Sphinx

I’m doing the final polish of this piece while wondering why watching Meet Me In St Louis seemed like a good idea – THIS is one of the classic movie musicals?!? – and ignoring the cats, who are NOT getting fed until half eight. It was sketched out last week, between rewatching Independence Day (far superior to Meet Me In St Louis despite lack of songs and some common themes), then drafted in between cooking vindaloo and chana masala, sitting on the train into work, and eating homemade muffin (proper English muffin) while being yelled at by cats who want to be let outside to intimidate the local wildlife.

Since this is the opening of a post about tips for academic writing, which I was asked about on the Twitter by Lakshmi Ramgopal, it might seem that the basic message is: you can write anywhere, any time, if you want to. Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated, at least as far as my experience – which is what I’m supposed to be talking about – is concerned; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be missing so many deadlines at the moment. In practice, I can write certain sorts of things – especially blog posts – almost anywhere, almost any time. Proper academic writing, however, is a whole other thing – and, in putting together this brief set of suggestions, I’m very conscious that it’s largely a theoretical explanation of what I would do in ideal circumstances, crossed with big flashing neon signs saying DON’T DO THIS…

(1) You need a place to write. I’m tempted to say that you’ll know what sort of place. For me, it’s uncluttered, with plenty of room to spread out (in other words, from my wife’s perspective, so that I can fill it with clutter), with as many books as possible to hand when you need them but not too visible as a distraction, and with a good view of the countryside. Keep the fridge well stocked, and/or have a good cafe nearby – ideally, you’d have a high-quality espresso machine on hand for regular usage with the cafe kept for special occasions… But this is all too specific. As I say, you should work out what you really need, and then work out how to get as close as possible to it as is practical.

(2) Work out the time when you write best – which for some reason for many people seems to be either early in the morning or late at night, rather than in normal working hours, but maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones. Ideally, keep this time clear; you won’t always feel like writing, but you’re more likely to feel like it then than at any other time. Of course, all this becomes trickier when there are other people and their inconvenient sleep patterns to worry about…

(3) Regular breaks, exercise, five-miles hikes through the countryside to clear the head and get the ideas flowing again. Or gardening, or squash, or whatever. Something physical.

(4) Write something, anything, however rubbish. Revising the useless sentences from the previous day remains the best way of getting going the next day. This is not news.

(5) There is almost always something you would rather be doing than writing. There is often something more important that you genuinely ought to get done first. There is always something else you could be doing. There are then two skills that ideally you need to have: knowing how to tell the difference between these things, and being able to make yourself do the thing you actually need to be doing. I’m aware that there are people out there who are quite capable of ignoring things like marking that actually need to be done because they prioritise their research, and I can only hope that they’re managing to get some writing done when they’re making everyone else’s lives unnecessarily difficult; but I suspect most of us suffer from the habit of prioritising everything except writing, because it can always be made to seem more urgent and/or easier just to get out of the way first, and then I’ll get properly down to it…

(6) This also applies to the demands of significant people and cats, except that it’s harder to resist these even if you want to. And, I am required to say, except that these demands are always higher priority than anything else you might have in mind.

I am conscious, in writing this, that the overall message is clearly tending towards the recommendation that you should become an 18th-century clergyman with a comfortable library full of books and a dutiful wife keeping the children quiet because Daddy is working on his book, or a bachelor scholar with college servants, or some other existence far removed from the realities of modern academic life and an even slightly healthy existence as a social being. And there are times – mostly when I wake at 4 am and just have to lie there instead of firing up the computer, when this does seem rather tempting. But, seriously, is anything I’m capable of writing ever going to justify disturbing the cats? I doubt it.

No, the real message is rather different. None of this actually matters; it may make things a little easier, but what you really need is to want to write, and want to write the thing you’re supposed to be writing. It’s all in the mind, which is deeply unhelpful but true. I can write blog posts wherever, whenever, because I want to write them – but also because I’m not afraid of them, and don’t feel that they have to meet any standard other than my personal satisfaction (which is mostly grammar-related). With ‘proper’ academic writing, I get the Fear – and when that strikes, every bit of advice about how to make writing easier also becomes a trap if you imagine that you can’t write properly without it.

And the only thing that works against the Fear is to switch off the Internet and forget every possible distraction; just fire up the computer, open the document, and write a word, any word. And a sentence. And then rewrite it. And rewrite it again. And delete it. And at some point the words will start to come. And if it was actually this easy I wouldn’t miss so many deadlines…