Thursday 23 January 2014

How to Get in the Writing Zone

I write every weekday, and I think that this is the key to my writing productivity.

People sometimes ask me how I can get in the writing zone every single day. After having written every day for the past several years, writing has become a habit. I no longer need to get in the zone, as writing is habitual for me.

However, it is also true that there are a few strategies that I practice that enhance my clarity and make it easier to get in the writing zone. In this blog post, I will share a few of these strategies with you. I also will challenge you to try these strategies for two weeks to see if you are able to develop a writing habit.



Are you struggling with writing consistently? If so, try and implement these strategies, adjusted for the particularities of your schedule:

  • Make a writing plan for the week. Decide exactly what writing projects you will work on this week. For example: Finalize article and submit to journal. Finish literature review for Chapter Three.
  • Break your writing plan down by days, and make specific tasks for tomorrow. For example: Monday: Refine methodology section and add sample details from proposal. Tuesday: Add references on neoliberalism to literature review.
  • At 8pm tonight, turn off all electronic devices: cellular phone, laptop, tablet, television, etc.
  • Find a novel and read it in bed.
  • Sleep by 9pm.
  • Wake up at 5am or 6am.
  • Write for 30 minutes when you first wake up, before checking email or social media accounts.

I know that not everyone has the life circumstances that would permit them to implement this schedule. So, it is not for everybody. However, I will say that having children or a family does not necessarily prevent you from having a similar schedule.

At some point, your children will be old enough to put themselves to bed and to take care of their immediate needs in the mornings. In my house, everyone turns off their electronic devices at 8pm and reads or goes to sleep. My children are old enough to do this on their own. When they were younger, I would read to them, and thus had much less time to read novels that I found interesting.

In these strategies, you will find that I suggest getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep. Nearly everyone needs this amount of sleep in order to function at their highest mental capacity and to have the ability to focus.

I also suggest reading novels, as any writer should read to perfect our craft.

If you think these strategies are feasible for you, I encourage you to try to implement them for two weeks to see if daily writing - and writing before checking your email - can become habits for you.

Let me know how it works for you.

Saturday 14 December 2013

Do You Need to Go on an Information Diet?

Is it possible to have too much information? Could information overload be getting in the way of important tasks?

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I am a professor, a social scientist, and – to some extent – a public intellectual. It thus seems imperative that I keep up on the news. I talk about current events in my classes. I write about immigration policy, which is constantly changing. And, I like to know what’s going on so I can keep apace at bars and cocktail parties. Thus, in many ways, I need to know what is going on in the news so I can be effective at my work.

Even so, I find it useful to cut back on the amount of information coming at me. There are two ways that I have cut back:
  1. Limiting the amount of time I spend on news and social media sites; and
  2. Getting my intellectual work (writing) done before checking email and other websites.

I am convinced that I am a more productive writer when I write before going on social media and email. However, I have to admit it is a constant struggle. That’s why I find a strategy suggested by Dr. Morgan Giddings useful – “the information diet.” This strategy is also suggested by Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet.

I am participating in a “Think Creative, Be Productive” Course offered by Dr. Morgan Giddings. I have only gotten through the first module. But, in that module Giddings offers up a great strategy that she calls an “information diet.” She challenged all of the course participants to cut out or cut back the following sources of (often unnecessary) information:

  • News sites
  • Blogs
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Text messages
  • Phone conversations
  • In-person conversations

Giddings argues that reducing the amount of extraneous information that you permit to come into your mind will allow you to tap deeper into your intuition. If there is less clutter in your mind, you can think more clearly. I certainly agree with that. But, how do you reduce the flow of information?

Giddings is not suggesting that you completely eliminate these sources of information, but that you control how much you take in and control the times that you indulge in them.

I have a family to take care of, so it is not usually the case that I can wake up and walk straight to my computer without talking to anyone in the morning. However, I can avoid the urge to go on the Internet first thing in the morning. I also can make sure that I write for two hours before permitting myself to engage in email, social media, or phone conversations.

I put this strategy into practice this week and was mildly successful.

On Wednesday, I was successful at avoiding all Internet activities before getting in two hours of writing. On Thursday, I did the same. On Friday, however, I thought I would just check a little bit of email while my kids were getting ready for school. They left the house at 8:30am. At 9:30am, I was still on Facebook.

That’s when I turned on my “Self-Control” application and wrote for an hour. Self Control is a free and open-source application for Mac OS that lets you block your own access to particular websites. Once you install it, you can set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites--even if you restart your computer or delete the application. (Check out this list here for other apps that can help you go on an information diet.)

On Friday, I set Self-Control for two hours and was able to avoid distractions for an hour. After an hour, however, I pulled out my phone and got sucked into a Twitter debate.

Lesson learned (again). No Internet in the mornings before writing!

It is not just about the time you save in the morning by not checking email, news sites, and social media. It is also about the mental clarity you are able to sustain. Writing is a tough intellectual exercise, and the more focus and clarity you have, the better you will be at it.

What do you think? Are you ready to go on an information diet? Do you already have self-imposed restrictions? How do you avoid the urge? Does the urge go away with time?


Tuesday 10 December 2013

End of Year Check-In … 2013 is nearly over!

There are many ways a writer can stay motivated.


Setting small goals and meeting them is one example. However, setting big goals also can be helpful.

Setting large goals for the year, for example, can help you to think about the big picture. And, once you meet those goals, it can be useful to think about all you have done so that you can develop motivation to move forward.

Goals

The trick is to set reasonable goals and reasonable expectations for meeting them.

The end of the year is a great time to go back to your big goals and see all that you have accomplished during the year.

As I was looking over what I did for last month, I was a bit down because most of what I did was to continue to revise works in progress. It can be hard to see the progress I am making when all I have to say for November is that I revised a chapter and an article and they are still unfinished.

To pull myself out of that slump, I decided to look at all I have done over the course of 2013. And, it turns out I have some major accomplishments to report.

I have been working on a fifteen-chapter textbook for just about three years. I wrote the first chapter in early 2011 and have been moving forward slowly ever since. This was the year for the final push and I managed to write the final six chapters this year! That is 48,000 new words. In addition, I returned to the reviews and made final revisions on each of the chapters. The final deadline for the textbook revisions was December 6, so the book is now officially in production. The book will be out in August 2014, and I will certainly celebrate that. (If you are curious, I have details about the book here.)

I also have been working on a book on deportees for a while. I completed the interviews in August 2010. I finished going through the transcriptions, writing memos and doing the preliminary analyses of the interviews in January 2011. I have been writing up the chapters ever since. In 2012, I wrote the Introduction and the first three chapters. In 2013, I wrote chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 – four new chapters or about 40,000 words!

In addition to those two books, I have also been working on articles and book chapters for edited volumes. I wrote and submitted one book chapter and one article based on the interviews with deportees. I also wrote a rough draft of another article. Those three pieces overlap somewhat with the book manuscript, but are not exactly the same.

While writing this, I looked back to see what I did in 2012, and my productivity was similar – five textbook chapters and four chapters of the deportee book in addition to a few shorter pieces. It is good to know that I can maintain a consistent writing pace. It is also remarkable to me that my productivity for 2012 and 2013 were so similar. Perhaps I really have found my writing groove! As I mentioned last year, I have been able to accomplish all of this writing by maintaining a consistent writing habit of two hours a day, five days a week.

I find looking back over my accomplishments to be rewarding. It also gives me energy to move forward and keep up momentum for next year.

Now that I am finished with the race textbook, I can focus all of my energies on revising and submitting the book on deportees. There is no doubt that I can be finished with the revisions by Spring 2014. This is fantastic, as I am ready to be done with it!

Once I finish the deportee manuscript, I can work on the three articles I have drafts of. And, then I can move on to my next project!

What about you? Did you make goals for 2013? Have you met them?

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Negotiating an Academic Job Offer: What are the Secrets?

The academic job market is difficult, but people are still getting job offers. When you do get a job offer, how do you negotiate? Should you negotiate? I think the answer is yes and I offer some tips for how to negotiate in this post.

Negotiate this, motherfucker!


For my first job offer, I did not negotiate at all. I had heard I was supposed to negotiate. However, I had no idea where to start or what to ask for. I meekly asked for more moving expenses. The chair said he could not budge on moving expenses. Instead, he offered me $1,000 more in salary and I took the offer.

I had interviewed at another place, yet withdrew from the search before (potentially) receiving an offer. I had heard that I could use a second offer to negotiate, but I feared that I would appear greedy.

It was my first academic job and I was happy to have a job at all. So, I did not negotiate for a better salary.

I am not alone. Only seven percent of women negotiate when they get a job offer, as compared to 57% of men!

After six years in my first job, it became clear that my salary was not competitive. I asked my senior colleagues for advice on how I might get a raise. They told me that the only way to get a raise was to go on the job market and get another offer. So, I sent off three job applications.

One of those applications turned into an interview and then a job offer. The job offer included a significantly higher salary and a substantial amount of perks that I did not have at my then-current position.

Still, I did not want to regret not having negotiated. And, after six years as a professor, I had heard plenty of stories of people getting more resources when they negotiated. So, I decided to ask for more resources in each of the following categories:


  • base salary
  • research funds
  • conference funds
  • equipment funds
  • course releases
  • summer salary
  • moving expenses
  • housing allowance


For each thing I asked for, I gave a justification. When I asked for help with housing, I explained that I would be unlikely to be able to sell my house due to the housing crisis. When I asked for course releases, I said I would use the time to write a grant. When I asked for research funds, I explained what I would do with the money.

I made out my list of requests and accompanying justification, ran it by a few trusted people, and sent it to the Dean.

I didn’t get everything I asked for, but the Dean was willing to give me some of the things I asked for.

What I found interesting about the process is how simultaneously hard and easy it is. It is hard to work up the nerve to ask for stuff. But once you have the nerve to ask for things and know what to ask for, negotiating is remarkably easy. You ask for it and the Dean either says yes or no.

In my case, the Dean said yes to some things, met me halfway on others, and said no to others.

I took the letter back to my university and they offered me a substantial raise, research funds, and course releases. The hard part was making a decision: should I stay at my job with improved resources or should I leave and venture off into unknown territory?

Eventually, I decided to move because the new job and location seemed like the best option for my family and I was ready for something a bit different professionally.

Now that I have the job and the accompanying resources, I am glad I negotiated because I feel like I got the best deal possible. In my first job, I always had that nagging feeling that I should have negotiated.

The important lesson here is that you never know what you will get if you ask, but you can be sure that if you don’t ask, you won’t get anything.