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A person who has not done one
half of his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half
undone. ~ Emily Bronte, WutheringHeights
Track
your writing time, at least once. Try this: Before you begin a new
project, or new chapter, or new section of a chapter, think about the work
you must do: How much content do you need to cover, what topics will you
include, how many subsections will be included? Then consider how much
time good-to-excellent writing will take…on this topic…but especially by
you. Write that amount of time down. Then start writing on that section
and keep track of how much time it actually took to do exactly what you
planned. When you’re done writing, refer back to the number you wrote
down. (Do you ever finish sooner than you thought? Well, congratulations
to you. That’s never happened to me.) It always takes longer. The next
step is the most critical, really the only important part of this
exercise. (The prior steps are just data collection.) Analyze why it took
longer. Maybe you took more breaks, ate more snacks, watched more
television, or got distracted more often than you had planned. So you know
what action to take? Identify and eliminate the distractions that prove to
be your weaknesses. Or, did you just not reasonably give yourself enough
time to do this part of the writing job? Do you anticipate that something
(really, everything) will be easier and thus quicker than it turns out to
be? Do the thoughts make more sense in your head than they do on the paper
or screen so you underestimate how much time you’ll need to get your
mental writing into external, more visible form? Does a project that
appears to you to be a 90 minute project turn out to just simply be a 180
minute project? It’s OK to be a lousy judge of how much time something
will take. It just means that you must adjust your schedule and your
thinking about that schedule. How? You must start earlier. Give yourself
that additional time by starting a week, a month, or more earlier based on
what you anticipate you’ll need. Or, you can work so much more quickly
than you’ve been working. I recommend the first option. It allows you to
retain sanity (not to mention friends and loved ones) and it preserves or even
improves the quality of your work.
How much writing would you get done if you were
told to abstain from writing, or to write only when you were inspired?
Boice (1990) reported on his “writing intervention” with 27 faculty
members. All faculty reported problems getting their writing finished yet
all had perfectly manageable writing projects to complete. Boice assigned
faculty to one of three conditions. Perhaps the most desired assignment
was given to nine faculty who were told not to write for 10 weeks except
“in case of emergency.” Faculty in this “abstinence” group assumed that
the 10 weeks away from writing would let them develop more, and more
creative, ideas for their writing. Boice told a second group of nine to
schedule 50 writing sessions over 10 weeks but to write only if they felt
in the mood to write. (Another nice assignment, right?) These
“spontaneous” writers also predicted they would experience more creative
writing ideas. Boice also told the remaining nine faculty to schedule 50
writing sessions over the 10 weeks. But, if they did not write at least
three pages during each of these scheduled times, for a minimum total of
150 pages, a prewritten check signed by each would be sent to an
organization they hated. (The Democrats? The Republicans? The NRA? Planned
Parenthood? Children’s Defense Fund?) Faculty in this “expensive
contingency” group, clearly having drawn the short straw, predicted that
they might be productive but definitely not creative. Know what happened?
(Would I be telling you this if it didn’t?) The group forced to write
produced over three times as much as the spontaneous group and over 15
times as much as the abstinence group. By the faculty members’
self-report, the first group, forced to write with an expensive contingency,
had a “useful, novel idea” each writing day; the rate was half as often
and a fifth as often for the other two groups, respectively. One faculty
member, forced to write, said: “It really isn’t what I thought it would
be. I don’t feel the pressure because I don’t even think about it very
often….It feels good to be so self-disciplined. What I really like,
though, is how easy it is to start writing. No struggle. I look forward to
it. I think about what I’m going to write during the day. Sometimes I’m
tempted to start sooner. That sure doesn’t sound like me” [laughs] (Boice,
1990, p. 81)
One other suggestion from Boice is this, which
may seem counterintuitive if you’re having problems starting to write each
day: Set limits on your writing. “Start writing before you may feel you’re
ready. Finish writing before you may feel you’re ready. Know when you’ve
done enough with your writing project” (Boice, 1990, p. 86) Boice explains
that not waiting until you have the perfect plan and perfect paper in mind
and turning the paper over to reviewers before it’s been perfectly written
“both teach the values of giving up one kind of control, i.e., wanting to
be perfect, for another, healthier kind of control, i.e., being able to
work and communicate comfortably, without unnecessary anxiety (p. 87).
Boice offers an interesting take on procrastination – it is a type of
limit-setting. When you procrastinate you limit yourself to a flurry of a
few writing days rather than writing day after day almost endlessly. “What
these procrastinating writers ignore, though, are the aversive properties
associated with last-minute writing – fatigue, anxiety, lack of confidence
about writing ability, among them (p. 87). There are healthier ways to set
limits, and they result in more productive writing outcomes.
So
what to do when none of the time management tips work for you? Or you use
every strategy and still are so overextended with school and work and
life? Try writing when there’s very little time to write. I love these
examples from Keyes: Perhaps the most commercially successful contemporary
fiction writer ever, author of more than 30 books with sales of over 80
million in the U.S.
alone, was a widow at age 36 with five children. She wrote from 5:00
to 7:00 each morning for three years to complete her first book (Keyes,
2003, p. 40). The Canadian poet and novelist Carol Shields wrote in
between diapering and nursing five children she had in 10 years. When she
did not meet her two-page a day goal, she wrote in bed as she was falling
asleep each night. “Nine months of two-page-a-day writing resulted in her
first novel Small Ceremonies. Shields later observed that she never
wrote this quickly again, or in such an organized way.” After winning a
Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, she told NPR’s Terry Gross,
“Now I have the whole day and my output is no more than it was then”
(Keyes, 2003, p .42). Anthony Trollope wrote dozens of novels after his
British postal surveyor job. Agatha Christie wrote 12 novels in six years
while working full-time at a hospital. The Pulitzer Prize winning author
of Wit wrote after work at a bicycle shop. An assembly line worker
wrote during breaks at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan,
to start his career that led to the Newbery Medal. Attorney Scott Turow
wrote Presumed Innocent during his 30-minute train ride into Chicago each day.
bell hooks worked fulltime at the phone company while producing essays.
Debra Rienstra wrote her memoir Great with Child in 15 to 60 minute
blocks and was so sleep-deprived “that she could not fully remember
writing the book. Franz Kafka was a clerk, Herman Melville a customs
official, Primo Levi an industrial chemist. T.S. Eliot worked in a bank”
(Keyes, p. 44). I don’t know about you, but after I read Keyes’s description
of these successful writers, I would feel foolish saying I don’t have
enough time to write.
Allen, J.
(2008) The new faculty and graduate mentor. Sterling, VA:
Stylus Publishers (chapter 10 on writing).
Boice, R. (1990). Professors as writers: A self-help guide
to productive writing. Stillwater,
OK: New Forums Press.
Keyes, R.
(2003). The writer’s book of hope: Getting from frustration to publication.
New York:
Henry Holt and Company.
King, S. (2000). On writing: A memoir of the craft. New York: Pocket Books.
*We have extra copies of Silvia’s book and today randomly
selected these BreakWriting subscribers to receive a copy (or one of the other
books on our resource list, your choice). Stop by 109 Low to get your book.
First five letters/numbers of the uni are:
Aj229
Eel210
Some of the information in the Break Writing postings is
drawn from previously published work, and I have tried to properly attribute
the ideas and work of others. If I have failed to do so, please let me know so
I can clarify and correct (ja2310@columbia.edu).
Continue to Break Writing #12 - Motivational Tools
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