice until they
are far along in the process. Don't wait until you have completed
your literature review to begin writing. Instead, use active note-taking
as you read. Active note-taking involves free writing about what you've
just read; how it ties into the bigger picture, what is important about
it, and how it connects to other work you've read.
As you progress, spend more time writing, even if you're not sure
where you're going. The act of reading can be very paralyzing.
After all, these writers have such well-formed thoughts and you're
just struggling to say something coherent. By forcing yourself to write
frequently, you can surmount that block.
Many of my clients tell me that writing each day BEFORE they do any
reading works best. At the end of a session of reading they may be too
tired or overwhelmed to write. Determine what kind of writing schedule
works best for you, then stick to it!
Here are the most frequent excuses I hear for not writing enough (or
at all):
- I don't know enough on this subject yet to be able
to write anything
- I need to read more before I can write anything
- When I free write,
it turns out to be useless drivel
- I wasn't in the mood to write
- I just couldn't get started – I felt paralyzed.
And the most frequent excuse at this time of year or after any break:
- I've lost my momentum; I can barely remember what I was working
on.
The truth is that NOT writing feeds on itself. The less you write, the
less you feel like writing. Conversely, the more you write, the more
you feel like writing.
So, the trick is to get started and to keep that momentum going.
I wrote an article last year about getting
started after the holidays.
It contains some useful hints for jump-starting your writing process.
You might also like to read "Write
Before You're Ready: First
Steps to Avoid Writer's Block," also in my newsletter archives.
Few people are aware that the act of writing daily actually increases
creativity. Robert Boyce, who wrote Professors
as Writers, which I highly
recommend, did some research in this area. He showed that those professors
who were assigned the task of daily writing had many more creative thoughts
throughout the day than a group who only wrote when they felt like writing.
One way to increase the amount that you write is to keep a journal.
I believe journal-writing is effective because it makes it more obvious
to our "inner critic" that whatever you're writing
is not for public consumption. Therefore your writing can flow more smoothly,
since you're only writing in order to find out what you think.
I've just discovered some software called LifeJournal. I've
started using it and I'm surprised at how effective this software
is at helping me keep perspective on my projects and increasing my productivity.
I love LifeJournal's tagline: "A Place to Hear Yourself
Think." It has many features that could be useful to an academic
who wants to track thoughts and ideas:
-
You can search your entries by topics that you assign, by
date and/or by journal type
-
You can keep multiple journals if you wish – personal, academic,
and artistic, for example.
-
A feature called "Daily Pulse" allows you to measure how
you're doing on a number of dimensions, including stress, mood,
energy, health, and six more categories that you define yourself.
You can then graph it each of these dimensions.
-
There is a paper version
available that you can carry with you.
The journal accomplishes what a blog does for some: it's a place
to see your thoughts, organized by day and also theme or topic. It has
an advantage, though – it's private. I would imagine that
some bloggers could use a journal and then turn the entries that they'd
like to share into blog entries.
Download LifeJournal for
fr*ee – you can try it for 15 entries
and see if it works for you. I made my decision after 5 entries!
If you don't want to buy software, one of my clients suggested
that gmail, which is Google's email client, is another way to store
data and then use it for retrieval of information, since the contents
of your emails are searchable. Gmail
can also automatically store your email according to subject line or
conversation. And because Gmail has such a high storage capacity, my
client periodically emails herself her work, as a secondary backup.
No matter what technique you use, start today to write at least 15 minutes
a day. I promise you; in a few months, you'll be very glad you
did.
Warmly,
Gina
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