How successful academics write - Helen Sword 2017

11. Risk and resilience
Part four. Emotional habits

Academics are expected to create new knowledge and expand the boundaries of the known world. Yet many of the institutional factors that shape our research careers—from the scholarly conventions that mold our thought and expression to the peer-review processes that determine our grant funding and tenure prospects—seem calculated to “discipline” us into timidity and conformity instead. So how do successful academic writers become risk takers rather than rule followers? How do they learn to bounce back from criticism and rejection? And to what extent can their academic survival and even success be attributed to their emotional habits rather than to sheer good luck?

Not all of the colleagues I interviewed would classify themselves as academic risk takers. Most, however, were able to identify at least a few occasions when they have pushed against stylistic or disciplinary boundaries in their writing and publication. When asked whether there is an optimal time for taking such risks, some were adamant that early-career academics need to “prove themselves” first:

Before Picasso started doing cubist paintings, he did conventional, descriptive paintings. To break the rules, you have to know how to play by the rules. (Fabrizio Gilardi, Political Science, University of Zurich)

They warned of the hazards of sticking one’s neck out too soon:

The most important thing is to get the job security. If you’re going to go out on a limb as an untenured faculty member and it blows up in your face, that can be the end of your career. If you’re going to go out on a limb as a tenured faculty member and it blows up in your face, who cares? (Stephen Ross, English, University of Victoria)

Others, however, disputed the notion that only tenured faculty can or should take academic risks:

It’s not like you’ve been kissed and turned into a prince when you’ve been a frog all along. If you have wriggled in a kind of academic way for the seven or eight years leading to tenure and have not made any effort to change that style, it’s probably impossible to do so at that point. So the fantasy that you’re allowed to be free and express yourself more freely when you receive tenure is just that—a fantasy. (James Shapiro, English, Columbia University)

Indeed, many of the senior colleagues I interviewed noted that they have been risk takers all along:

I’ve taken risks my entire writing career. I’ve gone in different directions and done risky things the whole time. (Keith Devlin, Human Sciences and Technologies, Stanford University)

Often they felt they had no choice in the matter:

It happened really quite by accident. I meant to follow all the rules. The people I worked for said, “No, you can’t do that. It’s too risky.” But I wasn’t taking a risk. I was doing what I thought was honorable. (Mindy Fullilove, Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University)

Howard Becker’s classic book Writing for Social Scientists contains an entire chapter on risk, mostly written by his former graduate student Pamela Richards, who describes the emotional risks that academics face when they write for publication: “It means that I have to open myself to scrutiny. To do that requires that I trust myself, and it also means that I have to trust my colleagues.”1 In my interviews, I heard some shocking stories of colleagues who have betrayed that trust: the anonymous peer reviewer who dismissed an eager young scholar’s research passion as “a fad”; the professor who phoned up a graduate student at eleven p.m. on a Sunday night to announce, “I read the chapter you sent me, and I’ve got to tell you, I hate it.”

“Squeeze it down and open it out”

Carlo Rotella

Department of English, Boston College (USA)

American studies scholar and journalist Carlo Rotella publishes in a range of genres, from newspaper columns to academic monographs: “I’ve done a scholarly book, a trade book for a university press, a trade book for a trade press, and the next one is going to be a trade book from a university press.” Writing across genres, he believes, is “good for your writing chops”:

There’s a certain way to play a slow blues and a certain way to play a prom jam; they’re different. All that cross-training makes you better at recognizing what a genre is and how a genre works. I think of it as playing the accordion: squeeze it down and open it out.

A devotee of the “write every day” school of productivity— “I write from five to seven every morning, seven days a week; the blanker the page, the earlier in the day”—Rotella fits his other academic work around his writing, rather than vice versa:

I steal minutes in the day for things that I can do in a more start-and-stop fashion, like preparing class and or any kind of stuff I have to do for administration. When I’m taking my daughter for her piano lesson, if I remember to bring my stuff, I can be working on preparing class.

He welcomes critical feedback, especially when provided by a professional copy editor with a meticulous eye for detail: “That kind of thing can change you forever and change what you think about what editing is.” Indeed, one of the most useful skills that he has learned as a journalist is the ability to deal gracefully with rejection:

Not only does it thicken your skin to be rejected, but there is a technique to being rejected well. In the academy, it’s almost taken as a final judgment on your worth. On the trade side, it’s really all about fit, and you learn about fit if you’re paying attention.

Rotella dismisses the notion that young academics need to prove themselves as scholars before they turn to trade publishing:

The idea of waiting until you are tenured and “safe” is becoming outmoded. There are lots of reasons, not just intellectual but also professional, to start writing across the whole range of possibilities.

From these conversations, I learned that the risks of writing and publication never really go away. One recently tenured academic told me an uplifting tale of risk taking rewarded:

At one point when I wasn’t publishing a lot, my dean said something to the effect that I shouldn’t write about marginal populations, that I should work with more normative populations, and that would help me in my career. Then I got a big research grant, and the next year, when I was being introduced to graduate students by the same dean, my work that had previously been called “marginal” was now called “cutting edge.” (Name withheld)

But that same colleague later asked me to anonymize the anecdote for this book, as publishing it with a name attached feels too risky even now.

A common theme in my interviews was the story of the naïve early-career researcher who has no idea how to respond constructively to the peer-review process. Without the benefit of experience or training, apprentice academics tend to read with their emotions rather than their intellect:

I got the letter back from the editor, and he started with, “I’m sorry to have to tell you …” I was very upset at first, but it turned out that they just wanted some minor changes. (Maja Elmgren, Teaching and Learning Development, Uppsala University)

Or they interpret criticism as rejection:

Junior scholars are precarious and sensitive. They will, to a surprising degree, take a “revise and resubmit” suggestion as a rejection. They are completely crestfallen. (Kevin Kenny, History, Boston College)

Or they respond to a negative review by sticking their article in a drawer and their head into the sand:

I would literally take the article and put it in a file cabinet with the letter in shame. I didn’t even want to go back to that article or that idea. I think I wasted a lot of time with these things in drawers. (Marysol Asencio, Sociology, University of Connecticut)

Some senior academics confessed to me that they still hate being criticized, especially when they feel the feedback is unjust:

My first reaction is always to disagree with all the negative comments—“This guy got it wrong. He did not read it right. He misunderstood.” Of course, in hindsight, three weeks later: “Oh, yeah. Maybe they were right about that.” But the first reaction is always anger, disappointment. (Robert Poulin, Zoology, University of Otago)

Most, however, have developed strategies for recovering quickly and moving on:

Rejection feels horrible, but the feeling has a shelf life. And you just develop your plan: “Well, this didn’t get in here, so I’m going to do this to it and send it there.” As soon as I have a plan for postrejection action, I feel a lot better. (Victoria Rosner, English, Columbia University)

Best of all is the sweet revenge that comes from proving the reviewers wrong:

The first paper I ever wrote and submitted to a journal was rejected on the grounds that there was nothing new or interesting in the paper. So what did I do? I threw it out and wrote a book on the same subject. (John Heilbron, History of Science, University of California Berkeley)

Strikingly, more than half the tenured or tenure-track colleagues I interviewed used words such as good luck, lucky, or fortunate to describe their academic careers, as though their success were due to the generosity of smiling academic gods as much as to their own intellectual labor and perseverance:

I used to experience a lot of fear about writing and anxiety. But now, I have a real sense of the privilege—and I know it sounds corny—of having the time to write and being paid to do it. I just think, “Whoa, I’m the luckiest person alive.” (Alison Jones, Education, University of Auckland)

“A risky thing to do”

Janet Currie

Center for Health and Well-Being, Princeton University (USA)

As a PhD student, economist Janet Currie worked in the same research field as her supervisor: “that’s what everyone in my shop did.” Eventually, however, she grew bored with the topic: “I had taken the safe approach.” She decided to start researching child development within the paradigm of economics, which “was a risky thing to do at the time, because no one in economics was working on children’s issues, and no one was particularly interested”:

Then Bill Clinton was elected president, and there was all this discussion about welfare reform. Suddenly everyone was interested in child development, and there was this big explosion of research in an area where I was already ahead and there wasn’t anybody else doing it. So that was lucky, but it also happened because I was willing to take a risk and do something that I thought was important.

In 1996, Currie published an article on the long-term economic effects of Head Start, a program for disadvantaged children. Although her paper broke new methodological ground—“It pioneered a way of looking at the effects of such programs on children while controlling for other factors”—her conclusions about the cost-effectiveness of the program were widely misconstrued, much to her chagrin:

I had people writing to me saying that people were going to use this study to cut off funding for Head Start for black kids. It was terrible. The Head Start people didn’t speak to me for years; I was this evil ogre. But then, at a certain point, the Republicans wanted to cut Head Start entirely, and my paper was the only one showing there was any long-term benefit. So then all of a sudden I was the darling again.

Currie advises early-career academics to “listen to other people’s advice, but that doesn’t mean you should follow it”:

Being conservative and risk averse is stifling and probably counterproductive. You get assistant professors who aren’t ever willing to say anything in faculty meetings or seminars because what if they annoy somebody? But then when they come up for tenure, they get no votes because nobody knows who they are.

According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, self-described “lucky” people typically make their own luck by cultivating four characteristic habits of mind that maximize opportunity and help them turn lemons into lemonade.2 First, lucky people notice and act on chance opportunities in their life, creating strong social networks and holding themselves open to new experiences:

I was lucky; I went to a grad school that was very open to risk taking and very open to freedom. That was at McGill back in the 1960s. I think they almost had a culture of risk taking, and my supervisor used to tell me, “Just have a go. It doesn’t matter if they reject it.” (Michael Corballis, Psychology, University of Auckland)

Second, they trust their intuition:

I’m a big fan of following serendipitous encounters: you leave no stone unturned and follow all kinds of paths even if you don’t really expect much there. Some of them of course don’t pan out well, but occasionally, you really get rewarded. (Ann Blair, History, Harvard University)

Third, they persevere in the face of criticism and rejection:

When I first started getting published in medicine, I was accused of being fluffy, Mickey Mouse. All kinds of awful criticisms were made of my work and my writing—“This isn’t medical,” “You can’t publish this kind of thing as medical research.” The more I received that criticism, the more absolutely determined I became to overcome it. (Gillie Bolton, freelance writer in literature and medicine, United Kingdom)

And fourth, they transform bad luck into good by seeing the positive side of unlucky events:

I absolutely subscribe to the notion that any feedback is a blessing. I don’t actually care how negative the feedback is; I just keep thinking, “Gosh, this could only strengthen my paper for the next place I’m going to send it to.” (Shanthi Ameratunga, Population Health, University of Auckland)

These qualities of connectedness, self-confidence, perseverance, and positivity were abundantly evident in my conversations with successful academic writers and particularly with senior academics at the top of their game. However “lucky” they may have been to reach their current positions of influence and privilege, their emotional habits of pleasure, passion, risk taking, and resilience played a crucial role in helping them get there. In turn, they cultivate habits of gratitude and generosity that ensure their luck will get passed on to others.

“A difficult journey”

Maraea Hunia, Pania Matthews, and Pauline Harris

Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)

In a group interview, three early-career Māori researchers spoke to me about their passion for their subject matter, their struggle to navigate the sometimes baffling world of academe, and their determination to represent a Māori worldview through their scholarship, even when doing so feels risky. Hunia, a PhD student in education, described the contradictory messages she has received from senior academics about her use of personal narrative:

When I did my MA, I was advised to put more of myself in there and say who I was. Then I came to this university, and one of the people who looked at my expression of research interest ripped it to shreds because it was “too personal.” But I’ve learned that I can’t really exclude myself. I’m a linguist, and I’m Māori. I’m an educator. I just have to trust in my own voice.

Matthews, a master’s student in education, noted that indigenous scholars often find themselves caught between competing epistemologies:

It’s a difficult journey, because when you think of things in Māori and you’re trying to fit them into this world, sometimes it clashes. I’m often swayed between including things that are important to me and things that are very technically based. It’s important to me to keep that Māoriness in my thesis, because ultimately, at the end, I want to affect the way Māori learners receive education in the classroom. So who do I listen to when my advisers tell me to change something?

Harris, a postdoctoral fellow in chemical and physical sciences, discussed the particular challenges of integrating matauranga Māori (a knowledge system that embodies the Māori worldview) into her work as a scientist:

Scientists tend to be “hard core” and not so open to doing publications in that area. But Aristotle and all those dudes—those ancient philosophers—they used to be so multidisciplinary. Now, if you try to be more rounded and more knowledgeable in multiple disciplines, people say, “What are you trying to do that for?” I get told that the stuff I’m interested in is something I should do later on, when I’m sixty or something. But no one’s doing it now. Am I supposed to wait thirty years?

Things to try

Strategize

Some academics take risks with their writing because they simply can’t imagine behaving otherwise; they follow their hearts, and damn the torpedoes. Others strike a more strategic balance between life-enhancing activities (academic work that they are truly passionate about) and career-advancing pursuits (academic work that will increase their visibility or prestige). The chart below will help you choreograph your own balancing act. Ideally, most of your research will already sit in the top-left quadrant of the chart. If it doesn’t, consider how you might shift more items there from other sections of the grid, whether by extracting more value from the writing you want to do or by seeking more enjoyment from the writing you must do. This exercise can be expanded to other aspects of academic life as well: for example, how might you turn a routine administrative job (career-advancing but not life-enhancing) into a proactive leadership role that feeds your sense of personal fulfillment and professional purpose (career-advancing and life-enhancing)?

Bounce

The harder you’re thrown, the higher you’ll bounce—unless, of course, you are a crystal ball, in which case you’ll smash to smithereens. Writers with egos made of glass are unlikely to survive in academia for long. To build up your resilience, try orchestrating some practice falls onto padded ground: a mock conference presentation at which you ask a few friends to take on the role of challenging audience members; a writing-group meeting dedicated to helping you respond to a negative peer review.

Celebrate failure

It’s easy and intuitive to acknowledge success; but habitual risk takers understand that failure, too, is worth celebrating. (In Albert Einstein’s famous formulation, “Failure is success in progress”).3 Consider writing up a “CV of failures” to share with a few trusted friends, or look for other ways of rewarding risk taking even when it doesn’t pay off.4 A participant in a writing workshop once told me that she and her husband buy each other dinner whenever one of them has had an article or funding application rejected—a win-win proposition, she explained, as every submission, however risky, is guaranteed to result either in academic kudos or a nice meal out.

Read a book

Why take risks with your writing? Books by and for academic writers have explored this question from a variety of angles: for example, from the research scholar’s perspective (Stanley Fish’s Versions of Academic Freedom), the postgraduate student’s perspective (Linda Cooper and Lucia Thesen’s Risk in Academic Writing), and the beginning writer’s perspective (Mark Edmundson’s Why Write? A Master Class on the Art of Writing and Why It Matters). Jordan Rosenfeld’s Writer’s Guide to Persistence cultivates the professional resilience of fiction writers and journalists; Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic teaches artists and writers to embrace “creative living beyond fear”; Joni Cole’s Toxic Feedback coaches writers of all stripes in the art of surviving criticism and critique; and Catherine Wald’s The Resilient Writer soothes bruised egos with “tales of rejection and triumph from 23 top authors.” Academics with a broader interest in risk and resilience might want to consult research-based popular psychology books on topics such as positivity (Barbara Fredrickson’s Positivity), creativity (Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire’s Wired to Create), vulnerability (Brené Brown’s Rising Strong), happiness (Emma Seppala’s The Happiness Track), self-belief (Amy Cuddy’s Presence), expertise (Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool’s Peak), grit (Angela Duckworth’s Grit), luck (Richard Wiseman’s The Luck Factor), flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow), and posttraumatic growth (Martin Seligman’s Flourish). Published by research academics who have risen to professorial appointments at major universities despite (or perhaps because of?) their ability to write for nonacademic audiences, such crossover books offer powerful models not only of risk and resilience but also of public outreach, clear communication, and the potential of scholarly research to make an impact on the wider world.5