Start Writing and Don’t Stop

Do you have a writing project that you can’t seem to get moving on? Is there an article you need to finish, a short essay you need to begin, or page proofs you must attend to?

We all have different relationships with our writing, and most people have at least one kind of writing they find harder than other kinds. In this post, I will discuss one strategy that will help you to finish that very project that seems interminable.

The strategy I suggest is to find 20 to 30 minutes a day each weekday to dedicate to the project. (Or, try using a pomodoro timer.) When the time comes to work on it, turn off all distractions. Turn off your phone. Cut off the Internet. Put all of your reading material away. Open the document and work on it for 20 to 30 minutes.


Do not stop before 20 minutes are up for any reason. Well, anything that is not a real emergency, like a fire alarm. If, while writing, you realize you need a reference, or need to double-check a piece of information, or need to go back to your data, do not stop to check anything. Instead, make a note to yourself about that and find something else to do in the document that does not require fact-checking.

If you get stuck on a word choice, put down both words. You can make stylistic and grammatical changes later. There is no need to stop to check the thesaurus.

Don’t stop to check your data or to fix your tables. Just keep going and make a note to yourself.

Don’t stop for anything. It is only 20 to 30 minutes, and nearly all phone calls, emails, visitors, and even bathroom breaks can wait.

If you dedicate just 20 to 30 minutes to your writing project, you will be surprised to see how quickly you are able to move it along.

When you are nearly done, or when you find yourself with more time and less resistance, you may be able to take a longer writing session to tie things up. You can also use longer writing sessions to go back and check your references, make word choice changes, and fix your tables.

Concentrated, short writing sessions are often the best time to produce new prose, as this process takes lots of mental energy. By working on your project every day, with whatever time you have available, the ideas around the project will percolate in the back of your mind throughout the day, making it easier to get back in the saddle and begin to write again when the time comes.

Ready, Set, Write!

Reflection, Creativity, and the Writing Process

Writing, even academic writing, requires creative energy. As writers, we have to be mindful of protecting and nourishing our creative energies. If not, we risk burnout and serious drops in productivity. Writing well requires practice, but also knowing when to stop.

A few months ago, a friend called me up and said, “Tanya, today, when I was on the treadmill at the gym, I had this fabulous idea!” Does that resonate with you? Do you often have great ideas for writing projects when you are not writing or trying to write? I certainly do.

In fact, this has happened to me so many times recently that I feel compelled to write about it on this blog.

I spent the winter break in Hawai’i, and made a point of walking along the beach every day. I had one of the most important epiphanies about my book project during one of those long beach walks. Here’s what happened. I woke up early and listened to the recording of an amazing oral history of Mateo – one of the deportees in Guatemala whom I had interviewed. As I listened to Mateo’s interview, I became enthralled with the richness of his story. I realized that this was the kind of rich data I was looking for. Not every interviewee has the trust or narrative ability to tell this kind of narrative, but Mateo did. I was particularly struck by his story of how he left Guatemala at the age of ten – alone! – to travel through Mexico and eventually to the United States. As I listened, I recalled other border-crossing narratives and thought to myself that it would be awesome to put Mateo’s story with others. After lunch, while walking along the beach, it became clear to me how I could put those narratives together into a chapter. I then had another epiphany – this one about how I could frame my book on deportees.

I have been struggling for months over how I want to frame the book, and, while walking along the beach, it became clear to me that I could structure the book as a narrative about the migration journey, using different stories to fill in the pieces. It sounds simple, but it was huge to me to finally be able to see how I could structure the book. Without a big idea, I felt stuck in the project.

The point is: the idea came to me when I was not writing, when I was walking along the beach. Since then, I have worked out two other minor writing challenges during my daily walks. These situations have taught me two important lessons:

1. It is important to make space in each day for reflection. Creativity is much less likely to happen if we don’t open up the space for it.
2. Creativity happens when we are engaged with our projects on a daily basis. The ideas occurred to me when I was not writing or attempting to write, but they happened after I had spent time working on the projects.

One of the beautiful beaches in Hawai'i where I walked, and reflected

For me, walking is an obvious way to build time for reflection into my life. What about you? How and when do you find time for reflection?

How to Be Productive by Writing Two Hours a Day

You can be extraordinarily productive by writing two hours a day, five days a week. I know because I practice daily writing and it works.

Many writers find the suggestion to write for two hours every day ludicrous and instead aim to write eight hours a day. Unable to write for eight hours, they berate themselves and spend lots of time thinking how much less productive they are than other writers.



I have tried many different ways of convincing writers that it is much better to write for two hours a day and move on to other things than to try incessantly to write all day without success. The former leads to feeling accomplished and productive on a daily basis, whereas the latter leads to burnout and less productivity. It may not make sense, but it is true: writing for two hours a day is a much more effective long-term strategy than trying to write for eight.

In 2007, I was lucky enough to have a post-doctoral fellowship that involved very few responsibilities. This seems like an ideal situation for someone who wants to write and be productive. I showed up to my office every day and tried to write for as long as I could. Usually I would burn out by lunch time. Other days, I would intend to write, yet find myself surfing around on the Internet or staring at the wall.

I decided to try to write for just two hours a day. It worked, and my writing projects began to move forward. However, I always had this sneaking feeling that I should be trying to write more. With 24 hours in the day, how could I dedicate just two to writing? One week, I decided to try and write as much as possible. I hammered out a full conference paper in one week by writing four to six hours a day. The next week, I showed up at my office on Monday and had trouble getting started. After a few minutes of writing, my mind began to wander and  I found myself surfing the Internet. That week went much less well than the previous one. My experiment taught me that I need to be mindful of my limits. If I over-extend my brain, it won't work as well the next week. I went back to writing two hours a day, and only try to write for three to four hours on an emergency basis.

Last year - 2011 - I wrote for two hours a day, Monday to Friday, for most of the year. I'd venture a guess that I did this about 46 of the 52 weeks during the year.

During the Spring 2011 semester, I wrote every day, Monday to Friday, for two hours. I did lots of different things during those two hours, but I mostly drafted new text, revised old drafts, and took notes from books and articles. Between January 1 and May 1, in four months, I drafted a total of about 42,000 words of new text. A large chunk of that writing - 25,000 words - was the first draft of my third book: Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in the United States. 

It took me about 80 working days to write 42,000 new words, an average of about 525 words a day. Keep in mind that these 42,000 words were very rough drafts, and that I spent much of the remainder of the year revising these drafts. Nevertheless, by December 2011, my third book was in press and the remainder of those words (an article and a book chapter) were under review. Thus, even if I did not write any new text after May 2011, and only revised what I had written, this would have been a productive year.

During the Summer, I did spend a lot of time revising, and also wrote a small amount of new text. I wrote and/or revised for two hours a day for at least two months during the summer. By the end of the summer, I had written about 8,000 new words. In addition, I finalized and revised the short book that I drafted in the Spring, and completed a "revise and resubmit" from a journal. I also analyzed and coded some of my interviews.

During the Fall Semester, I also wrote two hours a day, every day, Monday to Friday, most of the time. There were a few exceptions when I was traveling, but I tried to make up for it. The Fall semester was not as productive as the Spring. In all, I wrote about 21,000 new words. I did not write as many new words as in the Spring because I spent quite a bit of time revising, in addition to taking notes, reading, and preparing and delivering ten presentations.

During AY 2011, then, I wrote about 70,000 new words. I almost never wrote more than two hours a day. There were also very few weekdays when I did not write. The major exceptions are during July when I took a two-week vacation and December when I took another two-week vacation from writing. Taking vacations allows me to maintain my equilibrium, renew my creativity, restore my energy, and continue to be productive.

If you focus on writing every day, you can’t help but be productive. Trying to write more than humanly possible will lead only to frustration and burnout. The best way to be productive and stress-free is to write every day for two hours a day on a consistent basis.

For me, the rewards are clear. The short book I drafted during Spring 2011 will be released in Spring 2012: Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in the United States

Ten ways To Write Every Day

If you have been following my advice and writing every day this semester, congratulations! If you haven't, ask yourself "why not?" If you need some ideas on how to actually write every day, then this post is for you!

“Write every day” is fabulous advice. But, how do you actually do it? That was my question for a long time before I convinced myself to give it a try. Now that I have been writing every day for five years, I can share with you a few ways to make that possible, and explain to you why I wake up each weekday morning and write.

Why you need to write every day

I decided I needed to try to write every day when I found out that scholars who write daily and hold themselves accountable write nearly ten times as much as others! In Robert Boice’s article, he explains the virtues of writing every day. Boice describes a study where he divided new faculty into three groups and recorded their writing productivity:

• The first group did not change their writing habits, and continued to write occasionally in big blocks of time; in one year they wrote an average of 17 pages
• The second group wrote daily and kept a record of their writing; they averaged 64 pages
• The third group wrote daily, kept a daily record, and held themselves accountable to someone weekly; this group's average was 157 pages (Boice 1989:609). 

Once I read those findings, I was convinced I should at least try daily writing.

How to write every day

After deciding I needed to write every day, my greatest challenge was to figure out what it meant to write every day. I asked myself, "What counts as daily writing?" To find out, I dove in and tried to write every day. I joined an online writing accountability group where I could record my writing progress and talk to other daily writers about the practice.

Eventually, I came to realize that writing means a lot of things and that there are lots of ways to write every day. Daily writing works for two reasons: 1) It ensures you are moving forward with your writing projects. 2) It keeps you engaged with your writing. Thus, any activity that accomplishes these two goals counts as daily writing.

Here are ten ways you can write every day:

1. Write on a blank page
2. Line-edit something you have already written
3. Restructure a paper that you have been working on
4. Pull together pieces of older documents you have written into a new paper
5. Check references and footnotes for accuracy
6. Outline or mind-map a new project
7. Summarize or take notes on something you have read recently that might be relevant to present or future research projects
8. Make a revision plan for a rejected article or a “revise and resubmit”
9. Make tables, figures, graphs, or images to represent visually concepts or trends in a paper
10. Create an After-the-fact or Reverse Outline

If you think of writing as only #1): Write on a blank page, it will be hard to do that every single day. However, it you are open to other kinds of writing, it will be possible to do at least one of these kinds of writing every day.

I try to do at least two kinds of writing each day, starting with the blank page in the morning. I am at my best early in the morning. That is my prime time. I use those early, fresh moments of the day to free-write and to create new material. Once I run out of steam, I might turn to editing something I have written or to checking references. If I get stuck, I will pull out a mind map and brainstorm ideas.

My routine each weekday, then, is to begin the day with writing or writing-related tasks. On a good day, I can concentrate for two hours. Usually, however, my mind drifts after an hour, so I take a break to check email or have some coffee, and put in another hour after my break. I keep track of the time I have spent working on writing so that I can be proud of my accomplishments, and so that I know when I need to stop.

I know that many academics reject as ridiculous the idea that one could or should write every day. To them, I would gently ask if they have ever tried it. And, I would add that it is not only important to try writing every day, but to commit to trying it for at least a month to see if it works for you. It is also important to have others to whom you are accountable and with whom you can share your struggles.

If you do try writing every day, let me know how it goes! If you are a seasoned daily writer, let me know why you keep it up!