End of the Year

It’s the end of the year, a time for reflection, evaluation, and goal setting. This year has been much better for me than 2013. I’m in a better shape now, have more energy and less pain than before. This year I defended my dissertation prospectus. I wish I have already received my IRB approval, got an article published, developed a daily writing routine, cleaned the house, etc. That’s what I hope to accomplish in 2015. Next year I also need to complete data collection for my dissertation.

What have I learned in 2014? To take better care of myself and to stay positive. After a long break from going to conferences, I attended CADAAD 2014 in Budapest, Hungary. I realized how much I was missing by not conferencing. I decided to go to at least one conference per year. To ensure that, I organized a panel for ICQI 2015. This panel has been accepted. Thus, all I need to do now is to revise my paper, book a hotel room, buy plane tickets, and attend the conference in May. In 2014, I revised a paper and submitted it to a journal. Belcher’s book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success gave me some structure and taught me how to better approach editing on both macro and micro levels. I will use this model again, starting January 2, to revise my other paper and will reflect on that process in February and then in March.

During 2015, I will blog twice a month.  In January, I plan to write about Yuri Lotman, his approach to cultural studies, and how this approach may help me in grounding my dissertation project. In February, I will reflect on my trip to Russia and discuss how the revision of my paper is going. In March, I plan to write about my data collection and report on submitting my second paper to a journal. If some more interesting or more urgent topics surface, I may change this plan, but my goal is to write regularly. In 2015, I plan to use this blog to discuss various aspects of my life, including my non-academic goals. Hope you’ll come back in January and share this journey with me! Happy Holidays, everyone!

Writing every morning

It’s been a week since my last post. During this week, I’ve been writing on most of the days. My first move was to follow a common writing advice to wake up early and write first thing in the morning, and this worked for a few mornings. Then, various things came up, and one morning after another went without writing. But, on most of these days, I was able to write later in the day, usually in the afternoon and once late in the evening, when around 10:00 p.m., I realized that I hadn’t written and jumped into saving that day.

At first, missing morning writing felt as a failure, but reading about other people’s experiences has helped me once again. Jonathan Manor, for example, insists that writing is not, and should not be, “a race to finish”, but “a long immersion in a hot tub or a relaxing meditation.” At first, his metaphor of writing as relaxing meditation struck me as strange, if not inappropriate, but gradually I warmed up to it. In a way, I can compare writing to restorative yoga, which I usually do in the afternoon to re-energize and beat the afternoon slump. While yoga practice helps me to distress and refocus, productive writing creates a sense of achievement and boosts self-perception. Manor also maintains that night, not morning, is the best time for writing, arguing that clear-morning mind may present a hindrance to creative work, rather than being an impetus for it:

“If your mind is completely clear, wouldn’t it be clear of creativity too?

The reason that most writers — ‘good’ writers — choose to write at night, is because their mornings, afternoons, and early evenings have filled their bodies with inspiration.”

I am not sure I agree with this thesis. I guess it depends on the individual, but I can see why the late evening, when another “lost” day fades away, is more conducive for putting everything aside and getting to writing. As Gabriel Cohen explains, in his article “On Not Writing: And What Exactly It Means”: 

“In real life, getting to the computer is a matter of delayed momentum: I finally hit the keyboard not because I’ve been struck with a cinematic bolt of inspiration, but because the self-disgust of not writing finally gains enough mass to roll over my anxiety about what to write.”

This, however, does not mean that one should not write in the morning. In this regard, I like Jenna Avery’s point that:

“One of the biggest roadblocks to getting your writing done is limiting yourself to just one or two spaces [or times] to write. If conditions aren’t ideal, you’ll lose a lot of steam and think writing will be harder than it has to be. . . . You don’t want to get so precious about your writing that you can only write on Tuesdays in the north corner of the house when the wind is blowing from the east. :)”

She talks about a common tendency to present the act of writing as a bigger deal than it is, which may create an impression of the necessity of ideal conditions in order for you to be “able” to write. Avery acknowledges that in some circumstances writing may be easier than in others, but recommends to shift attention from the outside conditions to one’s attitude toward writing and how to enhance it through interrupting your normal writing patterns and “sneaking in under the radar of any resistance to writing.” To achieve that, she suggests, “Schedule 5 minutes in the morning to write, and don’t put any expectations on writing well. Then do it again each day.”

For the last several days, I’ve been following this advice. In the past, I used the pomodoro technique, according to which one needs to write for 25 minutes (one pomodoro), take a 2 minute break, then work for another pomodoro, and so on. In the morning, I often felt that I didn’t have 25 min to sit down and write. I also wanted to keep track on my writing time, which I usually did in pomodoros (and when you interrupt a pomodoro, it gets annulled), so I never sat down to write for less than 25 min. To be able to keep track on my writing time AND to write in smaller segments, I found a new app (Goals Calendar) for my android, which allows me to set a specific duration of time for which I’d like to work on a goal and to measure my progress. I noticed that, when I write for 5, 10, or 15 minutes in the morning, I always return back to writing in the afternoon and write for at least two hours a day. Not having expectations that I need to allocate a half an hour, or more, for a writing session, makes it easier for me to start and keep writing, and, during interruptions/breaks, I can think of what to write next. I’m also moving away from having one or two special places for writing, doing it wherever and whenever I can. These changes seem to reduce the grandiosity of the writing process and make me more comfortable with it.

Getting back to the keyboard

It’s been awhile since my last blog post. For months I’ve been thinking about getting back to blogging. But this took me much longer than I expected. In many ways, this process has been similar to picking up the pieces after an extended break from academic writing, which makes a lot of sense, especially because my blog is about dissertating.

If you are (or have ever been) a graduate student, you can probably relate to my experience. Health problems, deaths of loved ones, and other life issues come unexpectedly and disrupt dissertation writing. The longer one stays away from writing, the harder it feels to get back in the saddle. For one, as time passes by, the distance between the writer and her unfinished piece gradually grows, and reconnecting with it demands increasingly more energy. Not surprisingly, my mentor gave me an advice to write a sentence of my dissertation each time I have a few free minutes. That way, she explained, I would always stay close to my project. This valuable and seemingly simple advice rightly identifies the most effective solution to the problem of not writing, which is to start WRITING. Unfortunately, often this is easier said than done. As the prolific author and screenwriter Gene Fowler sarcastically pointed out, “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

In other words, finding a way to write a first sentence is a very emotional moment for many writers, probably because one’s writing (or inability to write) is closely connected to his/her identity. According to the psychologist Maja Djikic,

A writer is not a person who writes, but a person whose process of self-development depends on writing. The horrors incurred by not being able to write are then not just horrors of not completing a task at hand. It is not about one’s work, it is about self that without the necessary process – writing - cannot evolve with experience. Not writing then is not akin to failure at work, but failure at being oneself.

Thus, to find one’s way out of the impasse of not writing, these pertinent identity issues must be addressed. Dr. Cally Guerin, in her blog post “Starting again: picking up the pieces after an extended break from writing,” makes a similar point:

For those who have taken a break from that identity and are now trying to return, there are pressing questions to face: How does my identity as a new parent fit with my identity as a scholar? As a cancer survivor, will I have the energy required to complete this intense writing phase? After a major accident that involved head injuries, am I still the kind of person whose concentration span is sufficient to do rigorous, scholarly research? Now that I am a bereaved widow instead of a carer for my terminally ill husband, will the writing fill up that aching gap of grief or will it be too isolating when what I really need is human warmth? It’s important not to underestimate how confronting these questions might be, nor how far beneath the surface they might lurk, stalling progress but not consciously acknowledged.

In addition, to posing and valorizing these pressing identity questions, Guerin also recommends some specific steps for coming back to doctoral writing after an extended interruption, which include starting with taking stock of the existing chapters and notes of the literature, setting a plan of what remains to be done, in what order, and in what timeframe, breaking the work up into manageable chunks, etc. By discussing these steps, Guerin acknowledges the complexity of the problem of getting back to writing and the need of a multifaceted solution.

Gabriel Cohen, in his article “On Not Writing: And What Exactly It Means,” connects the inability to start writing to fear of failure, once again connecting it to identity issues. To him, a writer’s identity is not only a source of (not) writing problems, but also a way of resolving them:

In real life, getting to the computer is a matter of delayed momentum: I finally hit the keyboard not because I’ve been struck with a cinematic bolt of inspiration, but because the self-disgust of not writing finally gains enough mass to roll over my anxiety about what to write.

Cohen comes to realization that, although periods of not writing may be rather uncomfortable, they are not a problem or some obstacle, but a necessary part of the writing process: “Stress the conscious mind and the subconscious will eventually release words, phrases, bubbles of insight, sometimes even whole scenes.”

Caleb J. Ross also talks about the discomfort that often accompanies writing and argues for embracing it. He compares writing to traveling, which Ross allegedly doesn’t like, but does it regularly and always enjoys it afterwards, when he thinks back to his finished travels.

Reading all these blog posts, writings, and reflections on writing helped me realize that getting back into writing is a continuous process, not a one-shot enterprise, and that, to succeed, I need a multifaceted approach, which includes reevaluating my self-concept, seeking opportunities to reinforce my researcher identity, embracing the discomfort that comes with inability to write (or performing below my expectations), and developing a writing routine that helps me move forward. I'll let you know about my progress and would love to hear about your experience of starting writing, especially after an extended break.

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?

Trying to become more productive

Writing a dissertation is a huge task, and, to accomplish it successfully, I need to get some organization system in place. In the past, right after defending my Master's thesis, I tried to reflect on the challenges of working on a lengthy research project, and, as a part of that process, read a number of books on academic writing. One of my favorites at the time was Robert Boice's Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing. The book discusses psychological causes of typical writing problems, such as being stuck or unable to start writing, and outlines ways to make writing a regular and productive habit, which include establishing momentum via uncensored generative writing, developing a sense of organization that will help in subsequent revisions, cycling through these two steps, and ensuring continuous progress through prioritizing writing, imposing self-control, and soliciting feedback. During my first reading of the book, I learned two important lessons that helped me to grow as a writer. The first one was the idea of cycling through the stages of uncensored writing and revision, and the second, Boice's advice to write in short intervals of 20-30 minutes, avoiding binge writing.

However, as I have recently discovered when working on my dissertation, I need additional tools to achieve continuous productivity and to deal with occasional blocks. I reread Boice's book, hoping to find more useful ideas that didn't register with me during the first reading. One of them was "automatic note taking," which works best for me when combined with the Cornell note taking method. I still stick to my usual reading routine with underlining what I find important and jotting notes on the margins. Then, as Boice suggests, I devote one page of notes to each literature source. Since the notes are so short, they don't require much time, and I made a rule not to move to another source before the notes for the previous one are done. The notes include only those aspects of the source that I can use in the chapter I'm working on. If I plan to use the same source for a different chapter or another project, then I return to it later and make a new set of notes. In the left (narrower) column of a notepad for the Cornell style notes, I put keywords that refer to the subsections of the chapter or some specific points to which the source is related; in the right (wider) column, some specifics on the connections of the source to my project; and in the bottom section, a summary of the implications that the source has for my work.
  
Another tool that has helped me in improving my continuous productivity came from the Pomodoro technique. The idea behind that technique is somewhat similar to Boice's suggestion to write in short intervals of 20-30 minutes, but I found that the Pomodoro technique is easier for me to implement, probably, because it doesn't focuses exclusively on writing, but covers various types of tasks, such as reading, note taking, correspondence, etc. Each pomodoro is 25 minutes of uninterrupted work; then, there is a short 2-5 minute break before the next pomodoro, and a longer one ~15-30 minutes after the 4-th one. I use both a mechanical Pomodoro, which is basically a regular kitchen timer, and Android Pomodoro app; each of them works best for different types of activities.

When the Pomodoro rings, I am "not allowed" to keep working for another minute or two to finish what I've been doing and have to use the time of the break to "disconnect" from my work and to do something good for my health (e.g., some stretches). All completed pomodoros need to be recorded, and the records need to be analyzed to estimate how much time each type of tasks requires. Using the Pomodoro Techniques for reading and note taking allows me (1) to better spread my energy over time and, as a result, accomplish more by taking frequent breaks and (2) to get a sense of accomplishing something meaningful, which is often missing when I'm amidst of extensive reading and note taking.

The Pomodoro technique also gave me a good idea on how to plan my daily activities and ensure ongoing progress. The Pomodoro technique book suggests keeping two lists: "To Do Today" and "Activity Inventory." I use the latter in two different forms: (1) a list of ideas and possible revisions for the chapter and (2) a list of all my weekly activities, which I create at the end of each week and then divide into seven parts for each day of the week. As recommended in the Pomodoro book, I keep adding unplanned and urgent activities to my weekly list and then reassign them to specific days. At the end of the day, I cross out completed tasks and make notes on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the strategies I used in accomplishing them, to be able to better plan for similar tasks in the future. Although at this point I don't make any estimates of how many pomodoros each task would require, I plan to advance to that in the future. Currently, I only identify the tasks that I need to do, decide on how many pomodoros I have in a given day, and do my best to accomplish what I've planned. If something is left unfinished (or even unstarted), I make notes in my daily to-do list and assign the task to another day. This approach keeps me focused on what needs to be done and allows me to find additional time for work by squeezing a pomodoro in between already preplanned activities.

What strategies and productivity tools do you use to ensure smooth and continuous progress in your work? What did and did not work for you?