“The Good Things Still to Be Written”

How to write a lot: a practical guide to productive academic writing - Silvia Paul J. 2019

“The Good Things Still to Be Written”

Graduate school is long enough for most grad students to eventually find themselves in need of towels. And so they drive their jalopy to the nearest big-box store, find the long row of towels, and stand in front of the cheapest ones—towels scratchy enough to refinish an oak table, towels unworthy of the name—with a practiced aspect of resignation and defeat. “One day,” they say, looking with yearning at the fancy towels on the eye-level shelves, “when I have a real job, it will all be different.”

Most of us made a solemn grad-school vow like this. Once the indentured servitude of grad school is over, things are going to change. I’ll take a vacation, start a family, get a hobby, and buy my ramen noodles at hip fusion restaurants instead of dollar stores. But for now, I’ll make some sacrifices so I can write all the stuff I need to write to get that job.

What happens after grad students get that coveted tenure-track job? They find themselves wading through the slowly rising waters of teaching and service, holding their writing projects over their heads to keep them safe and dry, and they think, “When I get tenure, it will all be different. I can slow down, take a vacation, start a family. But for now . . .”

And what happens once they get tenure? There’s no secret ceremony. The provost won’t walk up to you, put a hand on your shoulder, and say, “You’re here now. It’s time. Join us.” Your department chair won’t give you tokens for free hot-stone massages at a secret wellness spa concealed beneath the Faculty Center. Instead, your bosses will find many more service opportunities to suit someone of your obvious energy and talents—after all, you need to start planning for promotion to full professor. And so it goes, cycle to cycle, until we hear the late-career professors saying, “I can’t wait to retire so I can finally focus on my book.”

Let’s commit to using the active voice instead of the passive “things will change” and “it is going to be different.” I’ve been around long enough to know that it will not be different unless we choose to make it so. If we don’t shoehorn our writing into the normal work week, no one will do it for us. We have all sacrificed too much in grad school to go back to binge writing and scratchy towels.

THE JOYS OF WRITING SCHEDULES

Making a writing schedule and sticking to it—this book’s central idea—strikes some people as dour and austere, but it has its joys. You’ll write more pages per week, which translates into more journal articles, more grant proposals, and more books. Following a schedule eliminates the uncertainties and sorrows of “finding time to write,” of wondering if something will get done. Projects will wrap up well before their deadlines. You’ll spend as much time writing during the summer weeks, if you choose to write then, as you’ll spend during the first weeks of the semester. Writing will become mundane, routine, and typical, not oppressive, uncertain, and monopolistic.

And writing schedules bring balance to your life and perspective on your writing. Binge writers search for big chunks of time, and they “find” this time during the evenings and weekends. Binge writing thus consumes time that should be spent on normal living. Our books, our articles, our ideas are important, without a doubt—but we are more than writers, so we should protect our real-world time just as we protect our scheduled writing time. Spend your leisure time hanging out, finding new trails, building canoes, agitating against The System, perfecting your apple fritter recipe, or holding a staring contest with your inscrutable cat. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t spend your free time writing—there’s time during the work week for that.

Productive writing involves harnessing the power of habit, and habits come from repetition. Make a schedule and sit down to write during your scheduled time. You might spend the first few sessions groaning, gnashing your teeth, and draping yourself in sackcloth, but at least you’re not binge gnashing. After a couple of weeks, once your writing schedule is habitual, you’ll no longer feel pressured to write during nonscheduled hours. And a few months later, once your writing schedule has ossified into a weekly routine, the notion of “wanting to write” will seem irrelevant.

You don’t need special traits, special genes, or special motivation to write a lot. And you don’t need to want to write—people rarely feel like doing unpleasant tasks that lack deadlines—so don’t wait until you feel like it. Make a writing schedule and show up for it. Want less and do more. “Decide what you want to do,” wrote Zinsser (2006), “then decide to do it. Then do it” (p. 280).

WRITING ISN’T A RACE

Write as much or as little as you want to write. Although this book shows you how to write a lot, don’t think that you ought to. In a way, this book isn’t about writing a lot: it’s about slotting writing into your normal work week, which makes writing less stressful and lets you take the vacations that your grad-school self vowed that you would take. If you want to write more, a writing schedule will get you there. You’ll spend more hours per week writing, write more efficiently, and chisel through your backlog. If you don’t want to write more, a writing schedule will take the guilt and uncertainty out of writing. You won’t worry about “finding time to write,” and you won’t sacrifice your weekends for writing binges. And if you plan to write only a few things in your career, your writing time can be time for thinking and reading about your professional development.

Publishing a lot does not make anyone a good person or scholar. Some of academia’s most prolific writers rehash the same ideas ceaselessly: empirical articles lead to a review article, the review article gets rewarmed as book chapters, and the book chapters are retreaded for handbooks and newsletters. Prolific writers might have more publications, but they don’t always have more good ideas than anyone else. Writing isn’t a race. Don’t count your publications unless you have to. Don’t publish a paper just for the sake of having one more published paper, one more notch on the belt.

THE END

This book is over; thank you for reading it. I enjoyed writing this book, but it’s time for me to write something else, and it’s time for you to write something, too. Let’s look forward to it. “When I think of the good things still to be written I am glad,” wrote William Saroyan (1952), “for there is no end to them, and I know I myself shall write some of them” (p. 2).