Notes from the Study

Have you ever had this happen? The conditions are perfect. The day yawns and stretches out before you open, exactly the type of day you have waited for in order to begin writing. Perhaps it’s raining outside and there’s no temptation to brave the bad weather, so, instead, you sit down at your perfectly empty desk, which I imagine is a nice, modern airy but substantial walnut desk, completely cleared of clutter, perfectly reflecting both the openness of the day and the openness of your mind to spending the day writing. On the desk is a stack of clean, empty paper, perhaps lined, perhaps gridded, perhaps perfectly blank, you decide, and at the center of the desk sits one fresh sheet and a perfectly full fountain pen in some dignified color, let’s say a nice a nice burgundy or perhaps a deep forest green. You gather your books or whatever you need, flick on a lovely art nouveau, glass desk lamp, and now…

It often happens that the seemingly most perfect days for writing are exactly the days I can’t seem to get started writing, and when this happens I have one particular hack to begin. Usually if I’m struggling on a perfectly open writing day to write it is reflective of some sort of anxiety I have regarding writing, probably something to do with the negative reinforcement of what I see or believe to be unsuccessful days of writing in the past. These days loom over my shoulder, whispering anxieties into my ears even though the day itself is ideal for a bit of writing. Every minute that passes without a word written, or as the crossed out words pile upon my once clean, beautiful page, an increasing weight seems to press down on my shoulders. Or, perhaps I haven’t even sat down at my desk at all. Maybe I’ve buried myself in a book, afraid to even step near my desk, or maybe I’ve found some perfect task like re-organizing my desk in order to avoid the inevitable.

This occurred often enough during my dissertations that I developed a method for dealing with what I identified as writing anxiety and my method is to take that first sheet of paper and for one page just write down all the fear and anxiety that is holding me back. I use the free writing method here, so, I sit down with the paper and whatever pops into my mind I begin writing it down until I reach the bottom of the page. Usually what surfaces is fear that I’m not prepared enough to write in various guises and forms, but something interesting happens about halfway down the page my mind shifts from dread to problem solving and usually the second half of the page I spend writing down what I want to accomplish and how I think I am going to be able to do so. I move fairly seamlessly from anxiety to problem solving and while that first page is unrelated to my project in the sense that I was not writing my dissertation, this method became a part of my process, the way I successfully turned fear and dread into a plan within about fifteen minutes, and, in the process, I trapped all of those anxieties on the page and left them behind for the day.

Once I write this page I usually realize that the important part of drafting that day isn’t to get something perfect and it isn’t to know every resource or have all the research before I start writing. My goal, on that first draft, is to discover what I think and what I have to say about the subject I am approaching. So, if you’re struggling to get started on a writing project, whether academic or otherwise, I strongly recommend try free writing for five to fifteen minutes, and when that is done perhaps you too will feel more prepared to begin writing, even if the setting is imperfect. Perhaps your dorm room is cold and sterile, or you don’t like the furniture in your apartment, or maybe you don’t even have a desk, or you have to write on the train on your commute or in the fifteen minutes before going to teach or attend a class, even or especially in these circumstances I find a free write about writing helps to focus me on my task and get me in the right frame of mind, and if you’re like me perhaps you can use your imagination to change your less than ideal surroundings into exactly where you dream of writing while you’re at it.

Do you have any questions about writing that you would like me to answer? Let me know in the comments below, and, of course, tell me about the dream writing space that you imagine.