Book Review: Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life by Bonnie Friedman

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

Bonnie Friedman is a novelist. From the very first pages of this book, it’s apparent she has spent countless hours living in this creative headspace. Her descriptions bloom into metaphors, and those metaphors are rife with brilliant, complicated allegorical truths of writers and the difficulty of writing. It’s all very literary, if you please.

But what Bonnie speaks to with utmost clarity is that writing is nuanced. It is hard. It can make you question your sanity not only as a professional but as a human being. Through this book, Bonnie anchors these challenges in a way that makes you feel connected with all writers, no matter their proficiency or discipline. That we are not alone in this process.

Here are the main takeaways from this text:

First: Writing is terrifying, even to those who love it. In my undergraduate (and even graduate) coursework, writing was a task I studiously avoided at all costs. I felt that because I was not one of the blessed (i.e., an English major), I was not qualified or gifted enough to write with any authority. Bonnie takes this twisted, albeit common mentality and slaps it out of the air. “We are afraid of writing, even those who love it. And there are parts of it we hate. The necessary mess, the loss of control, its ability to betray us, as well as the possibility that what we write may be lousy, it might just stink…” (pg. 15). In this, Bonnie assures all who come to the altar of writing that each of us will face barriers and challenges. The fact that we hate parts of the process does not make us any less of a writer or devalue our work.

Second: Accolades and theoretical frameworks count for nothing in the face of a writing deadline. Writing doesn’t care how many post-nominal letters follow after your name. Writing doesn’t care how many classes you’ve taught as a TA. Writing doesn’t care how brilliant your theoretical framework is and how it perfectly situates your research questions within your qualitative study. It is the Great Equalizer. “Phi Beta Kappa counted for nothing here. One of the finest writers was a shaggy man without college who said he slept in a tent pitched in his living room… He spoke his stories into a tape and he paid a secretary to type them” (p. 51).

Third: More words do not equal a better manuscript. This is a particularly hard pill to swallow. When you finally dip your toe into the writing waters and are surrounded by more experienced, bigger fish, all you hear are “writing sprints”, “word count checks”, or “hitting your daily word goals”. It seems obvious that better writing is synonymous with more words. False, cries Bonnie, who also fell prey to this addictive mindset: “I wrote the same thing over and over because I didn’t trust it had communicated. And I thought, the more words the better. People read because they enjoy reading. Wouldn’t they enjoy reading more words?” (pg. 50). This hits at the crux of the issue: trusting in yourself as a communicator and trusting that your words do the job justice.

At times, this book can be difficult to get through as an academic. While Bonnie’s writing is beautiful and fragile and lyrical, this is not the traditional academic way. After all, aren’t we expected to present our writing with a prodigious level of conciseness, wrapped with a bow of footnotes, in-text citations, and proper indentations? Get to the point. What is the problem? Who is your audience? Too much fluff here. Take these four sentences and say them with one.

However, Bonnie would encourage you to step outside your academic context and see writing for what it truly is: the effort of humanity to communicate with one another despite fear, envy, or doubt. Embrace the imperfections, and let go of the all-consuming inner narrative that tells you you’re not good enough.

Happy writing, dear readers.

Writing the Literature Review: The QuiltWork Method

Photo by Dinh Pham on Unsplash

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

It is highly unusual to meet someone in academia, be it a student or professor, who genuinely enjoys the prospect of writing a literature review. Thesis, dissertation, journal article, program assessment – the medium matters not. The quintessential literature review has a singular way of unifying individuals across all disciplines and all levels of research. Someone whispers its name into the bleak unknown. All hold their breath in response, hoping it will pass over their doorstep like an academic Angel of Death.

Despite your feelings on the subject, all graduate students must write an exhaustive, cohesive literature review at some point in their academic careers. While daunting, this task need not be completed at the expense of blood, sweat, and tears. Finding an effective writing method can easily reduce your writing workload (and subsequent anxiety) from an Everest into a molehill. Or several molehills, in this case.

 

Enter the QuiltWork Writing Method.

The QuiltWork Method was born as an act of desperation while deep in the throes of writing my first dissertation draft. With deadlines looming and candidacy standing in the shadows of the doctoral guillotine, I knew that a linear approach to writing my literature review wouldn’t get me there fast enough. My topics were too broad, my sources too interdisciplinary – I found myself missing key points in articles that had already been “assigned” to other sections of my review. I was trying to create a blanket with one fell swoop, by synthesizing all of the scholarship of my topic at once. And it wasn’t working. I needed to instead step back and approach the literature review the same way my grandmother approached her sewing projects: one square bit of fabric at a time.

So I stopped. I saved my work. And started from scratch. Here was what I tried instead:

Step One: Write an Outline. It doesn’t matter if you rewrite this ten times over. Get an outline on the page. What are the main sections of your literature review? Are you following a narrative model (broad to narrow topics) or a systematic model (individual topics that together form a cohesive argument for your study)? Start there. Every project, no matter how small or large, needs a vision (or a Pinterest board).

Step Two: Prepare your Word Documents. Open a series of blank Word or Google documents. The number you open should match the number of literature review sections you outlined in Step One. If you are working on a small laptop, you may also consider keeping them minimized until needed to maximize screen efficiency. Do not include your Introduction or Conclusion, since these will be written once you’ve completed your Literature Review.

Step Three: One Source at a Time. Unlike a traditional linear writing process, you are no longer trying to spin paragraphs out of thin air. With QuiltWork writing, you go through each source one by one and read for key points and quotes. As you come across these points in your reading, open up the word doc that represents that literature review section and write. How is this relevant to your study? What does this remind you of? Do you need this quote? Be sure to include the full citation at the top of the blurb before you begin, and place in-text citations throughout. This will alleviate many headaches later when you patch these quilting squares together.

***Note for Step Three: If Source #1 has a point that works for Section A and Section D, place it in both! Isn’t the purpose of a literature review to provide an exhaustive, synthesized perspective of the existing scholarship? This method encourages this idea of scholarly flexibility, acknowledging that one source can be used in many different ways if given the right lens. Many times, I found that one source possessed data that could be applied to nearly every section in my literature review!

Step Four: Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Continue to repeat Step Three with every source you have. That’s right – every single one. Eventually, you’ll begin to make connections. Your documents might take on a note of free flow synthesis without you even realizing it.

Step Five: The Inquiry. Once you have worked through a large portion of your sources, I would recommend going back through each document and asking these questions: Which ones are filled to the brim with pages and pages of content? Which ones are still lagging behind? Do you need to shift your focus and feed the smaller ones with new sources? How many quotes have you found for each section? Do you need more? Less? Have you included citations for all of your work? Go back and check each one before moving on. These questions will guide you as you begin to refine your sections into veritable reservoirs of empirical evidence to support your study.

Step Six: The Great Gathering. You now should have 3-5 documents filled with quality content. At this point, you may see themes emerge in these documents. Identify the themes and work to craft stellar topic sentences out of them. These topic sentences are the seams that will bind the writing you’ve already accomplished.

 

At this point, you will find yourself edging closer and closer to writing a traditional paragraph. After you’ve completed Step Six, take the leap! You now have a clear idea of what you want to say in each section, which sources are key contenders in these debates, and how you plan to synthesize these works across the various sections of your literature review. You may now commence with sewing your quilting squares together to form the Great Blanket.

I do not profess to be a great seamstress, nor do I consider myself a great writer. But this small writing hack, created out of desperation and fear, allowed my brain to finally put words on the page. And as many of you know, getting words on the page is perhaps the biggest challenge of all.

You can do this. You can write this. How do we quilt a blanket? One square at a time.

Happy writing to you all!

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Set Yourself Up for Successful Writing Habits

By Jasmine Stovall, Consultant

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

More often than not, the hardest part about writing is not necessarily the writing itself, but rather the act of simply getting started. Typing just one sentence, one bullet point, or even one word on that blank Word document can break the procrastination barrier and open the flood gates of productivity. Second to starting, is finding the time to start and consistently making the time to continue as the semester picks up. One way to combat the hurdles of getting started and keeping going is to start early. Here are five things you can do right now to set yourself up for successful writing habits:

 

1. Figure out your writing style: One of the best ways to figure out your preferred writing style and environment preferences is to spend time writing and getting to know yourself as a writer. Experiment with writing alone, writing with a friend, or even a group of friends, in informal and formal settings, like a departmental writing group. Also, try writing in different environments (e.g., at home or a coffee shop) as well as during different times of the day. This will allow you to get a better understanding of your likes and dislikes. You can then use this information to set up a schedule and create an environment that will allow you to be the most productive.

2. Assess your schedule to get an idea of when and how writing will fit into your routine: Before the semester begins and your Outlook calendar fills up with meetings, seminars, teaching and other outside of class/research obligations in what seems like the blink of an eye, spend some time assessing your schedule to determine where you can schedule in writing time at your ideal duration and frequency. Then, write it in and set it in stone. Set expectations for yourself (and your writing partners, if applicable) and be protective of your writing time. If you do not take it upon yourself to prioritize scheduling writing early on and treat it like a class or any other non-negotiable obligation, it will likely fall by the wayside and never get the time that it deserves or the time you desire to devote to it. Before you know it, you will be halfway through the semester with no real, consistent writing routine and finding yourself looking for ways to fit writing in when it is convenient rather than making it a staple in your weekly schedule to help hold yourself accountable. This is especially important if you plan on writing solo.

3. Establish short-term and long-term goals: One of the most valuable pieces of advice I have ever received regarding large projects, or just feeling overwhelmed with tasks in general, is to think of the project as a big picture and divide your tasks into puzzle pieces of said picture. In other words, breaking larger things down into smaller, more manageable tasks put together over time will allow you to work on parts that will ultimately create a whole and hopefully reduce the feeling of overwhelm in the process. I am a firm believer that the same concept rings true for writing, especially for longer documents such as theses, dissertations, and research proposals. For some, breaking down the big picture writing assignment into puzzle pieces can look like planning ahead. Remember, write your purpose in pen and your plan in pencil. Life happens, so allow yourself to be flexible, but never lose sight of the goal. For others, puzzle pieces make look like setting milestone deadlines with themselves and/or their advisor to keep them on track, hold them accountable and ensure steady progress. This can help make the big picture seem less daunting if you are submitting small parts of a whole at regular intervals. Depending on the nature of your project, these deadlines may be weeks, months, or even semesters in advance. Finally, puzzle pieces may look like breaking down a document by chapter, or even by writing stage. For example, planning to have chapter one submitted by this date, or have a brainstorming session by this date followed by a rough outline by this date, and so on. Regardless of what the puzzle pieces look like for you, the key to successfully assembling your puzzle lies in goal setting. So, set a deadline (long-term goal) then work backwards by setting your milestone deadlines (short-term goals) to keep you on the trajectory of reaching the long-term goal within your desired timeframe.

4. Make a list of resources: Having a resource list handy in times of high stress writing can make all the difference. We often do not realize how many resources we have available to us as graduate students and waiting until you are in dire need typically is not the most conducive time to start looking. Being proactive in seeking out what is available to you beforehand, even if you do not need the services in that moment, will make for a smoother, more expedited process should a problem arise. This way, if/when you do find yourself in need of assistance, you already know where to look. Your resource list can consist of writing resources such as the GWC, or otherwise (e.g., Baylor Counseling Center, OALA, GRC, Career Services, etc). There are several factors that contribute to successful, productive writing, which can vary between individuals. Taking some time at the beginning of the semester to personalize your resource list will allow you the best chances of showing up to the computer as your best self to produce your best work.

5. Find (and use!) a citation manager: Graduate students and faculty alike make the claim that citation managers are a game changer, but it was something that I didn’t come to truly believe until I tried one myself. Trust me, to say that it is a game changer is an understatement. Experimenting and familiarizing yourself with a citation manager early in the semester will ease one of the many, if not the biggest, potential headaches of writing, especially when it comes to documents such as literature reviews. There are several options for citation managers, such as Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote and Citation Machine, to name a few. The options exist and they all serve the same purpose, so your only responsibility is to find one that suits you best based on your preferences and project goals. It is important to note that Baylor and/or your department do support memberships for many of these services and provide how-to workshops for beginners as well as those just needing a refresher. These workshops would make a great addition your resource list from tip #4. For more information on using citation managers, click here. Also keep a look out for upcoming GWC Zotero workshops!

 

Writing is not a task that comes easy to most. While the act of writing can be scary, sometimes even the thought of getting started can be even scarier. Hopefully, these five tips will be helpful in easing some of the anxieties surrounding writing and how to juggle it with the multitude of obligations we commit to throughout the semester as graduate students. The earlier in the semester you begin these things, the more ready you will feel to not only start writing but keep writing.