Coming to a Learning Resource Centre room near you : a workshop on developing good writing habits delivered by the man who recently waited until the morning of a deadline to start working on a 6000-word piece of writing. Forget impostor syndrome; this is blatant fraud.
But, since talent spotters don’t required talent themselves, the workshop happens, and I’m happy with how it goes. Hopefully the participants, all conscientious enough to have better writing habits than the facilitator already, are not unhappy.
Usually when I speak about writing I’m using could not should, and there are disappointed looks on the faces of those looking for silver bullet shortcuts that fix all of their problems. Today, though, is about sharing advice from two decades of reading and talking about writing, and should, via those who walk the walk, will make an appearance. The workshop is about the practicalities of getting things done. A reading list will be given at the end, but the aim is for participants to leave with useful action plans, not (even) more things to read.
First, so that we don’t just spend our time complaining about how difficult writing is, we talk about the pleasure of writing. Imagine that. I ask everyone to think of a time when they took some pleasure in their writing. When was it? Where did it happen? What were they doing and how did the pleasure manifest itself? Who else was involved? Were they writing with or for someone in particular?
To my pleasant surprise, the pleasure conversations flow, and people look happy as they talk. After struggling to interrupt and bring the conversational buzz to a close, I ask for words that describe the pleasure they’ve been recalling. I suggest “clicks” for myself: the happy chatter of my fingers on keys as writing – as typing – flows through me. “Flow” is a word I’ve heard used in the room, and I’m expecting it to be the top answer, but we generate quite a list: space, time, and enjoyment; but also self and freedom. This is going well. I was anticipating perhaps more of a focus on the sense of achievement that writing can give us, but this would have missed the point: achievement is about happy outcomes and not the pleasure – however rare or fleeting – we take in the act of writing.
They get it. Now onto the main event: the bad stuff. I ask everyone to think about what they would like to achieve in or with their writing. What goals and desired outcomes are they harbouring? Can that be quantified in word counts, chapters, assignments, or publications? And then the question that represents the centre-point of the workshop: “what’s standing in your way?”.
Everyone, it seems, has much to say, and they talk. Lots of productive articulation of the challenges and barriers, met with familiarity and empathy. It feels like the kind of group therapy that I was imagining this session would be. Five minutes later, we have a list of barriers to writing in a shared Google document. Some take more teasing out than others, but the participants are thoughtful, honest, and earnest in explaining what they want to explain.
Self-confidence (inner critic bringing you down) / perfectionism
Focus / distractions (including other responsibilities)
Time
Space
Getting started
Not resting : overloading the brain / body / self
Mood
Not having the discipline (?) to narrow down from all the stuff
Lack of clarity of thought about your writing
Lack of interest
Lack of energy
Frustration / lack of ‘skill'
Now, I say, I’m going to speak for a few minutes. I’ve prepared five principles and strategies for overcoming barriers to writing. The hope is that in combination they offer solutions to all of the above, though I’m not promising anything.
As I go through my five points, I wonder why I always have to use odd numbers. Odd.
- Write ‘little’ and often. Break it down.
I explain that I’ve typically suggested writing little and often – particularly about reading and responses to reading – as a way to get started with university / academic writing. Indeed, as a principle it’s been the building block of pretty much every EAP or Academic Skills course I’ve ever developed. But it also occurs to me that little and often is just as useful for ‘expert’ writers as it is for novices. Recently Pat Thomson tweeted about how the 1000th post on her brilliant blog Patter would represented well over 1 million words in total for her site. Small steps; huge footprints
- Put a fence around your writing time / space : make your writing the priority it deserves to be.
Here, I tell the participants, I’m saving them £12.99 and four hours of time which could be spent in the sparkling company of Paul Silvia, whose book How to Write a Lot basically advocate for nothing more sophisticated (or profoundly impactful) than establishing a writing schedule. Silvia encourages us to block out writing time in our diaries as if it were a regular one-to-one class. In this class, however, we are both teacher and student. No decent teacher would ever cancel such a class, and only the worst kind of student would fail to attend. Protect time, and we get writing done: 250 hours per year is just an hour a day with weekends left free for, well, weekend stuff. An appropriate space – without distractions – is equally important, of course, and I share Silvia’s fondness for Stephen King’s advice that all a good writing space needs is a door that the writer is willing to shut.
I was imagining that this would be the principle that spoke most directly to the barriers to writing that participants would list, and I suspect that it addresses the biggest issue for most people. My third point, however, seems to connect to a much wider range of the items listed in our Google Document.
- Be realistic : you won’t ’flow’ every day but you don’t need to; editing is writing and writing is editing.
Dominic Lukes explains the whole “editing as writing” point better than I can and Silvia is also excellent on being realistic. Some days are a grind; sometimes you know your juices aren’t flowing, so it’s better to spend your time editing something you wrote previously (which might even inspire the juices into movement) or tidying up your references. Silvia is uncompromising in arguing that there is no such thing as writer’s block; if you’re not writing, he says, it’s because you’re not writing. Which brings us to:
- Be purposeful : set targets; get it down; get it done.
This links to breaking tasks down into sizeable chunks (see 1 above), of course, but it’s also about free writing (or even speaking) where necessary. Getting stuff down on paper, or recording a short conversation with yourself, is writing. It will need editing, and some of what you splurge out might find itself deleted on your next juiceless session, but your car won’t take you very far if you don’t start the engine.
- Build / find / use your community.
I have a lot more to say about this, but for this workshop, I simply try to remind the room that our writing goals inevitably involve other people, since we have to hope that at some point someone will read and perhaps even like whatever it is that we’re writing. So, it’s worth thinking about the audience, finding a critical friend, or building a group of people to share time and space with for any number of worthwhile activities, whether that’s just being in the same protected space in which to get some writing down, forming a writing circle for sharing and peer-critiquing, or co-authoring for publication. Other people aren’t just good for our writing, they’re indispensable.
I ask everyone to have a think about my principles, and how they could be turned into strategies for overcoming whatever barriers are holding them back. As if to prove my final point about the importance of interaction with others, I then encourage everyone to share their thoughts via conversations, and again the room is filled with meaningful chatter and buzz. I think / hope I see people writing down imperatives to themselves, resolutions, and plans. There are exchanges of phone numbers. A WhatsApp group is set up for siloed scientists in need of a peer-group. Our time together is coming to an end for the morning, but only one person is in a hurry to leave to the room, and I happily buy her excuse that she has a meeting to attend.
As the conversations continue, I try to cross-reference my principles to the barriers we identified earlier and share my thoughts as the end-point of the workshop. In consultation with the group, we arrive at this:
- Focus / distractions (including other responsibilities) 2
- Time 2
- Space 2
- Lack of energy 3
- Not resting : overloading the brain / body / self 1, 2, 3, 4
- Frustration / lack of ‘skill’ 1, 3, 5
- Getting started 1,3
- Self-confidence (inner critic bringing you down) / perfectionism : 3,5
- Mood 3, 4, 5
- Not having the discipline (?) to narrow down from all the stuff 4
- Lack of clarity of thought about your writing 4,5
I wonder how much this is for me as much those who signed up for the workshop. How am I going to implement strategies to overcome my barriers based on my five principles? This blog post is an attempt at just getting it done; just getting something done; and possibly reaching out to a community? If anyone ever reads this far, I’d love to know…
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