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Have you ever considered running a marathon? I have.
Considered it. The best plan for running a marathon I can think of is to
rest. A lot. Maybe eat. A lot. I’ll need to be well rested and well fed
to run that far, especially for the six to eight hours it will take me to
finish running 26.2 miles. Or perhaps you could learn to play the piano by
giving a concert. Or to ride a bike by entering the Tour de France. Or learn
brain surgery by….
Kind of foolish, huh? But that’s what we do when we write.
We are given an assignment, and then we begin to write. A paper, a thesis, a
dissertation, a manuscript to submit for publication. We don’t train. We don’t
practice writing ahead of the big event. We write with the outcome and deadline
in mind. Oh, the pressure.
When was the last time you practiced writing? When do you
write just to develop better writing? Most of us can’t recall an occasion when
we wrote without an assignment, a requirement, a deadline…when we wrote with no
product or outcome as our goal. We write for classes, to complete the thesis or
dissertation, to get published, then to get promoted, to get tenure. And with
luck and the hard work of writing, we improve our thinking, writing, and
editing skills. But we can improve more if we practice writing.
Robert McClintock, the John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Chair in Historical and Philosophical
Foundations of Education at Teachers College, spoke last year in our
GSAS workshop series “A Writing Life: Columbia Faculty Talk about Writing and
Publishing.” His discussion of “grappling with the purpose of writing…other
than the purpose of finishing the paper, the class, the degree…” made me think
about writing practice. Robbie spoke passionately about having both discipline
and inspiration to write and suggested that we “practice stylistic writing to
help develop habits that are inspired rather than disciplined.” (This is not
the same as waiting for inspiration to write, OK? Robbie was talking about
producing writing that is inspired. Maybe even inspiring.)
Let me encourage you to choose a day when you have nothing
you must write…maybe your last chapter is off to your advisor. Or if you are
writing each week day, then choose a Saturday or Sunday. Rather than take a day
off from writing, select a topic, perhaps one where you’re not tempted or able
to write a dissertation length work. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development.
Gamma matrix arithmetic. Clovis lithic
assemblages. The pteropod Limacina helicina. Jane Kenyon. The
conservative legal movement and the U.S. government. (I read Eisenhower
Fellowship applications at 5:00 this morning. Thank you, Jeff Decker.) Choose a
topic about which you know only one or two pages worth. (That way it’s easier
to know when to stop writing.) And there is no pressure – you’ll never publish
this. No one will ever read it. If the anxiety of writing something that will
be submitted, reviewed, graded, evaluated – and possibly rejected – creates so
much stress and turmoil, or just procrastination, for you, then write about a
topic you’ll never publish.
After hearing Professor McClintock speak, I decided to
practice writing. “I was a 4th Grade Republican” was the title. I
began, “When I was nine years old, in a family best described as no more or
less politically engaged than others in my small community, I asked my mother,
‘What’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats?’ My mom, the less
politically-minded of my parents (my dad served on the City Council and even
ran for mayor once, two years before his death at age 49 when I was 13 – thus
our ‘politically average’ family), replied: ‘Well, Democrats spend all our
money and get us into war.’ I don’t recall another decision in my childhood
that I made with more determination than the one I made then and there: I was a
4th grade Republican.” I continued to write my two pages – about the
different decision I made in college – a very conservative Midwestern college
with Baptist in its name – where, and you can believe this or not, the faculty
helped me learn to think for myself. I wrote about having David Boren as my
political science professor – when Dr. Boren was a county judge and adjunct
faculty, before he became a governor, a senator, and the longest-serving chair
of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I wrote about the
political socialization research I did as a junior faculty member exploring
young children’s political concepts and understanding of social justice.
I never had so much fun writing those two pages. Talk about
flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The words just poured out. Now why am I telling
you this about an essay that I wrote and have revised several times, including
as I typed it above, but will never submit or share in its entirety? Because if
you still face some fear or anxiety when you start to write, maybe you are not
writing enough...in a way that writing can be fun and stress-free
because no one has to see it. It’s practice writing. You can revise and play
with this writing. It’s just practice. Try it. If you do this regularly, I
think you will discover at least two important things. You can, through the
work of writing, improve your thinking, writing, and editing skills. And you
will discover that you really can write without anxiety and delay. It is
possible. Especially when you write every day.
Csikszentmihalyi,
M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience . New York: HarperCollins.
*Today we randomly selected these BreakWriting subscribers
to receive a copy of Silvia’s book, How to Write a Lot. E-mail edg14@columbia.edu
to get your book. First four letters/numbers of the uni are:
Lbc1
Eel2
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 #14 - How to Think and Act Like a Writer
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