Writing before I'm ready

I have been in another slump lately, unable to make progress on my many projects. If it's a task for someone else, that's no problem - so it looks like I'm working. But I know that I haven't been.

When I was writing the NIH grant, it was a lot of work. As I would say to anyone who would listen, it took over my time and sucked out my life force. But honestly? I felt more like myself while writing that grant than I have in months. And now that the deadline has passed and the grant has been submitted, I have lost that again. Partly it's The Paper That Just Won't Die (henceforth known as TPTJWD) depresses me so much every time I look at it. And I think part of it is good old regular depression.

I noticed Academic Cog started her own springtime answer to InaDWriMo, the Magical Month of Academic Publishing (MMAP). I would have participated - obviously I need the external motivation - but at the time I was mired in the grant. But now I have finally picked up a copy of Robert Boice's Professors as Writers and I have decided to try his method. It's not so radical, really, and is probably familar to many of you.

The first thing you have to do is get used to writing without agonizing over it or pre-planning too much. So you start by doing "spontaneous writing" for about 15 minutes a day for a week or two. I got up early this morning and did my 15 minutes of writing before I was allowed to turn on the computer and check out anything online. He recommends writing longhand - partly because he started consulting on the topic and writing about it before everybody and their dog had their own computer, but also because it encourages writing without editing. I am doing the spontaneous writing longhand in a pretty journal I bought months ago and never used, but I am going to switch to typing for the generative writing that is the second step. I haven't done much longhand writing since I was taking notes for classes lo these many years ago, and my wrist is sore!

One thing I really like about his prescriptions is the whole "writing before you're ready" thing. Instead of focusing on trying to finish TPTJWD, I need to start writing a new paper. And it's true - I have a whole bunch of things planned to write but am waiting to finish analyses, whatever. But next week I will start writing one of these papers. I think (I haven't finished reading the book yet) that the idea is that once you get your writing juices flowing you just keep going. So I'll have draft pages written for paper number two, and then it will be easier to go back and edit paper number one.

Thus I am going to change my daily goals. Over in the sidebar is a graph where I've been trying to make new daily habits this year; one of those habits was writing for two hours a day. With the exception of when I was working on the grant, I didn't do too well with that habit. So instead I will give myself one point for every 15 minute chunk of time I spend writing.

So here's the plan: for the first week, I will do 15 minutes of spontaneous writing a day. Then starting next week, I will get started with 5 minutes of spontaneous writing followed by 15-30 minutes of generative writing - which is like spontaneous writing but is on a particular topic, in this case the topic of Paper Number Two. I like that he says that it doesn't matter if you don't have the analyses finished or the literature reviewed yet - you can leave holes for it in your writing. The point is to get your ideas on paper. I can do that.

Wish me luck! I plan to report on my progress here- it will give me something to write about.