Anticipating Obstacles in Journal and Thesis Writing

(1) I really am too busy!

If you really are too busy to fit in fifteen minutes of writing a day, then this workbook cannot help you. I rec­ommend that you plan, in the very near future, a weekend away from it all where you can really think about your life. If taking this time off means you cannot meet some obligations, do it anyway. Serious thinking about the quality and direction of your life is in order.

(2) Teaching preparation takes up all my extra time.

A common complaint of graduate students (and faculty) is that teaching preparation takes up the time they had hoped to use for writing. Certainly, preparing for class can devour time, especially if you have rarely taught before and want to avoid appearing like an idiot in front of thirty under­graduates. There is always more preparation and reading you can do for any class. Teaching assistants in the humanities can easily spend a forty- hour workweek just on meeting with students and grading.

The best solution for this very real problem is to set limits on your preparation time. You should learn to do this if you plan a career in acade­mia since preparation will be an ongoing reality. Schedule your writing time before your teaching prep time. For instance, do not start to prepare for class until you have done half an hour of writing. That way, teaching preparation cannot spill over into your writing time. Now that you know that writing does not have to take hours and hours, and can be done daily, you should be able to fit writing in before other tasks.

Finally, if you are dedicated to being a good teacher, you should know that, among untenured faculty, having a commitment to your students cor­relates positively with higher rates of writing productivity (Sax, Hagedorn, Arredondo, Dicrisi 2002). Being well-rounded matters!

(3) I will write just as soon as (fill in the blank).

Many students explain to me that they will get to writing just as soon as some more important task is completed. This list is varied and fascinating; that is, as soon as the apartment is clean, my lecture notes are organized, exams are over, the divorce is final, my advisor comes back from sabbatical, my medication kicks in, and so on. Only you can tell if these situations really do demand a break from writing. I suggest to you, however, that if you have not been writing regularly, none of these is an adequate excuse for not writing fifteen minutes a day.

Oddly enough, the most common “important task” of this sort is clean­ing the house. Apparently, it is a common fact that many people simply cannot write if the house is dirty. My advice to you: Clean your house! In fact, if the way you get yourself in the writing mood is to spend fifteen minutes of cleaning before you spend fifteen minutes of writing, I’m all for it. Many of these same people feel that once they start cleaning they cannot stop, however. If so, I recommend that you reverse the order and do your fifteen minutes of writing first.

In other words, you don’t have to “clear the decks” before you can get started on a writing project. Writing seems to thrive on messy decks.

(4) I’m too depressed to write.

This is a very real problem and should not be underestimated. Depression among graduate students and faculty members is a common reason for underproductivity. Depres­sion is variously defined, but some causes are useful for academics to remember.

Depression is an emotional disorder usually triggered by environment. Some researchers believe that continuous stress over a long period tricks the brain into responding to all events as stressful, which in turn triggers depression. Since there may be no better description of graduate school than operating continu­ously in stress mode, it is not surprising that depression is such a common problem in academia. Although the trigger is environmental, the effect is chemical—an imbalance in the neurotransmitters called dopamine, norep­inephrine, and serotonin. Low levels of these natural brain chemicals pre­vent the nerve cells in the brain from transmitting signals normally. This slow down makes people feel that performing daily activities is like strug­gling to walk through mud.

The terrible curse of depression is that it impairs the very faculty you need to solve that problem. So, if you suspect that you are depressed, go to your campus clinic and ask for an appointment with a doctor. If you don’t have such access, e-mail a few people for references and make an appoint­ment with a doctor. This is the easiest step I know of to start moving beyond depression. The doctor can then refer you to a counselor, whose services are often provided free for graduate students, or can recommend an antidepressant. Taking any medication is a serious step, but antidepres­sants aren’t designed to make you feel euphoric or to take away your blue feelings. They are designed to help you get up in the morning and com­plete tasks. They are about escaping that feeling of moving through mud; they are not about escaping your life. The doctor may also recommend exercise, which has been found a good antidote to mild depression.

If you are depressed, I know how hard it can be to take the steps to take care of yourself, but you simply must. Your academic future and maybe your life depend on it.

(5) I’m going to make writing my number one goal in life.

This may seem counterintuitive, but focusing all your energy on writing will not result in more productivity. In fact, research shows that whatever goal you make your highest priority you most likely will not attain. That’s because “the most valued activity” always “carries demands for time and perfection that encourage its avoidance”.Writers who make writing a modest, realistic priority are more productive. Do not establish self-defeating writing goals that relegate everything else in your life to mere backdrop. Aiming for a forty-hour writing week will only make you feel guilty, not productive. Furthermore, the feeling that you should always be working will haunt every pleasurable moment. You do not resolve desires by suppressing them entirely. Make time to go to the beach, meet a friend for dinner, or play basketball. A well-balanced life—with time allotted for friends and family, games and sports, movies and light reading, as well as writing, research, and teaching—is the best ground for productive writing.

Making writing your last goal won’t work well either. In some cases, you may need to think long and hard about what your real goals are. You may need to work on seeing your number one goal as completing your dis­sertation, not perfecting it.

(6)   I couldn’t get to my writing site.

“Living in limbo” is the graduate student’s theme song. One is always standing in some line, stuck in some meeting, stranded in traffic, lingering for delayed public transportation, or sitting around until someone shows up for an appoint­ment. Whole days can be frittered away in waiting. If you find these times useful for planning your day or just relaxing, then all power to you. Most people, however, waste this time on feeling frustrated. It can be useful to carry a draft of your article everywhere. You can review the draft and make notes to yourself on improvements or do line editing. Many students I have worked with get their fifteen minutes a day done during these down times. There is nothing like doing two things at once to give you a mar­velous feeling of efficiency!

(7) I have to read just one more book.

Many of us tend to bog down in research. We find it difficult to get to writing because we are lured into the forest of no return, otherwise known as the library. Each arti­cle leads to another and then another, especially online. We wander deeper and deeper into this forest, rarely finding a path out. Why do we do this? While we remain in the forest, we are safe from the perils of writing. The idea that just one more article is going to give us mastery is an illusion. If such a thing as mastery is possible, it comes from writing not reading.

The best way I know to get out of the research bog is to do your writing and research at the same time. Do not take endless notes and underline huge sections of books, and then feel overwhelmed because you have to go back through all of those notes and texts. Read and then write an actual paragraph, however loose, about what you have read.

The point here is that you do not have to “finish” research before you start writing. You do not have to complete your literature search or finalize your data analysis or even read your advisor’s book. You do not have to know everything on the subject. Start writing and find out what you must know. As Boice puts it, “Writers who learn to leave holes in manuscripts to be filled later master valuable skills in writing: they learn to proceed amid ambiguity and uncertainty”. I know a graduate student who claims that she finished her dissertation by posting this quote on her com­puter and looking at it every time she wanted to reach for another book.

Erich Auerbach’s masterpiece Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature is a good example of this principle of research. Dis­charged from his university position in Germany by the Nazi government, Auerbach emigrated to Turkey, where he wrote Mimesis from 1942 to 1945. In his epilogue, Auerbach explains that the book lacks footnotes and may assert things that “modern research has disproved or modified” because the libraries in Istanbul were “not well equipped for European studies.” Then he adds a fascinating note. “It is quite possible that the book owes its exis­tence to just this lack of a rich and specialized library. If it had been possible for me to acquaint myself with all the work that has been done on so many subjects, I might never have reached the point of writing”.

Don’t feel bad about not having done enough research. In the twenty- first century, it is no longer possible to be comprehensive. As knowledge expands and ways to communicate that knowledge explode, accelerat­ing ignorance is an inevitable state. The best future researcher will be someone who learns to make a path through this immensity without get­ting overwhelmed.

(8) I just can’t get started.

Many students find sitting down at the computer and starting to write to be the most difficult challenge fac­ing them. Indeed, the horror of the blank page is a frequent theme of litera­ture. The literary scholar Richard D. Altick talked about “First Paragraph Block”. Francoise Sagan described writing as “having a sheet of paper, a pen and … not an idea of what you’re going to say”. Getting started is painful. One of the reasons for this, as one of my stu­dents put it so well, is that “if I never start, then I never fail.”

An excellent way of dealing with the difficulty of getting started is to make a preferred task contingent on a nonpreferred task, as the behavior management experts put it. In this case, writing is the nonpreferred task you have to complete before you get to something you prefer. For instance, do not allow yourself to read the morning newspaper or check your e-mail before you write for thirty minutes. Tell yourself that you will call a friend or watch a favorite television program after writing for an hour. Most stu­dents flip this and tell themselves “I’ll watch TV for an hour and then write.” But it is better to make the pleasurable activity a reward. Turn your procrastination tactics into productivity tools.

One warning on this tool. A friend of mine, when invited to socialize, always told us that she couldn’t get together because she had to write. When we called her the next day, however, she usually admitted that she had just watched bad television. It’s better to feel guilty about really enjoy­ing something than to feel guilty about misspending your time and not writing. Denying yourself a real pleasure in order to force writing rarely works. Delaying a pleasure does.

Another method is to start by writing something else. Some students begin by typing a quote from their reading. Others write a plan for what they would like to do in that writing session. If you really feel shut down, it is useful to start by writing down the thoughts of your inner critic. You know, “It’s hubris for me even to pick up a pen, I haven’t a prayer of actu­ally finishing this article in time,” etc., etc., etc. When you get bored with this inner critic and think, “Oh come on, things aren’t that bad,” then you can start writing your article. Eventually you get bored with this voice. It’s not very good company and writing becomes preferable to whining.

Another method is to focus on writing badly. If you can’t get started because your first sentence has to be perfect, this method can be useful. For fifteen minutes, write down every thought you have about your article without stopping to edit. Just let it all hang out. This is writing what Ann Lamott has celebrated as “a shitty first draft.” I could use the more alliter­ative word fecal, but shitty gets at the real feelings of shame and revulsion many have about writing. If you set out deliberately to write something horrible, this roadblock is erased. Again, eventually you write a sentence or have an idea that, despite your best efforts at producing ghastly work, sounds pretty good. And then you are on your way.

Still another method is to have a phone or e-mail partner. Arrange with another prospective author to agree to write at the same time. Check in by phone or e-mail when you are supposed to start, encourage each other, and then get started writing, knowing that someone else is going through the same horrible suffering, I mean, wonderful process that you are. Lots of my students have found this really helpful. It seems to be more helpful than the plan of meeting at someone’s house to write together, which often ends up being a talking session rather than a writing session.

A final method is to plan the agenda for your next writing session at the end of the last one. That way you will know what to do when you sit down to write. This will also help you stay focused on your article as a series of small tasks. Some authors even recommend that you always stop in the middle of a sentence, so that you have somewhere to pick up. I prefer to recommend pushing a bit into the next section.

(9) I’m afraid of writing because my idea is very contro­versial or emotional.

Again, this is a very real concern. As one of my stu­dents put it, “sometimes I’m afraid my idea will come back and bite me.” One student had done a study on earnings and ethnicity, hypothesizing that salaries would be lower for a minority group in a certain profession. Her analysis of the data revealed that there was no significant difference. This finding went against her own experience and was disturbing to her advisor. Whenever she thought about writing, she felt shut down. Even if her initial findings were true, were they what she wanted to associate her name with? She felt an obligation to the truth, but also to justice and her career. How could she write when she was caught between such hard places?

As is so often the case, she found her way out through writing. She used the discussion and conclusion section of her article to suggest some alternative approaches to understanding the findings. She then used them as a platform for extending her future research to incorporate a more detailed investigation of earnings by adding qualitative in-depth inter­views to her previous quantitative approach. In other words, she used an obstacle to become a better scholar. If you find yourself in a similar posi­tion, talking and writing can be the cure.

(10) I’m afraid of writing because publication is so per­manent.

This fear is one that professors often aid and abet. Graduate stu­dents in the humanities are often warned not to publish until they are completely ready and in absolute control of their topic. Professors caution that early articles can come back to haunt and embarrass the author. Nev­ertheless, the benefits of publication outweigh its dangers.

The argument for waiting to publish goes something like the following story, told to me by a friend who is a professor. An assistant professor in the department was up for tenure when hostile committee members dug up the professor’s first article. They proceeded to lambaste the professor with it, calling it a “vulgar tract.” In this case, my friend pointed out, publication had hurt rather than helped.

I asked my friend two simple questions. First, had the professor gotten tenure? My friend had to admit that the professor had. Perhaps the profes­sor told the committee that the article was early work, and that if the later work could develop so far beyond the first article, this boded well for the trajectory of the professor’s career. Apparently, whatever the defense, it won the day. No one expects that scholars are going to have the same the­oretical or ideological approach over the course of a lifetime

My second question was, had the professor published the article in a peer-reviewed journal? In fact, the professor had not. The article had been published in a collection of conference papers, where the papers were not properly vetted. That’s why I emphasize that students send their work to peer-reviewed journals only. The review process, however faulty, provides a safety net. If a peer-reviewed journal accepts your article, it probably won’t embarrass you later.

Other professors are more to the point than my friend. “There’s enough bad writing out there, why increase it?” one said. “Most graduate students have nothing worth publishing.” All I can say in response to such critics is that they have not read my students’ articles. Students’ first drafts for the classroom can be rough, but those students willing to do real revisions often produce fascinating, cutting-edge work that many professors would be proud to publish. Certainly, if quality were the only criteria for publica­tion, many a faculty member dedicated to the obtuse would have to recuse him or herself from this debate.

(11) I’m not in the right mood to write.

Many people believe you have to be emotionally ready to write. If you are not in the right mood, they argue, don’t even try getting started because it’s not going to work. Yet, many can testify that it is possible to get in the writing mood. Behavior modification theory shows us that emotion follows action, not the other way around. If you don’t feel like doing something, then start doing it and usually your feelings will follow.Individuals who procrastinate frequently confuse motivation and action. You foolishly wait until you feel in the mood to do some­thing. Since you don’t feel like doing it, you automatically put it off. Your error is your belief that motivation comes first, and then leads to activation and success. But it is usually the other way around; action must come first, and the motivation comes later on.

David D. Burns’s book Feeling Good describes many techniques for thinking positively about your life and work so that you can overcome per­fectionism and guilty feelings.

You can also use ritual to overcome feeling unready. You can jumpstart the mood for writing by lighting a certain candle, playing a certain song, or doing certain stretches. When someone I know was writing her first book, she started every writing morning by reading a section from the King James Version of the Old Testament. The beauty of the passages always called up a writing response in her. Even on those days when she didn’t much feel like writing, she responded to the ritual. If Pavlov’s dogs can do it, so can you.

So, don’t wait until your feelings catch up with your goals. Just make a plan and follow it.

(12) My childcare responsibilities are preventing me from writing.

Interestingly, students with children are often the best prac­titioners of the tenets of this chapter. Caregivers simply do not have big blocks of time, so they get used to working in time-bound segments of one to four hours. They cannot make writing their number one priority, so they do not fixate. They cannot stay up all night binge writing and then take care of the baby the next day, so they plan ahead. For those of you who don’t have kids, no, I’m not recommending that you adopt. But if you have friends who are caregivers as well as students, you might want to study how they get it all done. You can learn good lessons from them.

If you are not getting writing done due to childcare responsibilities, you already know the answer: getting others to care for your children sev­eral hours a week. Many students would love to have such help, but are far from family and cannot afford to pay someone. Perhaps you might look into a shared childcare arrangement. Find another student who is a care­giver and arrange to trade baby-sitting so that each of you gets a full morn­ing for writing. Or, if what you really need is some sleep or to run errands, exchange for that as well. Just remember to get fifteen minutes of writing done in that time. If none of this is possible, focus on working with the small amounts of time that crop up. Write for half an hour after you put the kids to sleep and before you start cleaning up.

If it’s any comfort, studies differ as to the effect of marriage and dependents on faculty productivity. One study found that female faculty with children have lower tenure and promotion rates, while male faculty with children have higher tenure and promotion. Another study found that family has little effect on the actual productivity of either female or male faculty. These scholars speculate that the gender gap in publication rates, which has steadily been closing, is not explained by the weight of domestic responsibilities. Rather, this slightly lower rate seems to have more to do with women’s prioritizing of “social change” over advancement and field recognition. This isn’t to imply that male and female faculty experience family responsibilities in the same way. Among men and women with the same publication rates, female faculty did more work around the home and spent fewer hours per week on writing and research than male faculty. That is, women were more efficient, pro­ducing the same amount of writing in less time.

(13) I really can’t move forward on this writing project.

Sometimes, through no fault of your own, you cannot write. Perhaps you must wait for a result or further funding or your advisor’s response. If the way is blocked on one project, turn to another. Success correlates with authors who are not monomaniacal but have several writing projects going at once. If bored or frustrated with one, you can switch to the other. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that only full-time dedication to a single proj­ect will result in success. If you’re brought to a standstill, work on a grant application, revise an old article, or draft ideas for another article. You should always be moving forward on some front.

(14) I can’t write because my idea sucks.

Many students do not trust the composing process. They dismiss their initial ideas as derivative or silly and stop writing in the hope that better ideas will some­how show up. As one of my students said, “I feel like writing should be perfect and easy the first time. If it’s not perfect, I feel I need more time to think before I start.”

But writing and thinking are a loop: thinking leads to writing, which leads back to thinking. I often write in order to find out what I think. Cer­tainly, one need not have a fabulous, publishable idea to start writing. Writ­ing generates its own answers.

So, to have positive writing experiences, allow yourself to develop ideas without immediately critiquing them. Spend a page or two fleshing out an idea and then call a classmate to develop it. If you encourage your­self in this way, you will find ideas flowing more readily and quickly. By ignoring your inner critic when developing a project, you encourage your mind to be a fertile ground for new growth.

(15) My thesis advisor is more of an obstacle than an aid.

A student once volunteered that he was having trouble writing because “my advisor is the anti-Christ.” For some odd reason, of all the negative feelings about writing that students have voiced in all of my classes, this one got the biggest laugh. Perhaps it was nervous laughter rather than sympathetic laughter, but the truth remains that a hypercritical mentor is a real obstacle. This is especially the case if you must work closely with him or her on the article you are revising for this workbook.

If you are in this situation, you have three choices. First, try telling your advisor that research shows that when drafting an article it is a good idea to focus on what is working rather than what is not working. Add that you would like the space to develop your project without too much detailed feedback and that when you are done with a second draft you will wel­come all of your advisor’s comments, negative and positive. If your advi­sor argues that he or she is just trying to head you off at the pass, before you dedicate too much work to an errant direction, state that you are happy to revise when the time comes and to throw out sections if need be. This technique is risky, because your advisor may be even more critical if he or she has not had the opportunity to be so early on. But, since you will have had more time to develop your ideas, and defend them on paper, your direction may seem more palatable than it would have in an early draft. Professors can describe as wrong or untenable those ideas that you simply have not yet fully defended. Once you marshal more proofs, their objection fades.

If this sort of rational conversation is not possible, you might want to consider switching advisors. There is nothing wrong with letting an advisor know that you think you would both be happier working with others. There is no need to say specifically why or to offer the professor a critique of his or her advising style. Just focus on moving on. Make sure you have found another professor who is willing to be your advisor before you take this step.

If neither of these approaches are options, make sure to have some arena where you go for responses that are more positive. I recommend a writing group that focuses on offering support and encouragement. Feel free to tell the group that you are getting all the negative feedback you can handle and you would be grateful if they would focus on the positive.

(16) I can’t sit still.

Some energetic people find it hard to stay in one place. As one student put it, “I was writing when I suddenly found myself sweeping the kitchen. I have no idea how I got there!” Aim­ing to write no more than fifteen minutes at a stretch can be very helpful for this problem. It’s easier to sit still if you know it’s not for hours and hours. One student would set a kitchen timer for fifteen minutes. “When the alarm went off, it reminded me that I was supposed to be writing. I would often find myself doing something else and the alarm would help me refo­cus.” I know one professor who belts himself into his chair. He pulls his belt out of some loops, threads it through the back of his work chair, and then belts it back up. That way, if he gets distracted, he is quickly reminded to stay seated! This technique seems extreme to me, but he swears by it.

(17) I feel guilty about not writing.

It’s ironic that the very tool most of us use to spur ourselves into action also prevents us from act­ing. Guilt can be a useful goad, but it can also be a terrible obstacle. Most graduate students feel too much guilt about not writing. Some feel so guilty that it actually prevents them from writing. My unauthorized theory of why feeling guilty doesn’t work is this: If you already feel guilty about not writing, you do what you can to avoid feeling even more guilty. The longer you go without writing, the less guilty you have to feel, because writing is clearly an impossible task. Following the exercises in this work­book and its model of a slow and steady pace should help overcome this feeling.

(18) I write so slowly that I never seem to get much done.

Remember that it is extremely rare for a writer to churn out perfect first drafts. Even those who are famous for composing quickly may not have been so quick. The prolific eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson once wrote an essay in about half-an-hour while the printer’s runner was at the door. When a friend asked if he could read it, Johnson handed the essay to the runner and told the friend, “Sir, you shall not do more than I have done myself”. These are the kinds of stories that people use to make themselves feel bad about their pace of writing. But these stories are mythical in several significant ways. First, Johnson composed much of his writing in his head and then wrote it down in a short space of time. Second, he was not writing for academic publication. If he had been, editors would have regularly rejected his articles for plagiarism and inaccurate quoting of sources (which he did from memory). You are working under different constraints! So, don’t torture yourself with these examples. While some people who have been writing steadily for more than a decade can quickly write good first drafts, they are still the exception rather than the rule. Most people plod along, deleting one sentence for every three sentences they write and having to repeatedly read and revise their work to get it right. This does not make you a bad writer, it makes you a good writer. Over time, you will get faster. For now, applaud the amount of time you spend on writing instead of bemoaning your low output.

(19) If I have a long, productive writing day, somehow it is harder to get started the next day, rather than easier.

Boice observed this phenomenon during his research—that it was possible to have too much of a good thing. His advice is to limit the amount of time that you write. While this can seem counterintuitive (What?! You want me to stop writing when I am really moving along?!), I have heard from those who tend to “overwrite” that the advice is sound. One student told me that his writing got better, smoother, and quicker when he started to limit the amount of time he spent writing. He tended to spend many hours a day writing, not due to any deadline but just by nature, and so limiting the amount of time he spent writing prevented him from “fussing with it.” Others simply can’t avoid spending long days writing; for instance, those whose first job depends on their finishing their dissertations in several months. If that is you, don’t let me stop you. But there is a cost. I have noticed that those who had to binge write their dissertations often struggle later with post-traumatic dissertation syndrome. The feelings associated with writing for so long were exhaustion and anxiety so they recoil when faced with writing now. Avoid the marathon session.

(20) I know my writing habits are bad, but that’s just who I am and I can’t/don’t want to change. Only you can tell if the way

that you write is fundamental to your being or just an accident of your life experiences and education. If you feel strong resistance to any of my adages, you should pay attention to that. Believe your resistance, as they say. Not every tactic works for everyone. But do pay attention to whether you are feeling resistance or fear. Resistance is positive, the sense that something just isn’t for you. Fear is negative, the false sense that you just can’t do something. So, watch what’s happening because of “who you are.” If who you are is preventing you from attaining the goals that are valuable to you, you may have to think hard about how you can turn that character trait into a positive or whether you want to go on being yourself. Behavior modification asserts that you are not a Russian doll, with layers of wooden selves to your very core. Rather, you are a protean being who does not take advantage of half your potential, skills, or smarts. Be wary of labeling some dysfunction as your essence. Sometimes you have to choose being productive over being unique.

(21) I am eager to write but I don’t have the material or scholarly resources.

In some circumstances, you may not have access to a computer or to research publications. Maybe you are no longer at a univer­sity or your university doesn’t have these resources. One Sri Lankan scholar tells the story of having to choose between writing his article submission by hand or on an ancient typewriter with a threadbare ribbon. He had paper only because he had bribed someone for it. EuroAmer- ican editors are rarely aware of the deep challenges facing scholars from countries outside of Europe and North America. Faced with a handwritten submission, editors may automatically return it. What can you do to improve your odds? This workbook is one attempt to level the playing field by giving you some solid knowledge of what U.S. journal editors expect.

I have two other recommendations. Plan now on sending your submis­sion with an explanation of your circumstances. If material conditions lim­ited your research, not your own thought, it is important that the editors know that. Few U.S. editors will know what you face. If they know, they can be more helpful. Many journal editors wish that they received more submissions from outside the United States and say that they would be willing to work with foreign authors who asked for some assistance. The key to inspiring such help is your data. Since you don’t have access to the secondary literature (and so can’t relate your research to the field), you will have to depend heavily on possessing exceptional data. Fortunately, schol­ars from outside the United States often have unique data and texts to offer U.S. journal editors; for example, a quantitative study never done in your nation or an epic poem undiscussed in a European language. You are more likely to get a EuroAmerican editor’s assistance for a data-rich article than a theoretical one, unfortunately. Find a way to keep going.

(22) I have to make progress on several writing projects at the same time, and I am in a panic.

The writing research shows that those scholars with more than one writing project going at a time do better than those with only one. Perhaps this is because you can switch from one to the other when you get stuck. Whatever the reason, having more than one writing project is a plus, not a minus. You probably have to prioritize one, but make a plan for working on both

(23) I would love to ask someone to read and comment on my work but everyone seems so busy and I don’t want to bother them.

It can be tough to ask people to spend their precious time reading your work. One way to make it easier for others to do this is to make that reading social. That is, instead of handing over your prose and asking your reader to get back to you when they have had a chance to read it on their own, read each other’s work together. Schedule some time at a cafe or someone’s home and read the work right there, then comment on it. It can be easier to read work when someone else is keeping you company and when you know that it is an exchange. Exchanging writing is often more effective anyway, as your reviewer knows he or she is about to be reviewed and will take care to be kind.

(24) I’m beginning to wonder if being a professor is really the career for me, so what’s the point of writing? I probably won’t get a job anyway.

It is easy to get discouraged when you have to keep doing something you don’t feel good at. Being a professor depends on develop­ing skills in teaching, writing, research, socializing, organizing, and disci­pline. Few jobs require so many different skills. It’s a really difficult job! In fact, it is so difficult that most people spend decades figuring it all out, often after they have gotten their first jobs. So, be nice to yourself. In this work­book, you are going to work on one facet of being a professor—writing. For­tunately, learning to write well is a skill that will serve you in any profession so it is not a waste of time even if you don’t plan to be a profes­sor. When you are done with this workbook, you may feel better about your skills and may be more willing to spend the time to develop them.

Or, you may feel more clearly that being a professor isn’t for you. If that’s what you decide, be kind to yourself about that too.

(25) I’m not smart enough to do this kind of work.

Some­times, the most comforting response to our feelings of insecurity is to allow them. Maybe you are not smart enough to do statistics, learn several lan­guages, understand complex theory, lecture without notes, or write with­out agony. For me, though, that’s not the right question. The right question is not “Am I smart enough to do this work?” but “Am I passionate enough?” Do you love your topic or project? Do you believe it can make a real contribution? Sometimes it is easier to believe in the project than in yourself, and that’s okay. Many average people have accomplished extraordinary things through their commitment and passion. Through hard work, they develop skills that were not innate. Maybe you are smart enough, or maybe you aren’t. But if you care deeply about what you are doing, it may not matter. In the timeless words of that great sage Professor Albus Dumbledore, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”.

(26) I get distracted by web surfing, e-mailing, and text messaging.

As more than one scholar has argued, our communication technologies have “become both utterly integral and a major source of exhaustion and disquiet. . . E-mail must rank as one of the most time- devouring timesavers of all time. Too often it makes nothing happen— fast”. A student of mine resorted to working in a nearby fast food restaurant undergoing renovation because it had no wifi and the noise was so loud that she couldn’t hear her cell phone ring. I hope that you find an easier method than this to cut down on your connectivity. Try closing your e-mail software or web browser while writing. Try checking e­mail only in the evening—or whenever you have the least energy. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you will get started after some quick web browsing. Try to do writing first, not second.

(27) It is so difficult to write in English!

My sympa­thies! Writing in English when it isn’t your native tongue is difficult. Whole books have been written about the bizarre spelling, pronuncia­tion, grammar, and syntax of this crazy language. If you are fairly good, hiring a copyeditor may be useful. If you have a long way to go in improving your English, read academic works in English. Then read some more and then read some more! Reading helps you absorb the structure of the language at an intuitive level so the more you do of it, the better. Finally, support journals in your own language, if possible. I know universities in many countries now prioritize publishing in English- language journals, but it is extremely important to keep research going in native languages.

(28) I need big blocks of time to write, and my schedule doesn’t allow such blocks.

I addressed this topic earlier, in Designing Your Writing Schedule, but let me repeat. The first question I like to ask people who make such claims is: Have you ever tried it any other way? Many stu­dents believe that in order to write they must have long, uninterrupted stretches of time and yet they have never tried it any other way! It is unsci­entific to have such firm beliefs without having tested them. According to actual writing tests, there are two problems with this big block of time the­ory. One, such stretches are elusive, and virtually nonexistent once you become a professor. Two, people who use only big blocks of time to write are less productive and more unhappy than those who write daily. They have problems getting started and they often don’t feel good about their writing. Study after study shows that you do not need big blocks of time to write. In fact, writers who write a little bit every day produce more manu­scripts than those who alternate extended writing sessions with weeks/months of not writing. Writing just thirty minutes a day can make you one of those unusual writers who publishes several journal articles a year.