George Clooney's character in Up in the Air is a motivational speaker who begins his talks by setting a backpack on a table next to his podium, opening it, and then leaning in to the microphone to ask "What's in your backpack?"
The character wants his audience to feel the weight of all that ties them down. I'm going to use the same question in a writing workshop tomorrow for faculty and graduate students. But I'm using the question very differently. I want my participants to take stock of all of the writing resources they already have, many of which they take for granted.
The workshop actually brings together two different writing retreats: one for graduate students writing dissertations and one for faculty working on books or articles. Having been in both camps, I'll start with iconic stories from each experience:
The horror of the blank page: When I was a graduate student, I followed my dissertation proposal defense with a heavy summer teaching load. When the summer ended, I moved into a new office (thanks to a writing fellowship), set up my computer, and then stared in horror at the blank page of a new Word document. What do I do now? Eventually, I turned the computer back off and started reading. I had to read my way into the writing process. I took notes on my readings (initially from secondary sources, later from primary sources) and then used these notes to develop my own thoughts and arguments on the topic. The blank page needs to be quickly replaced by a map. The map will initially be quite simple: no dissertation --> dissertation. But will quickly be filled in by the mountains, valleys, rivers, and speedbumps of the research and writing process.
The invisible chapter: I spent a semester writing the theory chapter of my book. The initial version was 70 pages. That was obviously way too long, so I revised it down to 40 pages. Then I filed it away and moved on to other chapters. Later, I shared it with my mentor, who said it was too dense and inaccessible. I spent another semester revising it down to 25 pages. Then she suggested I remove it altogether, and disperse the theoretical discussions into the various chapters. By that time I had drafts of all chapters, and I was working with an editor, even though I still hadn't signed a contract. The editor concurred with my mentor, so I spent a few more months re-writing the other chapters in a way that allowed me to dispense with a separate theory chapter. My book came out last month and it has no theory chapter. I still have all of those drafts and I can see now that I needed to write them even though the chapter didn't need to be in the book. That invisible chapter guides all of the language and organization of the six visible chapters.
So what's in my backpack?
- Human Resources: People--friends and mentors--who can read your work and give you feedback. Courses where you can test-run some of your work as lectures or assigned readings. Conferences, research centers, and lecture opportunities where you can experiment with your writing and find a sample audience. Research assistants, when you have them, all bring their own strengths and weaknesses to the process and these should be carefully assessed. And of course, the campus writing center.
Example: Write for Your Mom. A good way to make sure that your writing is accessible is to write for your mom. I'm assuming your mom is alive and that she is a smart person who is not in your field and who may not even care about your field. If that's not true of your mom, pick someone else: dad, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc. When I was writing my dissertation, one of my readers told me to write it for Joan Snapp, the graduate secretary in my department. "If it doesn't matter to Joan Snapp," she said, "you're wasting your time." Joan Snapp and my mom are both people that I can imagine in my head as I revise my work, unlike editors, reviewers, or 'readers'. I can hear them stop me when I have a sentence that is jargon-ey, or too abstract, or awkwardly constructed. Joan Snapp and my mom would both make me say what I need to say in a way that is clear and straight-forward. Both would get swiftly impatient with rambling or tedious writing. - Language Games and Grammar Tools: We all have our favorite phrases and syntactical constructions. I can use a dash to sneak attack a word or phrase that would otherwise never fit into my sentence. I have a list of active verbs that make abstract discussions more compelling: argue, lament, explain, decry. Stephen King calls this set of resources the Writer's Toolbox. He offers a nice discussion of it in his book On Writing.
Example: I Argue That.... You need to be able to state your argument in one sentence and that sentence needs to be in your head all the time. You should get used to state that one sentence argument in a variety of ways. The off-page version of the one-sentence argument is the elevator speech--stating your argument in one minute.
Intervention: Take one minute right now and tell someone your argument.
(30 seconds): Tik Tok Tik Tok
(60 seconds): Times up, the elevator has reached the top floor, you're out of time. - Material Resources: A good word processor on a trusted laptop. A good notepad in a leather portfolio. A good pen. A set of index cards.
Example: Beerspiration. When I was writing my dissertation, I hit a point where my computer became an impediment to the writing process. I just couldn't be creative in front of a computer screen. So I implemented the following method. Every afternoon, I would read through the key sources (primary and secondary) for whatever section I was working on, and I would take notes on index cards--one idea per card, with a relevant citation if needed. After dinner, I would take a stack of index cards and legal notepad to a bar down the street where I would order the cards into a narrative and then transform them into sentences, with development, on the notepad. And yes, I drank beer while writing. The next morning, after breakfast, I would turn on my computer and type up the text I had hand-written the night before. As I typed, I would also revise to improve the clarity and organization of the writing. You've heard of inspiration and perspiration; I call this method beerspiration. - Inspirational Resources: Find a voice from your field and keep it nearby. I like Du Bois as a model of a voice that is unquestionably authoritative but also widely accessible to all. I also keep handy a variety of writings on writing: Zerubavel's The Clockwork Muse, King's On Writing, Lamott's Bird by Bird, Cameron's The Artist's Way.
Example: Shitty First Draft. Anne Lamott's book Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life encourages writers to begin with a shitty first draft. We have a tendency to not want to write until we can write it beautifully and perfectly. That generally means we don't write at all. Make it your goal to write a terrible and shitty first draft. This will give you to the freedom to write badly, misspell everything, ignore transitions, and even dangle your modifiers. Shitty first drafts are open for feedback and easily revised. A blank page can never receive feedback or be revised. When you write a shitty first draft, you can even forget your mom all you want and write for yourself. - Practical Resources: The appropriate style guide (Chicago, Harvard, MLA, etc.), the rules for the product (from your department for dissertations, from your journal for articles, from your publisher for books), the important literature (books and articles) from the field. Keep a model handy: a dissertation written by a student in your department, preferably with your adviser; a book from your field written in style you wish to emulate; an article with similar goals to yours, that is well-organized and well-written. I also recommend The Elements of Style by William Strunk, A Guide to Writing Sociology Papers by the Sociology Writing Group (or something similar from your field), and the Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers by Jane Miller.
Example: Write someone else's dissertation/article/book. Find a possible model for your book. Use the chapter and section titles to outline to the work. Now rename those titles to make it an outline of your work. Congratulations, you just made a roadmap for your writing! As the you continue on the path, or perhaps at journey's end, make sure you're not actually stealing from the model. But then, in a footnote or foreword, acknowledge the source as a model and inspiration for your work. - Emotional Resources: Trusted friends to complain to or celebrate with (whine or wine). Note: colleagues, department chairs, and dissertation advisers should be trusted human resources for your project, but NOT emotional resources. Pets are also good emotional resources. Family and close friends keep you grounded and remind you that there is a whole world that will keep going if you happen to mess up a sentence or two (or more)!
Example: Name the worst or hardest thing about writing for you. Remind yourself that this is the hardest thing so when you get to that point you know that the worst is right in front of you and after that it gets better. For me, the hardest thing is opening the document. I'll spend hours doing anything to avoid a few simple clicks in word that open up that document. Once it's open, I'm usually fine.
Intervention: Name the worst or hardest thing for you. Write it down.
I think every writer should have in their backpack are material
ReplyDeleteresources. Even a small notepad or a piece of paper would be good enough to
write any idea for your dissertation would help you take down note or idea that might come up unexpectedly. Some of this idea would certainly help you in writing your dissertation one way or the other.