My best writing tip

At the moment where you are filled with excitement about a new idea or topic, stop.

I discovered this serendipitously. I have a weakness when I write. I tend to get into a state where I'm overwhelmed with emotions. I write a lot from emotions rather than thinking. When I am overwhelmed, I have to stop. My heart just cannot continue. What I learned from this is that, it makes me anticipate coming back to my writing, because I know there are things undone and fun to write about when I resume in the future.

I saw this in this book called The Writer's Way by Jack Rawlins and Stephen Metzger (7th edition):

"9. Quit when you're hot, persist when you're not. Ernest Hemingway is said to have always quit writing when he knew exactly what was going to happen next, not when he ran out of things to say. That way, he was always excited about going to work the next day instead of dreading it. Hemingway understood that every time you stop writing, whether it's for five minutes or five months, you run the risk of finding out you're blocked when you come back. Get around the problem by quitting when you're hot. Take a break on a winning note, not a losing one. Stop writing when things are going well, when you feel strong and know where you're going next. When you're at a loss, don't let yourself quit; stick with it until the block dissolves, words come, and you've triumphed momentarily.

The principle behind this is basic behavior modification. If you quit when you're stuck, you're in fact rewarding your failure: you're learning that if you get stuck you get the reward of getting to eat, to stretch, to escape. If you stick it out, wait until the words come, and then quit, you reward success. At first it seems contrary to logic: why stop when the words are flowing? The answer is only apparent when you try it: if you quit when you feel good about writing, you feel good all during the break and come back to the computer feeling strong. If you quit when you're stuck, your break is filled with dread and worry, and the return to the computer feels like the climb to the scaffold. 

The longer the break, the more important it is to quit knowing what you'll do next. When I break for five minutes, I want to know what sentence I'm going to write when I come back, when I break for the day, I typically finish with a sketchy paragraph summary of where the discussion is going in the next few passages - a map of tomorrow's journey." (pp. 58-9) 

Write in manner that makes the reader turn the page

''The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention. I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research.'' 

- Barbara Tuchman, New York Times, February 2, 1989

Writing as Weaving

There are many metaphors we use to describe the act of writing. Today, I experience writing as weaving. I looked at the different ideas I have collected over two months and sorted over four days, and put like ideas together, and today, I started weaving some of these like ideas together, chaining them logically to other like ideas, and then putting this chunk in a position relative to other chunks.

It feels like weaving, knitting, or sewing, because I am doing intricate work. I look at the words of each idea to find similarities. For example, I see something in common between what Jackson (1995) says that teachers may deliver more than promised when they tell stories and what Benjamin (1968) says about how narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks. Both ideas tell us that stories can give us more than what we are expecting, that there is potential in stories. So I will allow these two separate threads to intertwine into a thicker and stronger thread that will form an argument in my literature review.

Writing adventures

I've had this experience, and I just want to share it with you.

"Parentheses, digression, subset. Some little detail in what I was writing, perhaps just an image or phrase or parenthesis, seems to have a spark in it. I let it go and it ends up being the main point, the center of gravity. And what I had thought was the center of gravity turns out to be only a subsidiary part. The whole thing drastically changes its orientation. Even though most of the same elements are still there, it feels very different." (Elbow, 1973, p. 37)

Remember that paper I wrote that was rejected? I was obsessed with something called "social patriotism". I kept seeing in my data that unique to my participants was the idea that patriotism has got to do with kinship, with people, with community. But then... after rejection, I had a look at the thesis again, and realized that what was more fascinating was not the social stuff, but how the teachers' understandings were postmodern. They talked about world citizenship, about caring for people rather than abstract notions. They way they think about patriotism was quite unlike how people typically think about it - it was postmodern.

So there you have it, don't be afraid to write, and to change your mind about matters. Sometimes to get to one point, you have to go through another. Don't see that "another" as a waste of time, but a necessary step to take to get to your destination! :)

Elbow, P. (1973) Writing without teachers. London: Oxford University Press

Writing

The thing about writing that I think we don't often talk about it the use of "tools", which I mean how sometimes an idea comes to me and I quickly latch on to it, and it leads to other ideas, but later on, I delete the first idea as it is not as relevant to my work as the ideas that followed it.

I rely a lot on tools actually. I write a lot, but I also delete a lot. It's like an expletive paragraph or sentence.

I recently read this:

We can hardly talk without the expletive, for it gives us time to shape our thoughts. But when we write, and therefore have time to revise, we ought to cast away unnecessary baggage, and that often means the expletive. We are not suggesting that you never use It is or There are - they have their uses. You just should not overuse them or fall back on them to avoid a little extra effort or thought. (Packer & Timpane, 1986, p. 219)

I'm reading up on "Writing with Economy" now...

It's something I strongly believe in... That as writers, we can respect our readers' time and energy, by writing as clearly and directly as possible. I would like to invest as much effort on copyediting as for this purpose. I believe it's not enough to have good ideas, but you need to express them well and in a timeless manner as well.

Packer, N. H. & Timpane, J. (1986) Writing worth reading: A practical guide. St. Martin's Press and New York: A Bedford Book

(This is actually surprisingly a book I really like. Not a sit down to read finish it book like Wolcott's but a now and then I need a little probing and direction, I refer to it type of book.)

Cool Down

My draft one was not up to my expectation. It was not very coherent. But I have reached a saturation point in my mind and know that further tarrying will not help bring it forward. So I printed it out on Monday and gave it to my supervisor. It is still lacking in word count. I know it's shocking! How can it be right? Graduate students struggle with too much to say and not too little. But I think this amount is fair enough, with more thorough editing, it should reach just the right amount of 40,000. So, I'm not as long-winded as I thought. Actually I'm more often a person of few words, to be honest, especially in person. My salute to those who write books and PhD thesis. It's credible how one can keep a 100,000 over word document coherent! It takes much patience, enduring, perseverance and hard work!

So for this week, I will not touch my thesis. But I will touch it again next Monday. That will give me a 1 week cool down. So what is a cool down for a writer? What does it mean?

Distancing yourself physically from your creation allows you to disengage from it mentally. And by disengaging, you effectively separate the writing stage from the editing stage - that is, the stage in which you scrutinize and revise what you've composed. Naturally, you're always doing some editing while composing. But much of that will have been done piecemeal, without an adequate overview.

Like any break, cool-down refreshes you. Then, once refreshed, you can step back from what you've been working on to truly see it. You know what should be there, but is it really there? You know what you meant to say, but did you really say it? The perspective you gain from cooling down will help you spot and correct faults in the logic flow, trim unnecessary words, and invigorate flabby text. (p. 75)

My thesis will be due on the second week of January. That leaves me with slightly more than a month. What I learn about academic life is that we never work apart from tight deadlines. Everything I do is not done in optimal conditions, but against a backdrop of competing projects/tasks/interests/demands/commitments. It makes me appreciate academics more. Many of them produce the finest works, not in an environment of peace and ease, but under extreme pressure and stress.

Reference
Carol Rosenblum Perry, The Fine Art of Technical Writing, 2011

Feedback

I think I enjoy thinking about writing, sometimes more than writing itself. I am in the thick of it. I have revisited my Chapter 1 and a newly created Chapter 4 which talks about the context of Singapore. And recently, I have started revising my Chapter 5 which is findings. And now, time for a break. I read this passage in Harry Wolcott's Writing Up Qualitative Research (ed. 3 page 73):

The search for theory, like a cogent review of the literature, offers another way to link up with the prior work of others and a shorthand way to convey the gist of our interests and inquiries. This "searching" stage is where one's dissertation committee, one's faculty colleagues, even anonymous reviewers, can - but seldom do - render invaluable service. Rather than belittle the efforts of novice researchers who thrash about trying desperately to hook up with theory, those more experienced in inquiry of this kind can - and should - suggest possible leads and links. We all run the risk of getting tunnel vision when writing up our own research, failing to see the broader implications or remaining unaware of relevant work that might provide a fresh or clearer perspective. 

I like this passage because I have been the recipient of many kind feedbackers. I don't take very well to criticisms and praises. I'm like those tender reeds that break easily, though I'm put in that situation so often, I hope my skin has grown thicker. So I have been extremely blessed that people who give me feedback are always very kind. They never fail to first draw out my strengths, before showing me my weaknesses. My confirmation reviewers wrote such nice comments about my work that I hid the comments for about a year. I was so embarrassed by it. But when I took them out to read them more objectively, I found that they had given me very good directions about how to expand my work, rather than having that "tunnel vision".

I've written here a couple of times about how I broke out of that theoretical box and that mesmerization with theories. It took me one year to get out of it. But actually, early into my study, my reviewers have already pointed out that I should break out of it. As I continued my research, the part that I have wanted to distance myself most from - the context of Singapore and Asia - were what my reviewers and supervisor thought were key to my research. The more I analyze my data, the more I realized what they said were very relevant and true on hindsight.

So that was my journey. Your feedback counts. :) So invaluable to my thoughts and thinking.

"You cannot begin writting too early"

I have written many things that would probably never see the daylight (never be published). They are in varying states of disarray. Many were written not for myself, but for others, whether for my bosses or my professors. But today, I feel that while those works did not come to fruition, the writing I did seem to be really for myself.

I can write faster and with greater ease today than I could while writing those stuff in the past. Could it be possible that those rejected works were foundations upon which my current works stand?

I'm now reading an AMAZING book called "Writing Up Qualitative Research" (3rd Edition) by Harry E. Wolcott.

"Writing is not only a great way to discover what we are thinking, it is also a way to uncover lacunae in our knowledge or our thinking. Unfortunately, that means we must be prepared to catch ourselves red-handed whenever we seem not to be thinking at all. The fact should not escape us that when the writing is not going well, our still-nebulous thoughts cannot yet be expressed in words." (p. 19)

"Writing is a way to access that personal fund of information - and misinformation." (p. 21)

Here I have shifted focus to what I am currently writing, my thesis. I have started writing again. And whenever I am unsure about something I have written... I highlight it in yellow. It sits uncomfortably there. And it forces me to return to check out my assumptions and the basis upon which I wrote those sentences and to change those parts till they fit in with what I'm saying.

About two years ago, I learned a systematic method of doing a literature review. It involved a lot of reading. A year ago, I was so immersed into this reading and trying to synthesize everything I have read into a coherent whole. I found it extremely difficult to synthesize, as my reading transverses many fields, many nations and many styles. I have since given that up. I have stopped reading. And stopped obsessing about knowing enough before I can write. Fair enough, that method was good for a start and exposed me to (almost) everything there was to patriotism. But as for today, I find my reading most strategic and effective, when I begin writing. I agree with Wolcott who says:

"Not surprisingly, I regard my most effective reading as the reading I do while I am engaged in fieldwork and/or preparing a manuscript. Writing gives purpose and focus to searching for new sources and reviewing old ones. It provides pegs on which to hang relevant ideas and a basis for deciding what to retain, what to let go." (p. 18)

Another I learned through writing of manuscripts, was that my real difficulty, while initially was in producing text, but thereafter was really in reducing text. I tend to write too much. I was forced to confront this when the editor raised this issue that there was much text to cut. That episode taught me not to develop an attachment to what I write or how I think, but to be ever read to re-structure and edit, so that what I write would be interesting and easy to understand for a reader. I learned that what I want to say must align with what others want to read. So I also agree when Wolcott says:

"The major problem in writing up descriptively oriented research is not to get but to get rid of data! With writing comes the always painful task of winnowing material to a manageable length, communicating an essence rather than compiling the bulky catalog that would provide further evidence of one's painstaking thoroughness.  The greater one's commitment to letting informants offer their own interpretation of meanings and events - the emic emphasis, as it is referred to in anthropological circles - the greater the proclivity to provide lengthy accounts that dampen the enthusiasm not only of readers but of potential publishers as well. The lengthier the study, the more costly to produce it, and, correspondingly, the greater the risk of it does not attract a wide readership."

Writing as "physical, emotional, and aesthetic labour"

From my heart, I sometimes write snippets about writing on Facebook. But I want a better place to collect them. So I'm gonna add some here. Maybe more to come in the future. This is to remind me that writing is so much more than a technique and a product, it is also a craft and a process.

The difficulty with writing is oftentimes not that I do not have enough ideas but that I have too many, and I have to learn to pick and choose those that I can thread together into a beautiful necklace. This often involves abandoning some of my favorite beads that do not fit the theme of the necklace I'm stringing together. - May 5 2014

Writing is an art. Initially, I approach it with my own bare hands, molding and restructuring it into shape. Towards its completion, I come with a chisel, chipping off bits and pieces to reveal the sculpture. My work has a frame - the word limit. And like an artist, I have put in so much tears, sweat and blood into my work that any criticism is hard to bear. - 7 September 2014

Kamler and Thomson (2014) say that, "Writing is physical, emotional and aesthetic labour... Many scholars carry their scholarship deep in their psyche, bones and muscles. (p. 3)" I think so too. :)

Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2014) Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision (2nd Edition) Florence, KY: Routledge

The courage of a writer

I have good news! The paper that I co-wrote with my supervisor has been accepted for publication!

But you know at this stage when the editor asked me to work on the "writing" which means things like grammar and style... it made me very uncomfortable. Grammar isn't my strength. I felt immense insecurity and sought help from friends.

My insecurities about writing surfaced as well and I was scared. I am afraid that my reader will read my work and spot all my grammatical errors. And other sort of writing and thinking errors.

I think this is the courage that is needed by the writer. The courage to say it, even if you cannot be 100% sure it is correct, even if it's wrong, to say it loud and clear and not be ashamed that you do not know some things or many things. The courage to submit your work, even when you know the work is not perfect, it cannot be perfect and never will be perfect. Because you only have who you are now to do the work, you don't have who you desire to be, who you'd be 10 years later, all the time and help and resources in the world. The courage to put yourself (how you think) out there to be criticized and to allow people to make a judgement on your work.

I find this quotation immensely encouraging at this stage where I ought to be extremely delighted about this good news, yet I feel trepidation.

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." - Aristotle

What this means is that we must not be paralyzed to start, to continue and to complete a work; wherever we are, at whatever stage we are at, in whatever we do. If we have the idea that we must first be of a certain standard before we can start, continue and complete something, we forfeit the experience of learning through the process. Thus, we must not be afraid to make mistakes, to make many of them. Not be afraid to produce substandard work. For this is probably is the only way to master something. And everyone, excluding a few anomalies, will probably start as an amateur and perfect their art and skills along the way.

"Every artist was first an amateur." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I also find comfort in that even established authors still spot errors in their books and still change the way they think and write by writing new editions. (I will not laugh anymore when I spot typo errors in printed books.)

What writing a thesis is like...

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invest your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even write and publish anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if what you write is demonstrably false. The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days' triviality. - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, page 11

 Annie Dillard puts it so well. It is "interesting and exhilarating", "engages all your intelligence" and "life at its most free" yet not that free because we want to produce something for the benefit of not just the writer, but all for his or her audience. :)

Throwing away the beginning of a work

"It is the beginning of a work that the writer throws away... In those early pages and chapters anyone may (p. 5) find bold leaps to nowhere, read the brave beginnings of dropped themes, hear a tone since abandoned, discover blind alleys, track red herrings, and laboriously learn a setting now false... Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared - relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork. But no.

Every year the aspiring photographer bought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the prints and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Every year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length he turned to the young man: "You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?" The young photographer said, "Because I had to climb a mountain to get it." (p. 6)
...
How many books do we read from which the writer lacked courage to tie off the umbilical cord? How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally? (p. 7))"

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1990

The secret to writing a thesis

Gosh. I think I discovered a secret! About ten months ago, as I was writing my research proposal, I got a bit stuck when I was deciding what to include in the key terms that have to be defined. I was also pretty stuck at the literature review section, having to guess what I needed to include there based on what's available in the literature and what my findings would reveal.

But now... After having worked through my ideas through writing new literature reviews, writing articles that form part of my study...

As I am now writing the new "Introduction" section for my thesis, I realized I have a clearer idea what terms I need and do not need to define. I realized that I'm not interested in the concepts of nationalism, chauvinism and that I could collapse a few terms into one overarching term. For example, rather than define blind, authoritarian and loyal patriotism as three separate terms with their nuances, I decided to draw upon the broad similarities of these three terms and named them under one term - loyal patriotism.

As I am now writing the new "Literature Review" section, I have dropped most of the things included in the initial literature review. But now I know I clearly have three sections, related to my three new research questions.  And yes! I finally knew what my boss meant by "the research questions would change." Because mine have! They have increased in complexity as I realized that I could answer higher order questions and not just basic ones with my data.

So the secret is that... Sometimes you just need to go ahead with the research even when you are unclear about things and don't know where it leads. Because, these answers would come up to you along the journey. If you allow your fears of the unknown and of uncertainties to stop you from progressing forward, you might hinder all the accidental discoveries that come along the way and which would lead you to the destination! :)

So friends, don't be afraid, just move ahead!

"Your 20s are about having the courage to write a frightful first draft"

I hope to share this snippet from the book "101 secrets for your twenties" by Paul Angone*:

"I think most of us went into our 20s expecting a box office smash, when instead our twentysomething story is not even going to make it to the theaters. At least not yet.

As a writer, I used to be bummed about all the time and effort I spent writing hundreds of pages that would never see the light. But as I grew as a writer I learned that you have to write a lot of really atrocious first drafts before you can find the story you need to tell.

Our 20s are the same way. For many years it will be about getting words down on paper that we'll edit later. Plans will fail because that's part of Frightful First Draftdom. But five rewrites later, we'll lean back and say, "Wow, that's actually not too bad."

We have to be willing to allow ourselves to write some terrible first drafts.

You can't have a good story without a good struggle."

*Angone, P. (2013) 101 secrets for your twenties. Kindle edition. (Learned the importance of doing citations when I was asked for the reference for a quotation I quoted on this blog a few years ago but because there was no citation, I had no idea where I got it from!)