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By Jonathan Kanary, Consultant

Review of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is not an academic, nor is her book intended for an academic audience. She has taught a lot of writing workshops, but mostly she assumes that her readers are writing stories. So why should you, a busy grad student, consider reading her book—or at least a blog post about it? Four reasons:

1. Lamott is a really good writer, and Bird by Bird is enjoyable to read. (Remember reading for pleasure?)
2. She’s also really funny.
3. She tells us that this book includes everything she knows about writing. It’s her writing workshop between paperback covers. Some of that wisdom is helpful for grad student types, as well. (And if you’re secretly writing a novel, or maybe a memoir or movie script, there’s a goldmine of good advice here for you.)
4. Note the subtitle: she’s also offering instructions on life. Frequently her insights about writing spill over into wry and sometimes painful (but still funny) observations about what it’s like to be human, and how bad we are at it, and how we might come to grips with that reality and learn to accept the kind of person we actually are. Do I even need to say that this is also relevant for grad students?

However, since you’re busy and may not have time to read the whole book, this post will synthesize some highlights.

The most directly relevant material shows up in the first three chapters. Here Lamott offers three simple but extremely important suggestions.

First: find consistency. “‘But how?’ my students ask. ‘How do you actually do it?’ You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at the same time every day… you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so.” Distractions come: interior voices, external interruptions, neck-pain. “Yet somehow in the face of all this, you clear a space for the writing voice… and you begin to compose sentences” (6-7). You write by showing up every day and putting some words together.

But you also break the work down into short assignments. “[A]ll I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame” (17), Lamott says. She keeps an actual one-inch frame on her desk as a reminder. For those of us overwhelmed by a seminar paper or a dissertation chapter, sometimes the answer is to break it down into very small pieces.

Third, write shitty first drafts. (My friend who uses this chapter in her freshman writing classes abbreviates to “SFDs.”) If you’re like me, you want to sit down and compose something beautiful—and publication-worthy—on the first try. But Lamott says real writing isn’t like this. The disastrous first draft is how we get to a better second draft, and maybe a third draft that’s actually good.

Part of her point is that “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it” (22). I almost always have to go back and revise my thesis statement after I draft a paper, because then I finally know what I’m arguing. But professional writers like Lamott do the same sort of thing: “Everyone I know flails around, kvetching and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work” (85). If you’re an academic, just swap in the word “argument” for “plot.” Of course you want to get it right the first time. But remember: “perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor” (28, 93).

Writing is hard, Lamott thinks, and so is being human, and sometimes those two hard things collide. She has plenty to say about real-life challenges: the distractions, the efforts that don’t work and get rewritten and still don’t work, the sense of inadequacy. There’s a whole chapter titled “Jealousy.” Grad students I know talk about impostor syndrome, the belief that somehow I’ve ended up here amongst all these smart people and someday they’ll realize I don’t belong and throw me out again. But we don’t talk as much about the flip side, jealousy: the feeling that so-and-so from your department is winning success after success, when his scholarship honestly isn’t as good as yours. Both forms of self-comparison can be deadly. Lamott thinks that sometimes you have to step away from those people, so you can actually do your own work.

But you need other people, too. Seeking feedback is risky, and potentially painful: Lamott says that any time someone gives her a lot of suggestions, her initial response is, “Well. I’m sorry, but I can’t be friends with you anymore” (166). But she believes that every writer needs someone who cares enough about her and her work to tell the truth about it, and offer honest help. She strongly recommends writing groups. Or you can ask a friend. Or—shameless plug—send a draft to the Graduate Writing Center.

The truth is, we all struggle with writing. Anne Lamott does too, and her honesty about the struggle may be the most helpful thing about her book. But Bird by Bird is also a constant reminder that we don’t have to struggle alone.

By Ed Eschler, Consultant

As I sit to write this, I am suddenly very aware of the expected format of the book review: an initial paragraph where John Warner is introduced as an award winning author and professor at Charleston College; a paragraph or two discussing his exploration of writing education, his personal writing philosophy, and his pedagogical advice; and finally a conclusion where I discuss that, while his primary audience is educators and policymakers, this is a book worth the time of anyone serious about understanding the gap between what we are taught about writing and the actual practice of writing. Do I follow that format because it helps me convey an idea I feel is important to express, or am I mimicking what I have been told good writing looks like instead of actually writing something good?

This dilemma is the core of Why They Can’t Write. Warner’s stated answer to the book’s title is “They’re doing what we’ve trained them to do: that’s the problem.” Parts one and two are expansions of this statement, a detailed historical dissection of writing education and assessment. The educational system in the United States has become more and more reliant on standardized testing, making it the key metric by which student writing is evaluated. Unfortunately, the need for efficient grading has made us reward writing that fits easily evaluated forms instead of writing that communicates. We have fallen victim to Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making . . . the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is meant to monitor.” Teaching students how to twist their writing into a five-paragraph essay instead of how to choose the best structure to meaningfully convey an idea is a symptom of this disease.

Sections three and four are where Warner proposes and supports his solution. Part of the problem with how we train students to write is reliance on “folklore” about how writing instruction should be done. He argues against popular wisdom, like focusing on grammar or prioritizing grit over informed decision making (a point he exemplifies with Will Smith’s determination to make After Earth). He advocates writing instruction that emphasizes writing as a social act. Collating a body of evidence from education scholars, he shows that when writing instruction focuses on meaningful communication and students are given the freedom to make choices—and mistakes—they demonstrate a growth not shown in those who pour “academic” words like plethora or myriad into tightly structured forms in pursuit of an A. He also shows how many desirable traits like grammatical proficiency and research skills tend to sort themselves out if the emphasis of instruction is on that social act.

The book is written to several groups. Writing instructors are probably the best served, with extensive discussions of pedagogy and example assignments he personally uses to promote the ideas the book covers. Policy makers and educational administrators might feel chastised at points, but there is ample evidence to support Warner’s critiques and so they would be wise to listen. More relevant to our discussion is the final audience, writers. Should we as graduate writers read Why They Can’t Write?

I think it depends on where you are personally on your writing journey. If you are just returning to graduate school and haven’t done much writing since your undergrad, the first half of this book will introduce you to the difference in the sort of assessment-focused writing you may have the most experience with and the idea/communication-focused writing you will be expected to do in graduate school. In that way the book is almost therapy, helping you to understand where certain bad habits might come from and forming a foundation you can built future good habits upon. The book is also worthwhile for writers who enjoy reading books about writing and expanding their general philosophy about the nature of writing itself.

Who it is less useful for is a practiced writer who is looking for concrete advice. If you have done any amount of quality professional or graduate-level writing, odds are you have already learned the lessons this book teaches. The history and philosophy are well-written and interesting, but not necessary to improve your writing. You’ll be better served by one of the other books we recommend on this blog.

Why They Can’t Write is not the sort of book we normally discuss here. It does not primarily speak to writers, which tends to be our focus. However, the ideas it presents about the writing process are important for graduate students who want to be successful writers to understand, even if you will never teach a writing course or form education policy. If you already understand those ideas, then you can pass this book by. But if you’re not sure why you can’t write, John Warner has a few ideas he’d like to communicate.

By Greg Barnhill, Consultant

You need to read this book. Cal Newport, an academic and accomplished author, breaks down why we find “being productive” so difficult and, more importantly, what we can do about it.

In 287 well-researched pages, Newport explains both what is “Deep Work” and how to go about doing as much of it as humanly possible, while documenting the dangers and threats to this vision at every turn. If anything, Newport’s book is a perceptive meditation on the difficulty of doing one’s best work and how to overcome that difficulty. For graduate students—and Newport knows personally the unique struggles of academia—this book offers a vision for setting patterns and rituals that will lead to consistent contributions to one’s field.

What is “Deep Work” & Why Should We Care?

Newport defines “Deep Work” as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate” (3). The goal is “to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity” (3). In Part One he explores why deep work is worthwhile: it is economically valuable and advantageous, leading to economic security; the alternative, shallow work, does not lead to economic security; and deep work is more fulfilling, not only economically but on a personal level. Readers might quibble with defining value so often in economic terms in Chapters One and Two (although as graduate students your end goal is to get a job!), but through personal anecdotes and a philosophical argument for depth, Newport does show that “to build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction” (86).

“Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.”

I must admit that I had two reservations before reading this book, and Newport has proven me wrong about both. First, I expected the book’s argument to be built upon personal stories that motivated me to dig deep within myself and simply work harder. I did not want to hear another message like that. Instead, Newport offers an incredibly well-researched perspective—a major strength of the book. When he makes a surprising claim, such as “embrace boredom,” he quickly shifts to studies and other relevant data to support his proposals and rarely resorts to opinion.

Second, I expected to find elements of a moral treatise that takes a stance against the world of distraction and its effects upon our ability to work productively. Newport, however, has no interest in the debate about whether tech is the future or our downfall as a society. For him, the commitment to deep work “is instead a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done” (258). Part Two of the book—called “The Rules”—follows this pragmatic approach and outlines in four chapters how to enact the vision of deep work.

Grad School Takeaways

Since Newport is an academic (an assistant professor of computer science), much of what he envisions applies naturally to the academic context. Here are some takeaways that might prove immediately applicable to the context of being a graduate student and particularly to the task of writing.

Attention Residue Effect: Interruptions and obligations lead to “attention residue” when one is working on a large project such as writing a paper. Newport recommends minimizing this attention residue and maximizing performance on one task at a time. By planning high-intensity, focused, and distraction-free work (i.e., deep work), one can avoid the negative effect of task-switching.

Take Control of Your Time: You only have so much willpower, so set a schedule for yourself that ritualizes deep work. Where will you work and for how long? And how will you support your work? (Think: coffee, snacks, etc.) Making these decisions ahead of time allows one to focus on the deep work itself.

Daily Shutdown: Newport recommends deciding when you will stop working and sticking to it. Studies show that one cannot perform deep work for more than four or so hours a day, and that downtime improves the performance of the bursts of high-intensity deep work that should characterize our days. So, make a ritual that helps you to shut down your work for the day. Paradoxically, not working can make your deep work more productive.

Quit Social Media: Newport really does say that! But he doesn’t mean what you think he means. Leaving aside the research that he cites about the negative effects of social media on intellectual capabilities, Newport intends for his readers to reflect on whether social media leads them to their career goals. In his view, such an exercise will show one how to free up time and mental resources for deep work; “Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking” (252). Think about your time and commitments in terms of tools—what will most effectively help you accomplish your goals? Newport’s advice is radical: drop everything except the most essential!

Newport’s book offers much more, but most importantly it fundamentally reframes the question about work and time. Everyone has the same amount of time. Newport argues that your best work will come when you tend to the quality of your work and the focus with which you go about doing it.