Someone recently asked me what advice I would give to my younger writing self and I immediately thought of the challenges and discomfort I experienced while writing my dissertation. I did indeed come up with advice for Her, and I thought maybe I should share that here as well - kind of like all of you are my younger selves…
Of course my first reaction was:
Don't go to graduate school??? Or at least don't work with the woman I did.
This is one of my core beliefs — more than a belief, actually — it’s kind of wired into the way I am. If something isn’t accessible or I can’t find a way to make it accessible, I just lose interest.
But while accessible writing is a Good Thing, it can be hard to be simple (that’s what editing is for). Let me tell you a little story…
Don’t you hate it when people start articles on procrastination by telling you what it is?
As if we don’t know exactly what it is, how it gets in our way, and the challenges of getting past it.
Harumph.
Well, I’m not going to do that to you.
What I am going to do is share some recent research about what makes it easier to procrastinate and, therefore and thusly, what might help to move through it.
This is from a marketing newsletter I receive from Sean at Psychotactics.
It may seem odd to be sharing a marketer’s advice with you, but there are certain similarities in the struggle to get words-that-matter down on the page.
And this article, in particular, spoke to me because so many of those participating in our UnDissertation Discussion Group seem to write quickly and eloquently and well —in their posts. They feel stuck when they sit down to Write Their Dissertation.
So let me share Sean’s advice…
These notes are from a writing workshop by Tara Gray called “Publish and Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar,” presented at the 2006 Text and Academic Authors convention.
What I’ve done is to extract the key points and snippets of some of them, but you’ll want to go the TAA website for the full article, for sure. Great content. Here goes…
The myth persists that prolific scholars are born, not made, but research suggests otherwise. Much is known about how to become more prolific — and any scholar can. These steps will show you how.