(Re)Claiming the Joy of Writing
What to do when even a cute tomato timer can't convince you to write
"I used to really like writing."
Maybe those are words you’ve uttered wistfully. Or maybe you’ve heard them from a student or a friend.
Far too often, grad students who used to like or even love putting words on paper find themselves struggling to write. They know they have to finish that manuscript draft, or that chapter of their thesis. Maybe they even carve out time for writing and make a habit of sitting down at their laptop to write every day. But now, even if they silence all their notifications, close all their browser tabs, open their document, and set their pomodoro timers, the words they’re supposed to be writing just simply will not come.
What is it about grad school that saps the joy out of writing? And how do we bring some of that joy back in?
My theory is that the writer's block that so many of today's grad students experience stems from the increasingly high stakes of grad school writing and from the unconstructive feedback that students often receive.
The stakes part is pretty straightforward. As underinvestment in higher ed makes the academic job market tighter, there's more pressure on grad students to publish their research, even before they get their first job.
Some people thrive under that kind of pressure. But, for many of us, the pressure to publish or perish can be debilitating, because the pain we imagine we’ll feel if we fail is bigger than the pain we feel for not trying in the first place (despite what the motivational mugs might say). And so, if we don't write, then we avoid the possibility of having our writing rejected or deemed not good enough to get us a job.
The irony here is that most of us are actually good writers. It's hard to make it to grad school if you aren't above-average at communicating complex ideas in written form. And at some point in our sixteen-plus years of schooling, there's a good chance we've been praised for how well we write.
So, why are so many of us so easily convinced that our efforts will end in failure? I'd argue that's where a history of harsh feedback comes in.
As I talk about in A Field Guide to Grad School, the structures of academia incentivize faculty members to spend as little time as possible on teaching and mentoring and service. Universities with large graduate programs are often called research universities because their faculty are evaluated and rewarded based primarily on that aspect of their work. That model is reasonable if there are enough faculty and staff to make teaching and service loads manageable. But the same underinvestment in academia that has led to a reduction in jobs for grad students has led to a reduction in colleagues for faculty members, which means that there are fewer people with whom they can share the load.
In that context—and under pressure to spend as little time on teaching and mentoring and service as possible—professors may start to cut corners. That includes cutting corners with peer reviewing, as we talked about recently. And it includes cutting corners with feedback on student work. In both of these cases, the quickest solution is to just point out what’s wrong. Think: "I'm not convinced" or "I don't know what you mean here." Or even just: "Not clear" or "Awk[ward]" or a margin scribble that maybe looks like a question mark.
The first problem with this type of feedback is that it doesn't help students (or other scholars, especially career scholars) move forward. Because if they knew how to make their writing clearer or less awkward or more convincing, they would've done it that way in the first place. And so there's a good chance that if they try to revise on their own, they'll end up making the same mistakes again and getting the same terse feedback again (and again, and again), as well.
Which leads to the second problem with that kind of feedback, which is that it undermines students' confidence in themselves as writers. At this point, they’ve tried multiple times to revise their work. They keep getting the same result. And they still don’t know how to fix things. Which opens the door for impostor syndrome—for feelings of self-doubt to creep in.
(Re)Claiming Writing Joy
So, what can we do here? How do we help grad students (and former grad students) reclaim their writing joy?
As a Sociologist, I am disciplinarily obligated to tell you that the best solution would be a structural one. Invest more in higher education, so there are more jobs to go around for grad students, and so that faculty aren't feeling so pressed for time, because there are more people to share the load. For grad students, that solution would lower the pressure to get the writing right the first time (or even the second or third time). And for faculty, that solution would allow more time to provide constructive feedback to students and anonymous manuscript authors who’ve submitted their work for peer review.
And what would that constructive feedback look like? It would identify problems, but it would also go two steps further. First, by explaining why the problem is a problem (i.e., “This isn’t convincing because it’s not clear how the claim you’re making here is supported by your evidence”). And, second, by offering suggestions that the writer can use to improve (i.e., “Connect the dots for your reader. Tell us how to interpret these data, and explain how they support your argument. For example, you might say…”).
The problem with structural solutions, of course, is that they're hard to achieve in the short term. Which means that we also need some stop-gap measures if we’re going to recover our collective writing joy. On that front, I have two suggestions: 1) ask for the help you need, and 2) give yourself permission to play. Let's unpack each of these in turn.
Ask for What You Need
First, as I find in my research on help-seeking, teachers are often more willing to help students than their words or their actions let on. When faced with lots of time pressure, they tend to provide support using a squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease model—helping those who ask for it, but not going out of their way to do more.
What this means, in turn, is that if you get a snarky comment from a reviewer, or if your advisor just writes "No" in the margins of your paper, don’t assume that the person providing feedback is disappointed, frustrated, or mad. Assume that they have dozens of unread emails in their inbox, three overdue journal reviews, a stack of student papers to read, an R&R of their own to finish, a day full of meetings to go to, and two exams to write. Assume also that your advisor and other faculty members genuinely want to give you the help you need and will be willing to do so if they have the time—you just have to ask.
You can ask faculty members for help making sense of journal reviews. And you can also ask faculty members to elaborate on the feedback that they give you on your drafts.
Requests for help don’t have to be elaborate. It’s perfectly find to send a quick email saying: “I really appreciate your feedback on my paper. You noted a few issues that need to be addressed, and I want to make sure we’re on the same page about how to move forward. Do you have a few minutes to chat?” Before the meeting, spend a little time developing potential solutions to the problems they’ve identified and that you can’t figure out how to fix on your own. Note the solutions on the draft—right next to their original comments. That way, you can show them each new idea and ask them: “Do you think this seems right?” If not, ask them what they think would work better. Take careful notes while they’re talking, and send a follow-up email after the meeting outlining what you discussed and asking your advisor to confirm the plan for the next draft.
Of course, there’s a chance your advisor won’t have time to provide additional feedback, or that the feedback they provide won’t be clear (we also don’t always get things right the first or second or third time ourselves). In that case, I’d suggest seeking out another more senior grad student or former grad student who worked with your advisor and asking them if they’re willing to take a look at the feedback you got.
Given their experience with your advisor, that fellow student might be able to play the role of interpreter—helping you make sense of what your advisor is looking for (or even helping you read their handwriting and figure out what they were trying to say). In exchange, you can offer to give feedback on the other student’s work sometime—a chance to develop your own constructive feedback skills—or just promise to pay it forward. That means helping other more junior students who may find themselves struggling to make sense of harsh or cryptic feedback someday.
Permission to Play
Unfortunately, even if you start asking for help and getting more constructive feedback from your advisor, that may not be enough to reclaim your writing joy. It takes work to recover from harmful experiences.
On the upside, some of that work can come in the form of play. One type of play involves trading words or traditional forms of academic writing for other ways of communicating ideas. If, for example, you’re having trouble getting started with a dissertation chapter or article you’re writing, draw it as a comic or a diagram instead. And don’t just draw it one time—draw it three or four or five different ways. The quality of the art doesn’t matter. And if art really isn’t your thing, you can also try less formal styles of writing like tweets or blog posts. The point is to get ideas on paper and see which one works best.
Then, once you choose the comic or the diagram that seems most compelling, start describing what you drew. Write it or type it or even talk it into an audio recorder—whichever gets the words to flow. That process can help you get to the core of the argument of your paper. And once you have that core, it’s much easier to build the rest of the paper out from there.
To that end, another form of play involves getting creative with structure. You don’t have to start writing at the beginning of a paper. Especially if your research involves inductive forms of analysis—where you’re developing theories from the bottom up, rather than testing them top-down—it may make more sense to write up the findings part of a paper first, then write the front end justification for your paper after you have a clear sense of what your argument is going to be.
A third form of play, meanwhile, involves giving yourself permission to fill an entire wastepaper basket with crumpled ideas. For me, the hardest part of writing a journal manuscript is usually framing my contribution to the literature—explaining how what I’m doing in my research adds to what’s been done before. That part of writing is hard for me because I can usually imagine at least three or four ways the framing could go. I could try to puzzle through it and figure out the best solution before I start writing. But there’s a good chance I’d sit there for days. Instead, I give myself permission to just pick one idea—randomly if I have to—and try writing it that way. Once I start putting the ideas on paper, it’s usually much easier to get a sense of whether that particular frame is working or not.
If an idea isn’t working, I just scrap it—metaphorically, in the sense that I save it (in case I realize later that it actually was the best idea after all) and start over with a new draft. Often times, my best ideas, framing-wise, aren’t even part of the original list of three or four options I came up with. They end up popping into my head as I’m writing a totally different framing for the draft. But at that point, I don’t stress about the fact that I’m scrapping all those words that I’ve just written. And maybe that’s because I’m not the kind of writer who celebrates when I finish things. Instead, I’m the kind of writer who celebrates when I get the kind of big idea that sparks a new draft.
Embrace those moments of excitement. Those moments are how you reclaim (or maybe even claim for the first time) your identity as a person who loves to write.