Why you should replace your writing routine with a writing toolbox
You’ll see lots of ‘how to write your dissertation’ and ‘how to establish a writing routine’ productivity tips out there, and they all tend to be about writing every day and doing writing sprints and being accountable and all that jazz. I have probably read all of these tips and tried to follow those routines myself. But what seems to happen is it works for a week, maybe, and then I spend the following week on the sofa thinking that I’ve used up all my words and they’ll never come back. This is a problem because my entire income is based on me either writing words or fixing words other people have written. I need the words to stay with me.
So when I was reading Gentle Writing Advice by Chuck Wendig and it gave me permission to replace a daily writing routine with a more flexible toolkit, I was delighted, because this made sense. See, academia for me turned writing from something I liked and was quite good at, into something I dreaded – this was one of the main reasons I decided not to pursue a traditional academic career. (That and I needed to take beta-blockers to overcome the anxiety of teaching which doesn’t make for a sustainable career). And now I think it might be because I was trying to follow a writing routine that wasn’t designed for me/many other humans.
Now, I can’t play games with a timer. Scattergories, Boggle, that last bit of Family Feud – they all make me too nervous. So why on earth I thought the Pomodoro technique and writing sprints would make me produce good work and be a happy writer, I don’t know. Admittedly, when the routine worked: great. But if it didn’t work at all – which is what happened most of time – I would feel lazy and guilty and like I’d broken my brain. Which is why the realisation that routines are individual both to you and to the project you’re working on was a game-changer for me.
This means that there is no one routine that works for everyone or for every project every time.
A ‘sit down and write as soon as you get up’ kind of routine that worked perfectly well to get your dissertation written might not work when it comes to working on a book or starting a brand new research project (particularly the case if children become part of your morning routine or if a new role brings additional service or teaching responsibilities). And when a routine no longer feels productive or it makes you dread sitting down and writing, you need to dive into your writing toolbox and build a new routine.
By all means, keep the traditional tips for ‘productive’ writing in your toolbox – they can absolutely be useful sometimes. So yes, if you have a really tight deadline, you may have no choice but to sit down and write until a timer goes off. Maybe you will have a daily word target that you need to meet to deliver a piece of writing on time. Maybe the Pomodoro technique and SMART goal-setting and habit tracker and a schedule broken down hour-by-hour is what you need.
But this doesn’t have to be how you always write.
It’s not sustainable as far as writing practices go, and I can tell you from experience, it will suck the joy out of writing and paradoxically, can make writing harder. Aside from the productivity-go-write-write-write tools, we also want stuff in our toolbox that makes the writing process not shit.
With this in mind, let me share my favourite tools (for now at least...) from my academic writing toolbox with you:
Notebooks that I like writing in and pens I like writing with. I have three on the go at the moment: one is a sort of schedule/bullet journal type thing, one is an everyday ‘take notes on a phone call’ notebook and the third is a kind of first draft of things I’m writing/brain dump/ideas notebook.
Washi tape, stickers and stamps. These are recent additions to my toolbox thanks to a very inspiring writer/teacher Susannah Conway. They are the answer to the questions: ‘How can I take the pressure off writing?’ and ‘How can I make the process more joyful?’.
Shifting your writing environment. Now this one crops up a lot in the traditional productivity hacks – “go write in a café!”, that sort of thing. That’s not what I mean. Sometimes, my best idea-thinking/writing has taken place crouched awkwardly on the floor next to my toddler son’s bed willing him to go to sleep, holding his hand with my left hand and scribbling notes into a notebook with my right hand. Or lying on the sofa with my laptop balanced on my stomach with the telly on in the background – which, incidentally, is how Roxane Gay, the prolific author and professor writes. (When I heard her say that at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, I tell you, I have never felt so vindicated in my life). Or take a notebook to the beach and do some musing. One of the absolute benefits and privileges of academic life is that you have a fair degree of flexibility in how and where you do your writing. Make the most of it.
Journalling. This is another new addition to my writing toolkit, but it’s made me wish I’d kept a research journal during my PhD. When I get stuck or feel funny about a piece of writing or a direction I’m thinking of going in, I write about that instead of just trying to push through the feelings. Is there something about a piece of data that is particularly intriguing? Or perhaps there was a weird dynamic in a research encounter that you can’t quite put your finger on. Perhaps you’re nervous about how a particular argument might be received. Or the thesis statement that you’re trying to get together remains elusive. Write about them. Just for you. Give yourself space to figure the weird stuff out in writing, to express your fears about the response to a particular publication, to ‘write around’ the thesis statement until it starts to come together. Sometimes, your research doesn’t need you to write it so much as it needs you to write (or talk) about it. Journalling is one of the ways I like to do that. And you wouldn’t believe how many interesting and potentially fruitful insights my brain offers up when we’re just quietly hanging out and musing over things together.
Go make soup. Now, you can take this one literally or metaphorically. I made a lot of soup during my PhD. I don’t even like soup, but chopping the vegetables and stirring them helped break my writing deadlocks. Now I use ‘go make soup’ more metaphorically because 1) I learned how to knit and crochet and 2) again, I don’t like soup. When I say ‘go make soup’, I use it as shorthand for ‘go do something that occupies your hands and your brain just enough to feel productive while leaving enough space for your brain to work through whatever the writing hold-up is’. (You can see why ‘go make soup’ is catchier.) Do a puzzle. Colour something in. Do some gardening. Doodle. Learn how to make pottery. Knit. Tidy out your bathroom cabinet. Follow along with Islamic geometry videos (my personal favourite of the moment – I’ve been taking some of the online courses through the School of Traditional Arts and constantly fantasise about doing their MA programme…). Whatever it is, it just needs to keep you occupied enough and distracted enough for your brain to simmer away on what the actual problem is.
There will be things in my toolbox that horrify you and would never work for you. There will also be things missing in my toolbox that I’ll hopefully find and add in the years of writing I have before me. (This is one of the reasons why I love doing the (academic) writer so very much – I get to peek inside the toolboxes of people whose work I admire). There might be tools I use less and less (though I think I’ll keep them in there, just in case an occasion calls for one or another of them – there’s still plenty of space).
Your job is to build – and keep building – your writing toolbox, and be prepared to switch your tools in and out of your routine so that you keep writing, yes, but moreover so that you want to keep writing. I want you to want to keep writing. I do not want academia to steal your writing voice, The Little Mermaid-style. Your other job is to remember that, when the words aren’t coming, it’s not that they have run out or that you have broken the writing bit of your brain; it just means it’s time to try a different tool.