Writing is a lonely sport. Some people enjoy this aspect of it, and others find it very dispiriting, enough to make them avoid writing altogether. You may be one sort of writer at one stage, and another at a different part of the writing process, might like to draft your first thoughts away from the world, but hang out in a library, or a coffeebar, or with a friend, when you’re revising, or vice-versa. The interesting question, though, is which sort of writer you are when, and how you deal with your preference.

For better and worse, though, writing is never a totally solitary sport. Even if you’re closeted, away from e-mail, phone, and people coming to ask you questions, you’re generally “with someone” — the ultimate audience for your writing, or in memory, with the 7th grade teacher who told you you could, or couldn’t write well, or with your own internal critic or judge. I suspect there are very few writers who would bother to write if they never hoped, or expected, their writing to be read by others. What do you make of all the company that accompanies your writing attempts? Whom might you want to
cultivate, and whom do you need to fire?

What matters most is that you write in good company. Writing for someone whom you know will understand you, and be on your side, who will offer useful criticism if it’s called for, but not overwhelm you with it, is as good as it gets. It may still feel anxiety-provoking, or embarrassing to hand over a piece of your writing. How much it does will depend on how finished your piece is, or how anxious you are. But writing by its very nature exposes the writer, even if s/he hides behind the third person, so it’s not strange that it so often makes us anxious to do it.

The writing that’s going to be read by a boss or colleague who’s mean-spirited, or hypercritical is harder, I think, than a rejection by an unknown journal editor who turns down your article: the latter is much easier not to take personally. What might you do in this kind of difficult situation? It helps to find another, trustworthy reader to show your work to first, or simultaneously; if you can avoid it, don’t hand an incomplete, or unrevised piece to the nasty reader. It can help to talk to yourself about how hard it is, but also to follow a “writing well is the best revenge” strategy.

What you can’t afford is to allow the difficult reader to take over your writing and your own opinion of it. (If *all* of your readers feel this way to you, you need to take a good long look at yourself, in one therapeutic way or another.) If you have the sense that the difficult reader is clueless about his/her effect on you, rather than mean, you might try summoning up your courage to say that it’s a bit hard for you to listen to his/her feedback, but that you’d find it easier if s/he could avoid writing on your ms. in red ink, and send you comments by e-mail, so you can digest them a bit more slowly.

The worst possible companions, though, are often ourselves. Imagination is a rich faculty, unless we turn it to spinning scenarios in which people say godawful things about our writing, ignore it, don’t fund our proposals, or tell us our data don’t prove what we’ve said they do, or let us know they don’t think we’re nearly as good as we think we are at what we do, or… (I’m sure you can easily add to this list.)

Years ago, with one of my first clients, I realized how powerful the imagined self-critic can be. He came to see me because he couldn’t write at all, and desperately wanted to. I asked him some questions, including what sort of setting he wrote in, and he mentioned that he had a painting of one of his illustrious ancestors hanging where he
could see it while he wrote. This ancestor, who resembled one of the vicious characters in the paintings at Harry Potter’s school, seemed to be spewing invectives at my client, telling him what a worthless character he was, and who was he, anyway, to think he could write anything worth reading? The fix was apparent and quick: we decided together that he’d turn the ancestor’s picture to the wall (this somehow seemed more appropriate than removing it altogether). My client became a quite prolific writer.

Some of us figure we’re better off criticizing ourselves before someone else does. Some of us were taught that the critical mode should always be the most important one when we write — but if it’s applied too early on, it can destroy thinking and creativity. Some of us are frightened by the extent to which even “objective writing” (if there is such a thing) exposes us, so we scare ourselves off from the task. I’d be very interested to hear any other explanations you might have for why we’re so often harsh to ourselves as writers.

Several of the writers I’ve worked with have gotten over writing blocks, or writing procrastination by finding writing partners or groups to work with. One of my clients, who choked each time she faced a deadline, had a good friend who was a professional writer, who invited her to come to her house and sequester herself to write, knowing that this friend was in the other room cheering her on — and writing.

One of the many good things about writing partnerships is that you choose your company. Another is that the partner isn’t there to judge your writing, just to egg you on — or, even better, you egg each other on. Getting out of solitary confinement can also turn down the nutty negative voices that often emerge full-blown when you’re alone. You have a simple obligation to a writing partner: to show up, and to write, and only that.

It’s hard enough writing even if you love it (some people do), even if you have a benevolent audience waiting to see what you produce. It’s very useful to work hard at finding the best possible company–both in yourself, and in others–to support this rich, complex, and difficult enterprise.

Cheers,

Joan

This posting is less about the product, and more about the process by which you create it. Let’s explore that.

The goal of “perfect” is impossible to reach, so you have to set a realistic goal for each of your writing tasks, and make a cost-benefit analysis for each project.  Think about how much work to put into a piece of writing, based on how important it is (will the grant proposal, if accepted, support your research for years? Is this article just a summary of some work that’s interesting, but not groundbreaking?  Will a clean draft of our report suffice?)

Not all projects are created equal, nor do they deserve the same amount of effort.

I’ve already written about the question of whether writing quickly or writing slowly is more likely to produce good results; it has a surprising conclusion: rapid writing tends to make for better writing.

Why does Perry’s advice to “first make a mess, then clean it up” produce a better ultimate product? When you allow your writing to take you where it will (rather than your forcing it into predetermined channels prematurely) you are also allowing for thinking, and not just reporting. Some of your papers may need to be just reports of your research, but others will involve writing to think, and then clarifying for your readers what you’ve come up with.

Perhaps most important, though, is the difference that lowering your standards can make in how you approach your writing.  Setting an initial bar high very often leads to putting off beginning, or keeping at your project, because you’ve set too formidable a goal. B.F.Skinner would call this sort of process “extinguishing behavior” –that is, by setting up a task so that it’s a punishment (which “get it perfect the first time” is an example of), you effectively make it harder and harder to approach it. Imagine deciding you’re going to have to run five miles a day when you’ve previously run only two; very soon you’re likely to give up on it altogether.

One common cause of writer’s block is setting unrealistic goals, so that you disappoint yourself each time you don’t meet them, and begin to think that the work–in this case, the writing–is just something you’re unable to do.  So you stop. (Skinner might say, “You’ve taught yourself how to stop writing.”)

Lowering your standards doesn’t mean accepting substandard writing. What it does do is to allow you to relax a bit while you write.  This produces better writing (anxiety doesn’t help thinking– quite the opposite), so that, paradoxically, lowering your standards ends up raising them, without your having to terrorize yourself.  The bottom line: Lower your standards, start off with a quickly written mess, do several drafts (much easier once you’ve got something–anything –written), and see what happens. And I’d be interested to hear how this works for you.

Cheers,

Joan

The postings that follow were originally written as part of my consultation to doctors and scientists at the MDAnderson Cancer Center, and seem to have been quite useful.  What my online writing clients taught me in return has  also enriched the short essays that follow.

I’ve learned many of the strategies you’ll read below from years of teaching writing, creating two university writing centers, and working with many stuck dissertation writers.  (The last of these led to Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day, a book I wrote for writers I couldn’t meet in person.)  This website translates the strategies for working on dissertations to the different kinds of writing that medical publications require.

I’ll begin with a few postings that will introduce you to some different approaches to your writing that you may wish to experiment with; I’ll add others as we go along.  I’d like to hear from you both about the sorts of writing issues you’d like me to address, and any comments or questions you might have about the postings. You can use the Feedback link at the right of the screen for that.

The postings focus on the process of writing; you’re the experts on the content of what you write.  I hope that this new approach will not only give you more tools, but also help you to put your writing out in the world, get you published, and bring you abundant grants.

Cheers,

Joan Bolker

• First posting
• Second thoughts
• Using, not making, time
• Some thoughts on writing and thinking
• Writing more, faster and better, suffering less
• Writing what you want to write
• Lowering your standards, producing better writing
• Writing in good company

-You wish to write different sorts of scientific papers and grant proposals, devoted to the questions that interest you most, even though they may be less likely to be published or funded;

-You’d like to write in a different style, one that’s more relaxed, or less stuffy, or more, or less, qualitative;

-You’d like to write single author papers, to have the chance to create them without having to contend with the quirks or opposing opinions or the organizational quagmires of joint work;

-Or, you’d like to write more joint papers, to make writing less of a solitary occupation, or to expand your knowledge, or to balance the weaknesses and strengths of your writing by the different ones of your coauthor;

-You want to take a shot at a really wild paper in your field, to see if you can make it convincing and publishable;

-You’d like to write about medicine/science, as well as in it, perhaps in essays like the ones that Jerome Groopman, Herbert Benson, and Lewis Thomas have written.

How can you satisfy any of these wishes, without shirking your professional duties, or your need to publish so you won’t perish?

Some possibilities:

-First define honestly what you want to write, not just as a way of saying, “I’d rather be doing anything other than writing this grant proposal.”

-Realize that you don’t need to quit your job and close yourself in a garret should you, for example, decide to write the great American novel.  There are gradual, possible ways to write outside your professional obligations (perhaps even to discover that writing novels can sometimes be as agonizing as putting together grant proposals).  (There are a number of famous writer- doctors who both held down full-time jobs and wrote major works of fiction.)  And if you can manage to do a different sort of writing, you may experience carryover from your “hobby”–find yourself more relaxed as a scientific writer as well, and more productive.  Think of writing of any sort, especially a kind you can enjoy, as building your writing muscle for your required papers.

So, for example, promise yourself some regular, small bits of time (even 15 minutes a day) for your “fun writing,” whatever it is, knowing that producing fiction, essays, or poetry can only make you better at other kinds of writing.  Consider using some of that time for reading the genre that you’d like to try out.

- Know that you don’t have to make any sudden drastic changes in your writing process or product, that you can modify your style gradually, for example, by experimenting with using the first person (even “Science” magazine began permitting it years ago), or less formal language, or shorter sentences.  Think of these changes as a series of iterations.

-If you’ve been longing to write a single author paper, you don’t either have to wait three years to begin, or tell your coauthors that you’re withdrawing from your joint projects immediately.  Start by thinking about what that paper of your own will be, and take your time with it, knowing that you don’t need to finish it for a deadline (this in itself will be a liberating experience!)

-And similarly, if you want to write more coauthored papers, begin the process gradually, see if it feels the way you expected it to be, and if it does, move, over time, toward that mode.

-If your ambition is to write what you want to write in a current paper, perhaps a challenge to the received wisdom in your field, or a different angle on your subject, or a wild, but interesting theory, consider taking the risk (especially if you don’t need this particular paper for tenure), and if it gets turned down, either send it to a more adventurous journal, or revise it to meet current standards, so long as that doesn’t feel like selling your soul.

-Moving toward writing what you want to write will not only increase your muscle, it will also increase the quantity of writing you can produce (once again, behavioral psychology can explain this: when you write in a way you can enjoy, you reinforce the behavior of writing in general.)

But you may also find yourself detoxing even your formerly unpleasant professional writing, becoming able to separate its “have to”  quality from your genuine interest in its material, remembering why you chose this work you do.

Becoming clear about the writing you want to do and how you want it to sound, exploring other genres as well as different kinds of authorship for your professional writing, separating the fact that a paper is required from your inherent interest in its subject, are all ways to move toward writing more easily, becoming more productive, and owning your work.

Cheers,
Joan

How might you put “more” and “faster” together, when it’s already so difficult to write slowly?

Let’s consider the possibility that starting a writing task by working at it carefully and painstakingly may not be the most efficient way to
get it done.  (Note the etymology of the word “painstaking,” which seems to include “being in pain,” as well as “taking pains” in an
attempt to “get it right the first time”.)

Writing to “get it right the first time” is like driving a car with the emergency brake on.  In order to write more good stuff faster, and
suffer less, you need to focus on removing the stalling, obsessing, and nitpicking from your composing process, and to think about a
different kind of process.

Writing slowly is often a stop and start operation.  But if you pay attention to your own thought processes, and try writing down whatever comes into your head in the course of a few minutes, you’ll note that your transcription moves quickly, and sometimes presents you with surprising ideas.

Here’s a different way to write that can produce less suffering:

–When you start out, try writing faster, and lowering your standards (this isn’t a typo, I really mean to say “lowering”).

–Don’t allow yourself to get stuck on one idea, or seduced by working on a very small piece of your prose for too long.  Your aim should be to get as much of a zero draft as possible, as quickly as you can. Later on, you can revise to your heart’s content, and work toward “getting it perfectly right,” so long as you realize that you’ll only approach, and not achieve that goal.

One of the liberating surprises if you tackle “writer’s block” is that writing cures anxiety.

A few more observations:

–Writing slowly tends to increase anxiety;

–Writing quickly tends to diminish anxiety, to get you past it, and into your real work;

–Being overimpressed by your own anxiety isn’t useful.

–But writing scared can be very useful:

If you can’t bear to ignore your fright, write about it while in the midst of your text (just remember to delete it before you pass your
paper on to your coauthor!);

Some writing anxiety is quite functional: it provides the edge that you need to leap into a project;

It’s useful to find out that you don’t need to wait for your anxiety to go away in order to write.

There is a joke about this problem among therapists who work with academics: that there are more efficient ways than psychoanalysis to cure writer’s block (this is what passes for humor in my profession). I’m a clinical psychologist, deeply invested in helping people understand what holds them back in their lives.  One of the things I’ve found out in the course of a career devoted to working with stuck writers is that pragmatic and behavioral stategies are often of much more use to them in getting their writing work done than deep therapy (I send them off to other therapists to deal with their other pain), that indeed, writing can cure (some) anxiety.

Writing faster accomplishes several things at once:

–It breaks through the stuckness that often occurs when you set out to “get it perfect the first time,” and allows you to get past “first
sentence terror.”

–It gets a lot of ideas written–and it doesn’t matter that not all of them are fit for the final product, or even necessarily correct.

–It encourages thinking, because it more closely matches the speed at which ideas come.  Slow writing can make us forget or ignore the ideas that speed through our minds, these thoughts that are a potential source of our richest work.

Cheers,
Joan

If you’ve had some success with freewriting so far, you’ll know that the sense you may have had of “nothing to say” was misleading, that writing without trying to direct your thoughts sometimes leads to new connections, or discoveries, to the experience of “I didn’t know I knew this.”

(If you’ve given up on this sort of writing, though, because you’re convinced that the think-first-then-write strategy works better, do consider carefully whether it really does, or you’ve chosen it because it’s familiar, and you don’t like change.  There are some writers who can easily carry complex, ambiguous trains of thought around in their heads, and then just transfer them to written text, but this isn’t a common talent.)

Establishing a daily writing habit that works for you, one that doesn’t include interrupting the stream of writing to criticize what you’ve just said, will help make writing a place where you can try out ideas safely, discard more easily ones that don’t work, and admit the natural contradictions, ambiguities, and wild speculations that come along with openmindedness.

If you cultivate the habit of quick writing, more or less free (depending on what’s worked for you in the past, and on your personality), you’ll be able to do what Virginia Woolf called “capturing the diamonds in the dust heap.”  You might experiment with setting yourself a number of pages (messy ones) rather than a fixed amount of time, and seeing how quickly you can produce them.

Obviously, all of these methods call for serious revision of writing, which brings me to the next mantra, the invention of William G.Perry, Jr., for many years the Director of Harvard’s Bureau of Study Counsel.  Here’s his description of the writing process:

“First you make a mess, then you clean it up.”

What does “make a mess” mean?  It can mean the kind of disorganized, self-contradictory, or outrageous stuff that might appear in your freewriting. It suggests that you carefully separate the creative process from the critical one, because combining them is a bit like driving a car with the emergency brake on.  When you interrupt your early draft writing to go back and clean up anything from typos to contradictions it’s very easy to lose your train of thought–you effectively halt the flow of ideas. Also, despite what your 4th grade teacher may have told you, most thought doesn’t fall easily into standard outline form, and allowing for the mess in your writing will yield both better writing and more cogent thinking in the long run.  If you note, say, in your lab notebook that you’ve just proposed two ideas that contradict each other, use this as an opportunity to write forward, and try to figure out whether this conflict tells you anything.

I’ve said “lab notebook,” and it’s not just my age that makes me visualize it as hard copy, and not notes on the computer.  If you haven’t tried writing by hand in a while, try it out for a few days or a week, and see, by keeping close track of how this shift works for you, what the difference is–in how you feel about writing, how much you get done, and what the product is like.

Computers are stunningly useful in producing writing, but not necessarily for early drafts.  Oddly enough, I think they work less well for people who are very fast typists, that writing by hand may match the slower speed of thought processes better. Writing on the computer can turn out to be easier, faster, and much more superficial.  It can also, especially in the revision stage, focus you more on tinkering with text, with fonts, with the machine, than on what you’re trying to say.  And it can confuse arguments wondrously quickly.  (Oddly, one of the places where revising on the computer works best is in the revision of poetry, where there are few enough words to tinker with, and you can see entire texts side by side.)

You don’t have to take this piece of advice, but I think it’s one of the most useful ones I have to offer: except for very short pieces of writing, try revising on hard copy, double-spaced.  You’ll have a much better sense of where you are in the whole piece of work, and what sections need to be moved; you won’t be tempted to scroll quickly through messy passages just because it’s so easy to do.  And when you’re done you’ll enjoy the lovely heft of paper in your hands.

The answer to this question is not making, but using time more realistically.  Let’s dispose first of imaginary time, the sort you invoke when you say, “I’ll write this paper over Christmas vacation.”  All of you work very hard, most of you probably too many hours a week.  There may be among you a few who live uncomplicated lives, without family or social or other obligations, or some who can get by indefinitely on four hours of sleep a night, or others who never need any down time to restore their energy.  But most of you probably need vacation time for what it’s labelled as.  Imagining that you’ll write the long overdue paper then as well isn’t usually productive of much except guilt.

How might you use time more realistically?  First, as the above suggests, by giving up on the fantasy of long, uninterrupted stretches of writing time–they probably don’t exist in your life. (A Boston doctor I know actually did “find” that sort of time to write a book during a year when she took a sabbatical from her medical practice and joined her husband and family in Paris, where he had a fellowship–of course, she had to change practice groups as a result…)

Your job is to learn to write in much, much shorter stretches, the ten minutes a day I’ve written about already, the lunch hour (if it exists) during which you close your office door, and pretend not to be there, or, even better, go hide in a library where no one can see you, or phone you. (Be sure to shut off your various devices that interrupt you.)  If you and a colleague are both working on writing tasks, and have similar schedules, flee together to the nearest Starbucks or such, and hold each other to writing for half an hour, twice a week.  Or do this briefly at the end of the workday (which involves giving up the illusion that once you get home you’ll be able to write for two solid hours).

Use the ten minute stretches to make a quick list of thoughts you have for your grant proposal, or journal article.  Consider a flow chart to map out your ideas, and put it on a whiteboard in your office, where you can add to it anytime an idea strikes you.  If there seems to be a glitch in your argument, spend the ten minutes wrestling with it in writing; don’t just go round and round in your head.  If you’re someone who thinks in the shower, get yourself a waterproof pad (they exist) and pen, and capture those ideas.

Anytime you’re tempted to have a conversation with someone about a new idea, write it down first–ideas that are spoken before they’re written down often evaporate into the air.  Or, if you feel like you must talk about it, bring your laptop along, and write the ideas down as you talk.

If you’re delivering a lecture, use the time on the plane on your way back to sketch out a draft of it; don’t set it aside for “when I have more time.”  Or tape record the lecture, and transcribe it as soon after you’ve given it as you can, noting the ideas that come as you write it.  (The problem with not doing this is one I’ve often encountered with the academics I’ve counselled about writing: they have a substantial amount of potential writing tied up in talks they’ve given, but haven’t managed to write up.  Don’t let your presentations grow cold before you get back to them–it’s a waste of good material.)

I’d like to hear from you any ideas or experiences you’ve had for using time that you might not previously have considered “real writing time.”

–After you’ve written a quick, messy page or two, read back through it, and underline or mark anything that stands out for you.  Then use a word, or sentence, or idea from these bits as the header for your next writing, and see where it takes you.  This is the beginning of trying out iterative freewriting, a process that gradually allows you to write in order to think.

–If, after you’ve done a page or so of freewriting, you’re anxious about “not getting to the real work,” try focusing the writing on a topic you want to think about, still writing quickly, without stopping, without fussing over getting the words perfect. Write another quick and messy page, but this time with a subject in mind.

–If you’ve hated the freewriting, and can’t imagine ever getting used to it, work at writing in a mode that suits you better, but for a very short time, so that you can do it every day. There’s no point in sticking with something that you’re sure doesn’t
suit who you are.

–Clearly, the refrain is “every day.”  There are probably a few people on earth who can do wonderful, long pieces of writing in a stretch of several hours, once a week, but I haven’t met any of them.  If you decide, say, to postpone your grant or paper writing to your next vacation, you’re likely to be anxious about it from now until then. (Not only won’t you have a real vacation if you do indeed work during that time, you probably also won’t have one if you don’t, because you’ll be busy feeling guilty.)

–If you can establish a habit of writing every day for a short time, you’ll have the chance to cook your ideas over time, continuously, so that when you do have, say, two hours in which to write you’ll be much more likely to accomplish something.

–Try “parking on the downhill slope” (I wish I’d invented this phrase–Ken Skier, who worked in the Writing Program at M.I.T., did):  When you come to the end of your writing session, note quickly, at the end of what you’ve written, your thoughts about
where you might go next with your hunches, or arguments or questions.  This way, you won’t have to start cold the next day; you’ll have some prompts to get you back into your writing.

–B.F.Skinner makes another important argument for working in very short stretches: negative reinforcement extinguishes behavior.  Translated into English, this means that if you keep punishing yourself about your writing (“Why can’t I write for a longer time?  Why can’t I sit down and do the four hours of writing I said I would?”) you’ll eventually stop writing anything at all.

–**Remember that even ten minutes of writing a day is an infinite improvement over none.

–Each of the above has at its center the time problem.  Many of you need to write, but have very little time in which to do it. In the next posting I’ll mull some more not how to “make time,” since that’s impossible, but to use some of the bits of time you haven’t considered usable before now.  Freewriting is an easy way to do this.

First, though, a mantra (mantras are valuable reminders when you’re tackling hard writing tasks):

In the first century B.C. Horace wrote,”Nulla dies sine linea” Translated into colloquial English it reads, “Write every day.”  What follows will show you how.

I’m sure you’re pressed for time.  Freewriting will help you use short segments (ten minute sessions) of time to get your writing started, strengthen your writing muscle, and keep writer’s block at bay.  It will also begin to prove to you something embodied in a second mantra (to be explained in a later posting).

“Write in order to think, rather than thinking in order to write.”

Here’s how you do free-writing, a process first popularized by Peter Elbow, the author of Writing Without Teachers:

Sit down to write for ten minutes (on the computer, or by hand–I recommend you start writing by hand, because it produces a different process than the computer does) in a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted.  Begin by writing whatever comes to mind–don’t sit and obsess with an empty word balloon over your head, don’t decide on a topic–just write.  Don’t worry if it’s garbage; garbage is good at this stage.  You don’t need to write complete sentences, or spell correctly, or stay on the same subject.  You can write in whatever language suits you best at the moment; you can include profanities, because NO ONE BUT YOU WILL SEE WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN.  Just keep going, don’t stop, follow the pen, don’t direct it (I know this may sound a bit like ouija board material, but there’s a method to this madness).

If you find you have nothing to say, just write, “I have nothing to say,” over and over, until something else comes to you (it might be, “Why am I doing this weird thing?”)  I’ve never known anyone to be at a loss for other words after s/he’s written “I have nothing to say” a few times.  At the end of 10 minutes, stop writing.  Then write “Process note” after what you’ve already written and jot down a word, or a few, or a few sentences that describe how this exercise felt to you.  And you’re done–for now.

One of the questions you might want to consider for the process note is whether you know anything at the end of the writing that you didn’t know when you began.  It’s fine if you don’t.  But if you continue doing these ten minute free-writings the odds are excellent that you’ll have such an experience.)  And this will, in turn, lead you to more productive writing.

The next posting will show you how to focus freewriting, but before I end this one I want to mention a caveat: if you give yourself ten minutes every day for this sort of writing, you may become addicted…

joan  AT joanbolker DOT net

I look forward to hearing from you.

Joan Bolker