Dear Annie: I’m jealous of others who can write

Disclaimers

First, I don’t usually like to talk about my personal stuff, particularly in written work, where one must sound smart, sophisticated and totally put together. But, this was an instance where I thought opening up about my struggles with writing and my (partial) solutions might help others. There is no deep wisdom in what follows (is there ever, in any of my posts?), but I still hope it helps someone.

Second, because the message is so intertwined with my own experience, it was difficult to present it as a logical argument and the post is a bit of a ramble. At least, that’s my excuse this time.

Finally, as someone once told me, free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. So, reader beware.

The challenge

I had a terrible time getting myself to write (journal papers, not term papers) when I was in graduate school.¹ I don’t think it was a case of impostor syndrome back then, but more a case of just not wanting to write. I loved reading articles, I loved research and coming up with arguments, I even liked (not loved) creating handouts for talks, but I couldn’t get myself to sit down and write — I have often tried to understand why that was the case, and most of the time I just shrug and say writing just wasn’t fun.

Towards the end of graduate school, I had submitted a couple of manuscripts to journals. When I got back reviews, one was a sort of revise and resubmit from Language and the other was a reject from the Journal of the IPA. One of the reviews for the latter manuscript was rough — the reviewer seemed to attack me personally. I never read the review after the first time, so I can’t quote exactly what was said ², but it was something to the effect of “this is clearly graduate level work, and not even good graduate level work. A definite reject”. Words like “embarrassing” also made a regular appearance, I think. That review affected me deeply. It affected my confidence to the point that I never resubmitted the Language paper, and had a massive 4-5 year gap in my publication record straight out of graduate school.³ Those of you in the business know that is as close to a death knell as there is if you want a tenure track job.⁴ The review shot my confidence, and suddenly out of graduate school, I was struggling with, what I think was, impostor syndrome. Here, I was teaching students to do research and write papers, while I myself was struggling with massive impostor syndrome and an inability to write (though, I was still doing research).

It took me many years to understand that success in academia is not just about having fun, but is about being “professional”, which I take to mean doing things that you don’t want to because they need to be done.

I am a huge tennis fan. So, bear with the tennis references. As I have grown older, I have paid closer attention to what tennis players I admire (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Alcaraz, …) actually say about their own work/experiences. Only rarely do professional sportpeople talk about the challenges they have to overcome on a daily basis. But, it is worth paying attention to, when they do open up. Tennis players are always injured — broken fingers, terrible blisters on their toes, a damaged elbow or knee… — but they play through the injuries because they are professionals. A related sentence that really hit me on the head was when Federer said in an interview “I even like playing tennis for fun” — there was an implicature there that was surprising, that many other professional players didn’t have that same feeling; that instead they were playing as professionals, and not (just) because it was fun. On top of that, many of them suffer from deep impostor syndrome. Finally, they too worry about squandered opportunities (to break in a game, to train better, …), and they too worry about never again having that shot they once had at winning a game, match, tournament. Even Federer, Nadal, Djokovic,… They are after all human, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Somehow, they don’t let their injuries or impostor syndrome or fear stop them from trying or continuing.⁵ Of course, they have to get awfully lucky; many of them have an incredible support network; and, for each one that succeeds, there are many more who don’t, though they do exactly the same things. So, there is definitely a survivorship bias in what I am talking about. However, it seems to me that getting up everyday and doing things you don’t want to, because you must, is a skill that is necessary (not sufficient) to achieve bigger goals in your life. That in a nutshell is what I am trying to express here, when I say “professionalism”.

Related to this idea of professionalism, it took a long time for me to learn the obvious — if I want to be in the business of academia (at least, the research end of things), I have to write, no matter what my challenges are, and no matter how un-fun it is.

The…umm…solution?

Often, in the past, I have given students boring/unhelpful advice when they were facing writer’s block: “it is easier to edit than write, so start writing stuff and you can always edit it later”. This is the advice I myself had read online and in books about writing.⁶ But, I just realised yesterday (hence the post) that that is simply not how I myself work. Yes, editing is easier than writing, but that doesn’t help me get started.

In fact, I took a few weeks off from research and just planned to get back to work this Monday. I was hoping to work on some revisions and start on a new paper. But, by Monday morning, there was that familiar friend “Mr. Dread”, and I felt like I couldn’t write. I read a paper, read the news, read another paper, and read the news again, and I realised what I was doing…not writing. And then, I did something that helped: I said “what if I worked for 15 minutes, and that’s it?” Let me do the dumbest thing to get started on the paper, and before I knew it I had worked for 30 minutes, and then I stopped. I came back today still reluctant to write, but I set myself a very small goal, and ended up writing for 1.5 hours. I suddenly reaslised that this is what I had really been doing the last few years when I had to start a new writing project after a break. Start very small, make sure to stop quickly the first few days, and then build on that. No single day results in a lot of writing (at least not usually past 2 hours), but the writing accumulates. Most importantly, you are greasing the groove, so the resistance to action decreases.

The challenge with getting started was two-fold at least for me. First, when I did write early on, I wrote in very, very long stints — this is actually terrible. If you want to come back the next day to do the same thing again, you need to be hungry for it. Stopping when you still really want to continue, makes you want to come back the next day. Second, when I haven’t written for many days, the desire to finish a lot of work is strong, so I used to plan to write a lot — mistake! When you have a lot you want to achieve and think about it, you can get the yips. Tennis players often talk about just thinking of winning the next point (not winning the game, not winning the set, and definitely not winning the match) — this makes the task less daunting. Incidentally, when they do think about winning the match or tournament, it puts a lot of pressure on them, and they often end up dropping a game or a set (at least, that’s what comes out in interviews).

To summarise, the small changes that really worked for me were the following.

First, when you start, start with baby steps. Have a narrow goal to write for 10-15 minutes in a day. Don’t think about the whole project, just focus on getting the 10-15 minutes done. Yes, you might have a lot to finish, and perhaps, you are behind already, but 15 minutes is still better than 0 minutes. Maybe, it will take a few days to get past 15 minutes, but that is all time that you are spending writing that you weren’t before, so you are making progress.

Second, stop while you are still really want to continue writing, not when you are exhausted. That lets you come back the next day. Working 20 hours straight is useless if you can’t rinse and repeat the same for the next however many days (or years!). If you can write for 20 hours straight day-in and day-out, then great, but I am not sure why you wasted your time reading this garbage then??!!

There’s hope!

Incidentally, I have grown to enjoy writing. It helps me think and understand my own arguments better. There’s something about putting pen to paper that helps clarify ideas in my head. In fact, I have caught bad arguments many times only after writing them down. The act of writing for an audience and thinking of your work from the perspective of a reader really creates some distance from your own thoughts that is absolutely helpful (at least in my case) for catching poor arguments. So, yeah, it is intellectually rewarding, and I do enjoy it, but the first few days of a new project are still a slog.

That’s all I got…hope it helps (someone)!

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1. Heck, it is difficult even now!↩︎

2. I do have a copy of the review still, but I just don’t want to open it.↩︎

3. You are welcome to call me “weak”, and I wouldn’t be offended.↩︎

4. How I overcame that is not a story of heroism or grit, but one of fantastic luck — the right support, the right sequence of events, and the right head space all of a sudden (inexplicably). Perhaps, I will talk about that another day.↩︎

5. There are obviously limits to what challenges one can push past.↩︎

6. See here, for suggestions about books on writing.↩︎