Fragmentation [or segmentation?] of Time

The bad news about time management in the academic setting is that it is very fragmented, broken up by interruptions of classes and meetings, emails and grading. Many people don't have four or five straight hours each day in which there is nothing else scheduled.

The good news is that you only need 1-3 hours a day for your writing. You can schedule writing the same way as anything else. Instead of seeing time as fragmented, broken up into unusable shards, take control yourself and break it into usable segments. One of the worst excuses is that "I only have 15 minutes, so I can't get any writing done." 15 minutes is long enough to run a spell check, to look over a few sentences, and to maintain continuity on a project.

I am proctoring the PhD exam tomorrow. That will let me get three hours of my own writing done.

Ruthlessness

By ruthlessness I do not mean an attitude of cruelty or hostility to the world or toward other people. You need only be ruthless toward your typical excuses, or the typical non-productive habits that you let yourself fall into. Be unsparing with your self-justifications. Call bullshit on yourself.

*I can't write today because I'm tired / sick / burnt out.

*because it's a teaching day.

*because I got so much done yesterday.

*because I'm not inspired.

*because I have to save up energy for tomorrow.

*because it's not close enough to the deadline for me to feel any sense of urgency.

You see, I already know all your excuses. My Stupid Tricks have a lethal effect on them. You only have your had habits to lose so what are you afraid of?

Grasshoppers and Ants

This article talks about the two styles of writing, one the steady plugging away of the ant, and the other the last minute before the deadline cramming of the grasshopper.

The author of the article is almost apologetic about being the ant. I have a bit of different perspective on this, as you might imagine.

I don't see these as two personal styles, suited to two classes of individuals. I am going to be extremely dogmatic here and say that the grasshopper model is vastly inferior, and inferior for every single individual. You can get away with meeting deadlines at the last minute for a while. You might even meet all your deadlines, but you will still a slave to deadlines and will only get a minimal amount done. For example, you might get all your book reviews done, all your conference papers prepared, but what about the long-term projects? How do those get written? The ant is going to outproduce the grasshopper 100% of the time, because it is not going to let external deadlines be the driving force for productivity. That is about the worst fucking thing you can do.

Even a Bad Writing Session Is Good

The other day I was writing in the morning, as is my custom. I had a cold and wasn't concentrating very well and I am sure I was only a shadow of my usually brilliant self.

Yet this "bad" writing session was still a good one. My manuscript grew by three or four hundred words. I generated some ideas I could develop later. Moreover, I maintained my continuity in working on the project.

One of the most amazing things I have learned from my own Stupid Motivational Tricks is that there is no such thing as a bad writing session. The writing does not care how you are feeling, it just needs to keep on getting written. The "bad" sessions just get averaged in with all the mediocre, so-so, pretty good, not bad, and kick-ass sessions, with the overall result being a wonderfully productive week or month or year of writing.

So if you don't feel so hot. If you feel uninspired and mediocre, that is an excellent time to not skip your writing. It might be even more important to write on those days than on the days when conditions are propitious.

In Which I Kick Ass

I've decided to go back to one of my best and most ruthless techniques, the Seinfeld Chain, in which I write on the calendar every day the number of consecutive days I have been writing. I am just going to write every day, with no more excuses. Already, on the second day, I had an extraordinarily productive session.

Where I Draw Creativity From

Tanya has some keen remarks about creative energy. Scholarship is a creative enterprise, it calls into existence ideas that never existed before, or at least new configurations of ideas. (I don't mean, here, scholarship that tries too hard to be "creative." Or that thinks of creativity in terms of over-clever gimmicks. That rarely works.)

So then I asked myself, where do I draw my creativity from?

1. In the first place, from primary texts of literature that I have close at hand. I want my literary criticism to be up to the level of those works themselves, or at least to be creatively engaged with them. The creative energy should flow from the poetry itself into the criticism of poetry.

2. Secondly, from the practice of memorizing and reciting texts. This allows poetry to flow through me as I speak. I become a kind of medium.

3. Music.

4. Art.

5. Nature.

6. Exercise and meditation.

7. Smart friends with whom I can talk about my research interests. The company of people who esteem me.

8. The practice of writing everyday (or almost), which allows the creativity to happen in a confined space and time.

I don't tend to derive creative energy from other people's scholarship. It could happen, but often reading academic writing drains me of energy rather than inspiring me. I still have to do it. I don't derive a lot of energy from teaching, though I enjoy it. Once again, that tends to drain me.

I think if you can figure out what gives you energy and what tends to diminish it, for you personally, you will be able to figure out what you need to do to continue to harness that creative energy.

Mirth

Today we have 8 people in the writing group here at the aptly named Mirth café. I added more than 1,000 words to my project ADLB. (Another damned Lorca book), also known as Lorca: modelo para armar, in 2 1/2 hours. The place is loud and the chairs uncomfortable. We hardly speak to one another. Yet it is a great way to write.