Writing is momentum (12/28/24)

Newton's cradle with an arrow for the impulse of "writing"

Why write a blog? In all the busy times, with all the other things to do, why blog at all? In the few months since I’ve started there are a few things that have been motivators.

Ideas: it gives me a place to work out ideas – to take the bits and bobs of reading and remembrance and tie them up into small packages that I can come back to when the need arises.

Accountability: Writing is a kind of progress, even if it isn’t directly adding to word count that “matters” for the CV. Thinking through things on the additive basis is making progress. And to make progress on MY work while also chairing the department, handling hospice at a distance, householding, teaching, and spending time with Tom – that’s a good thing.

Writing Practice: Setting up a writing practice has been helpful modeling for setting up appropriate timeframes. Specifically, I think it’s helped me better plan the idea-generation stages of writing.The sitting and listing things IS an important part of writing, and I give myself more time for gazing absently into space now than I did before I started blogging. I'm thinking less transactionally and more effectively these days. Win!

Momentum: I just have a better sense of ongoing engagement with my own work when I’m putting my ten fingers and some coffee time into the project. I can feel the shifting shapes of the book outline moving in the background even if I’m not actively “writing chapters” yet. The ideas about sound experiences in installations in Chicago, for instance, have shifted the way I’m thinking about civic experiences of sound in the 15^th century since I’m considering how shared sounds provide points of reference – a kind of acoustical person-to-person bonding. Moving forward; that’s a plus.

Perspective: Blogging gets me to the proverbial Forty-Thousand Foot view, and I’ve enjoyed my forays into medieval deafness, earlids (or here or here), and poetry (with its follow-along on poetry and silences). I work more broadly in the blog than I do when I think, “oh, I should work on the book.” The details of medieval documents are one kind of practice; this has been a helpful space for developing a different kind of thinking.

Fun: Okay, who doesn’t enjoy putting words together to make a thing? I love making things. And these short things, these posts, they’ve been interesting to me. I share them in hopes that they’re also of interest to some of you.

So, yep, blogging is something that stays into the New Year. I am going to try to cut back on the book binges and to plus-up the Tom time. But I think I’ll keep blogging. As long as it stays fun!

 

 

Starting from a place of blah (12/11/24)

 

A "no entry" red circle over a parallelogram labeled "The Blah Zone"

When you're caught in the blah zone—the one where starting anything feels impossible, but the work just HAS to get done—it’s time for a reset.

Here are three strategies that I’ve used successfully this past week to get over the not-starting blues…

Actual anonymized excerpt from a 70 item spreadsheet from last Wednesday:

1. Spreadsheet with color, text deleted; each row labeled "Thingy 1, thingy 2" etc.

1. Make a spreadsheet.

Those of you who are spreadsheet people will get where I’m going with this: the spreadsheet itself is an accomplishment. Bonus points for prioritizing with colors. (It was a big project – still is – so the kick-off thinking was facilitated by a little fancy spreadsheet driving.)

Don’t you instantaneously feel better, seeing all that organization? I know I do!

Besides, a spreadsheet can make the next steps straightforward. Ask a question about G3. Then about G4. Then about C5. A spreadsheet can put things into an order that your blah brain just isn’t managing right at the moment. Win!

2. Boots. Put 'em on.

2. Don’t climb the mountains, put on your boots.

Seriously, who has energy for mountain climbing this time of year? (I did last year, but that was last year. This is this year. Be one with the blahs.) If the mountain (or whatever the next task is) seems insurmountable, ignore it. Focus on the next step. If I’m going to go walking, I need to put on my boots. I will now put on my boots. (Or order the interlibrary loan materials, or figure out the grocery list.)

Once the metaphorical boots are on, I’ll often get a couple of hours mileage out of things done “while I’m here.” And if not, at least I have my boots on. Little bits of progress DO add up. 

3. Work-in-progress list

3. Check back on your progress.

So, you’re just going to open the file to see how much you managed to get done this week. You don’t have to work on it. Just report-out on what got done. And while you’re there, maybe write a little summary, or a reminder of things you wanted to do. Maybe bullet point something. Just a little bit of progress.

THE TAKE-AWAY:

            Little by little, and it all gets done.

You don’t always have to have the “big task” in mind. Make progress in increments for a while and you’re still making progress.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

If you’re up against the writers-block-blues version of the blahs, perhaps this writing strategies post will help:

•     The Silence of Not-Writing – and What To Do About It
   

Caveat: this post is about the exhaustion blahs; more serious causes may need more serious attention. If you think you’ve gone beyond exhaustion into depression, please seek support. Here are two resources that can guide you to help.

• https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression

• https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/depression/coping-with-depression

The Silence of Not-Writing – and What To Do About It (10/20/24)

To actively "not write" is an awful thing. Sure, my kitchen has never been cleaner, and my bathtub sparkles, but inside, I’m sinking. Each moment that the words don’t come feels like another part of me shriveling up, reduced to silence.

As this awful feeling and I have become friends over the years, I’ve developed some strategies for what some people call #WritersBlock. Perhaps one or another of these approaches will work for you. In hopes that they’re useful, I present:

STRATEGIES TO START THE WRITING PROCESS

The junk mail trick	"To whom am I talking?"	Go for a walk	Scrub the tub
The bullet point approach	Jump a section	Whiteboard it	Put in the time
Colored inks	Write to Cousin Tim	Poster paper	Move to the slide-deck version
The Pomodoro	Don't finish	The business card approach	Brown noise
Why it's not working	Don't write: dictate	Read more	Small chunky bits

 

The junk mail trick:

A big blank piece of paper is scary. Halloween haunted house levels of scary. This might help:

I used old envelopes from the junk mail pile to write my MA thesis. Turn it at an angle, and you have to write one word, then three words, then 6 words, then the full sentence....

Then after half an hour I'd type it in and it would be a paragraph or two

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The bullet point approach:

Everyone always tells me to outline first. But me? I don't know what I'm going to say until I write it.

So I don't outline; I just take 10 minutes and try to get out 20 bullet points. I'll use about 7 of them. It’s like scribbling on a napkin – low stakes, and the end product can be discarded at will.

Honestly, this often gives me 2-3 paragraphs worth of evidence and thoughts about them – and editing from something is always easier than starting from zero

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Colored inks:

I take 10 different pens -- different textures and colors. I lay them out. I set a timer for 3 minutes, choose a pen, and write a sentence with that color/texture. Then 3 minutes and another color/texture. Then 3 minutes and... my brain has taken over and I'm writing stuff so I stick with that pen for a while. But it gets me over the hurdle. And a ball point and a felt tip pen write different kinds of words, a weird but true fact (for me)

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The Pomodoro:

Sometimes the problem is trying to write too much. Trying to write a paper? Impossible. Trying to write the next paragraph? That’s at least dwelling in the realm of possibilities.

So: set a pomodoro (named after the timer): 5 minutes for planning, 25 minutes for writing on THAT ONE THING. Paragraph 2 of section 7, or whatever.

Don't worry about the whole of it, worry about the next thing to do.

Also, I sometimes do this in sets in a group setting ("writing retreat") -- we all log in and share our plan, then do 3 pomodoros with 10 minutes between. That's some sweet writing, and a celebration at the end

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Why it's not working

I take 30 minutes and list all the reasons it's not working. I don't know enough about X, I hate my topic, the fridge needs cleaning, all those thousands of reasons that the writing isn't coming together. Then I pick a fixable one and work on that for 15 minutes.

I often get farther in those 15 minutes than in the previous day, TBH

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"To whom am I talking?"

Set aside the content of your project and brainstorm the people in your world. With whom are you engaged -- whose work is driving your thinking right now, who do you hope picks up your book/article, who do you want to overwrite so that the TRUTH is seen, and so on.

Then, revisit your outline or bullet point list to see WHERE you're going to talk to them, and explain something for your favorite imagined reader in words they'd understand

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Jump a section

Okay, this part isn't ready to be written. So put in a placeholder and jump to a section that's going to go rip-roaringly fast. That part where you deconstruct someone's argument and explain it from a different perspective. The part where you're describing your data and just have to get that down on page. The part where you justify your methodology

Progress doesn't have to be linear, it just has to be progress

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Write to Cousin Tim

Sometimes it helps to spend a writing session explaining your project to an outsider. This is what I'm doing, this is why I'm doing it, this is how it's frustrating, this is how it's going to be so cool when it's done. I often draft an email to my Cousin Tim. (Sometimes I even send it – with a front-end explanation of getting over the stuck-ness. Groove on your weird, right?)

Then lift whatever sentences are ready, and turn other things into bullet points

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Don't finish

This is one from the "how to write" lit: Leave yourself mid-thought at the end of the day.

I'm terrible at this, but it's a great concept. You end your writing session with the question or thought mid-formulated, so when you sit down tomorrow it's easy to pick up the thread.

My best solution on this is to end the day with an all caps question for the next day: WHY DOES THIS DATA SUGGEST XXXX and then when I log in I just have to answer that question.

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Don't write: dictate

I do this one a TON: I do a really rough outline (half-page at most) for a chapter or a section, playing around with the order until it makes sense.

Then I pick up a voice recorder (Hello, cellphone) and I dictate the "lecture" in 5 minute chunks. Then I type it up and edit it.

I've found that larger (e.g. 45 minute) chunks are harder to work with, but in principle it's just the "talk It out" that's important here.

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Go for a walk

I'm a walker. I pose myself a problem, and go for a 2 mile walk. At the end of the first half-mile, I've usually got a paragraph. At the midpoint, I may need to pull off the trail, sit down and throw a bunch of stuff onto the paper. I almost always make at least one critically important connection or have a significant insight.

(You can combine this with dictation, but I've found that for me walking and writing are a better match for large-scale progress)

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Whiteboard it

There's something uniquely satisfying about standing at a whiteboard with colored markers making it make sense. So do that. And then keep working the details, and then the explanation for those details, until you're looking for the fine-tip marker and a spare bit of space, at which point it's probably time to capture all that writing on the computer.

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Poster-paper brain-dump

Poster paper

Get a giant piece of paper -- butcherblock paper or those poster paper things -- and tape them up in your hallway.

Use those to do a brain dump. I do associative outlining in a kind of spider-web diagrammish sort of way, but I also have random blocks of "this is in there too"

I might layer that with what have I read / what do I need to read

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The business card approach

This is the opposite of butcher paper: go small. One thought per card. I used up most of a box of old business cards on this a couple of articles ago -- each idea goes on a card, and I went as FAST as I could go. I might do 7 on a topic (go fast) and then switch to some other aspect of the content (go fast), and then... I did 3 separate sessions of making cards, and then sorted them out like a sunflower with its petals.

Then I typed it up and wrote transitions. I should do this again; I made such AMAZING progress

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Read more

This one is risky, b/c there's always more to read. But, sometimes I need a better overview of the topic than I've got activated, so I do the spreadsheet reading approach -- what's my literature? What gap was each author trying to fill? what methods did they use? What evidence do they have that I want, what findings did they make that make me feel strongly. What 3 quotes might I use from this.

I highlight what I want to be sure to cite, & write from there

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Scrub the tub

This may be everyone's favorite standby for writer’s block, but hear me out. Sometimes, following up on that urge to avoid gives you time for the ideas to gel. Scrubbing the bathtub or organizing the cabinets IS part of the writing process

But set the bargain in advance, and follow through:

Okay, I'll scrub the tub. But then I'm going to write 5 sentences. Or bullet point. Or stand at my whiteboard for 5 min

It's not a lot, but remember the adage:

Little by little, and sooner or later it all gets done

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Put in the time

Sometimes, you just have to sit with it not coming quickly. A lot of how-to-write advice is about word count, and as a counting type person that speaks to my itch.

But in reality, it's the time with the project that is making the difference. Whether it's a 10-minute session or a half-day, try to USE the time you've got as best you can. Measure important progress: I connected this idea with that one and now I need to explain that = progress

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Move to the slide-deck version

Most of us work in a slide-deck world, where our prose needs a visual accompaniment in some formats, and not in others. If your prose for the narrative version gets stuck, flip to the slide-deck and use visualization to outline the section. Is this section 4 slides or 5? What images will it use? What will you say about them? Oh wait, that’s prose. Now move it back to your narrative and adjust the text with that necessary shift of style

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Brown noise

Is your busy-beaver brain in the way of thinking about this current project? Turn on some brown noise (like white noise, but deeper, and a bit more irregular). It rumbles, and gives visceral me something to do so that prose-generating me can actually tend to task instead of checking in on that other layer of thought (I prefer brown noise to music, since when music is going I invariably wind up listening too actively to it -- bad for generating prose!)

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Small chunky bits

My last thought for today is that it's okay for writing to be in the in-betweens. I have written a paragraph standing in line at the grocery store, dictated the transition to the next section while waiting at the stoplight, run in from weeding the garden to make note of those three examples which are perfect for section 7. All of that is writing, even though it's not that "scholar sitting at the desk" approach that my advisor used. Just write. You'll get there.

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My take-away:

Writing isn’t always about grand revelations or hours of uninterrupted work. Sometimes it’s those small, in-between moments that add up. It’s the thinking that you do when you’re doing other things. (Why is it that the BEST ideas come to us in the shower? When you’re deep in the throes of a project, have a pen and pad EVERYWHERE so you capture the bits that help with the session tomorrow!)

In other words, your goal isn’t to write the whole thing, it’s to build momentum by writing the next thing. Whether you're outlining the chapter or just scribbling notes on the back of a receipt, trust that the process is working.

The words will come, and when they do, the silence will feel like a distant memory.