Trying to become more productive (Part II)

In my quest for increased productivity, I decided to participate in a writing boot camp, offered by the the UNM Graduate Resource Center to provide students with a free from distraction writing environment and to help them jump start their writing schedule. The boot camp has two different formats: a short weekend one and a week-long one. The boot camp begins at 8:30 a.m. with a group meeting that includes a writing warmup exercise and a discussion of effective writing strategies. Then, everyone breaks into smaller groups, where they go over personal writing goals for the day and address whatever problems that need to be addressed. After that, the actual writing begins and continues until 4:00 p.m., with a lunch break at noon. The day ends with a brief joint meeting and small group discussions of how the writing went and what needs to be done the next day. Before signing up for the boot camp, I talked to several people who attended it in the past. They all said that the format is very effective, that they accomplished a lot there, and that they definitely plan to participate again in the future. Boot-campers with whom I worked last week had very similar responses. The vast majority of them were returning "patrons," and, when asked how many boot camps they have attended, many replied 10+. So, indeed this format works for many dissertation writers.

Did it work well for me? To be honest, I don't know. On the one hand, I spent more time on actual writing than I would normally do at home, and, as a result, more was accomplished. On the other hand, I felt exhausted after the boot camp and needed a few days to recover before I could get back to my writing. I attended a week-long boot camp, and it was interesting to observe how the average time spent on writing had gradually decreased from Monday to Friday. At the beginning of the week, people came in earlier and stayed for the whole boot camp period, but soon they started arriving later and leaving earlier. The sole focus on writing was fading away as well; at the beginning, everyone was intensely working on their projects, but, as days passed by, more and more often I saw people doing online shopping, browsing, facebooking, and other unrelated to dissertation tasks. I guess the format was too intense and not just for me. Will I participate again? Yes, I will probably give it another try, but I will definitely make some adjustments from the very beginning. For one, I will take my pomodoro timer with me and will stick to my usual writing routine of working for 25 minutes with short breaks between the periods. I will also try to vary the types of writing to work on during the boot camp, including spontaneous writing, editing, note taking, etc.

After reading Peter Elbow's Writing without Teachers, I started doing regular spontaneous writing sessions, and they seem to be working nicely for me. I begin each day with two pomodoros of this type of writing and work on anything else later in the day. Usually I decide on the topic of my spontaneous writing ahead of time and in the morning simply seat in front of my computer and type whatever comes to mind. I expected that such writing would produce a lot of garbage, but surprisingly I have been able to use almost everything I produced so far. Spontaneous writing has become my way of thinking about the topic, making connections, and trying to articulate possible interpretations. I don't try to be exact or 100% accurate on references to other people's work or ideas; I simply write them down the way I remember, and, if I'm unable to recall something, I include a note and check that later. My goal is to produce no less than 500 words of spontaneous writing per day, but I usually produce more. When I'm done with doing spontaneous writing on a given topic, which usually involves several days of work, I devote some time in the middle of the day to editing that part. I combine all the installments of spontaneous writing together, use my source notes to verify the accuracy of ambiguous parts and to add specific examples or quotations, restructure the piece, and work on its language, grammar, and spelling. This work arrangement helps me steadily accumulate some writing, gives me some sense of achievement, and makes my process of editing easier. In the past, I had a tendency to write in tight paragraphs and to polish sentences as I go. As a result, I often became attached to my writing, and it was very difficult to incorporate new ideas in already written paragraphs or change their structure. What are your most effective writing and editing practices?