Greg Barnhill, Consultant
Are you a binge writer? I am. I’ve been a binge writer all of graduate school. That writing strategy, while manageable for a seminar paper perhaps, can only take you so far, as I’ve found out with my dissertation. A dissertation or thesis is professional writing, no matter what field you’re in. It’s your way of showing your professional credentials. And how do professionals go about their work? Well, that’s what Paul Silvia’s How to Write a Lot will tell you.
The thesis of Silvia’s book is quite simple, and everything revolves around it: “Prolific writers make a schedule and stick to it” (p. 12). “Don’t quit before you start—making a schedule is the secret to productive writing” (p. 15). “Successful professional writers, regardless of whether they’re writing novels, nonfiction, poetry, or drama, are prolific because they write regularly, usually every day” (p. 27). Everything that follows in Silvia’s book comes as motivation for and reflection upon the writing that a writer has scheduled, since she is a professional writer and approaches writing like a job.
But wait—graduate students are not professional writers, are they? Think again! The writing you do as a graduate student is part of your career, whether a prelude to future research or a teaching career (or an alt-ac career), or even the starting point for professional contributions within specific professional organizations and journals. If you are a graduate student, then you are already a professional writer of a specific sort. Becoming a successful and prolific writer in your professional field, according to Silvia, involves adopting this point of view and allowing it to change your outlook on writing.
Practical Tips
Silvia provides (at least) two helpful discussions for all writers. First, he dismantles common “specious barriers” to writing that will keep one from actually doing it. Second, he offers several practical motivational tools that are oriented toward the main goal of making a schedule and sticking to it. Whatever one does, one must never give up on keeping a writing schedule, no matter how good things are going. “Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette” (pp. 44–45). Silvia’s suggestions in the first few chapters are immensely practical, so much so that I found myself instantly jotting down how I could work the exact plan that he lays out for his readers to follow. A few highlights:
- Ruthlessly protect your writing time: no meetings, no email, no news, no phone. Do not schedule over your writing time.
- Create a concrete goal for each writing time, usually during the first few moments of your scheduled writing time.
- Create a spreadsheet to monitor your writing progress, which has various motivational benefits if you stick to your schedule.
- Create a list of your writing projects and prioritize which ones you should tackle first. This helps to not feel overwhelmed. Silvia makes suggestions about how to prioritize.
While the latter half of the book may be most helpful for others within the discipline of Psychology in particular, it is nevertheless worth reading by all academic writers for insights into Style, Writing Journal Articles, and Writing Books (Chapters Five, Six, and Seven). Silvia has a word of encouragement for those trying to get published: “Researchers who publish a lot of articles receive a lot of rejections” (p. 99). In Silvia’s view, it simply comes with the territory of voluminous output. (Since you’ve been writing every day, right?)
So, with summer underway and, most likely, a different sort of schedule ahead in the coming months, will you follow Silvia’s advice and make a writing schedule? When and where will you write? What rituals can you create to get you to that time and place and keep you writing every day? How will you track it? How will you reward yourself for sticking to it? Rewards should come not only for obvious milestones (a conference or article acceptances, perhaps) but simply for doing the job itself consistently. Writing is indeed difficult, but Silvia suggests taking an honest look at how you are setting yourself up to succeed or fail at it. The most valuable contribution of Silvia’s book is the way it leads to greater self-reflection on how I might move past my own binge writing to become a pro writer.