How Blogging Improves My Academic Writing

I never thought I’d say it, but blogging has improved my academic writing.

Before I began blogging in the spring of 2015, my academic writing committed every sin of bad writing. I used big words with zeal. I stuffed my wordy sentences full of nominalizations. I bloviated egregiously.

I felt justified in my pedantry, assuming that academic writers needed to sound smart to be considered smart. As a result, my academic writing sounded like a wooden version of myself trying way too hard to impress other people.

When I started blogging, I had no idea that I could write in a different style or that people would read my writing if it were freed of academic linguistic baggage. After almost ten years of (not) learning how to write academic stuff, I was shocked to discover that academic writing is not the only way to write. I’m still in the process of learning how to be a person with a blog and develop my own unique writing style. Through the last year of blogging, I’ve started to develop a writing style that reflects who I really am better than my academic writing voice ever did.

Not only has blogging made me a better writer in general, but blogging has made me a better academic writer. Here (in no particular order) are five changes I’ve noticed in my academic writing since I started blogging.

1. I focus more on telling a good story rather than dragging readers through tedious analysis.

A blog post is not an academic monograph. A blog is not the place to drone on about minutiae. Blog readers are a fickle bunch. They are not a captive audience. If bored, blog readers do not hesitate to find something more interesting to read.  

Blogging often involves telling personal stories or stories about my research. I’m planning to write more posts about my research this year, because I’ve got some good stories to tell. I’m starting to think a lot more about narrative arcs, character development, and plot twists.

But Lisa, isn’t that just writing narrative? Isn’t narrative problematic? What would Michel Foucault say?

Sure. Writing narrative leadsto all of those problems that we spent many graduate seminars discussing. Foucault would likely be either amused or horrified by my writing. As scholars, part of our job is to analyze things. But I reject the idea that history consists solely of dense analysis. I believe that we can tell a good story that teaches us something important about the past in a way that interests people.

Blogging has helped me figure out how to tell better stories. In other words, I try to tell some stories that people care about. 

2. Blogging has helped me think about the reader.

As an academic writer, I rarely considered my readers. I was always so worried about straightening out the argument, sharpening the analysis, or puffing up my ideas with big words. At no point did I wonder what readers thought of my writing.

I’m in the process of turning my dissertation into a book. When I read my academic writing from a few years ago, I cringe. I want to rewrite the entire thing. (And I still might.) I’m looking at it thought the eyes of a reader now. I see where I’m droning, boring, or confusing the reader.

When I blog, I’m forced to think about readers. I want to write stuff that interests other people and provides them a little benefit for having been nice enough read my posts. I consider whether readers will care about what I’m saying. I try to think about what’s in my writing for the reader. I’m working on revising my dissertation with the reader firmly in mind.

3. Blogging has helped me conquer my fear of sharing my (incredibly imperfect) work in public.

I, like lots of academic writers, am mired in a swamp of shame and anxiety about my writing. I always wonder if my ideas are good enough or my writing is up to par. Criticism terrifies me. I often compare myself to mypeers and fret about why they’re so much more published, promoted, and successful. The imposter syndrome sabotages me at every turn. I’m often afraid to share my work with other people.

A few short years ago, I would have rather walked over hot coals than shared my imperfect writing on the Internet.  Evey blog post I’ve ever written has some kind of problem. I usually don’t spot the problems in my posts until long after I’ve posted and the entire world has seen them. There are a zillion typos. Occasionally, I forget to punctuate. Nevertheless, I somehow manage to post week after week. Much to my surprise, no one has told me that my writing sucks.  Nor has the entire sky fallen on my head.

Last year, I sent off a journal article to a peer reviewed journal. I fretted. I freaked out. I worried. My article was far from perfect. I nearly didn’t send it, but then I thought about my blog. Just like I click on the POST button every week, I gathered up all of my courage and clicked SUBMIT, sending my imperfect article the the journal editors. Go team!

4. Blogging (and Twitter) has taught me to communicate complex ideas in simple language.

In addition to developing a clearer writing style on the blog, Twitter has taught me to write in short sentences. There’s no room to bloviate in 140 characters. I have learned to get to the point. I’m reading Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing this week. Klinkenborg argues that there’s no point in writing long sentences until we’ve mastered the art of writing short ones:

You can say smart, interesting things using short sentences. How long is a good idea? (2013, 8)

Because of Twitter and my blog, my academic writing gets to the point much faster these days.

The other great thing is that I’ve stopped hiding behind the pretension of my academic writing. I get to be me on my blog and on Twitter. When I write academic articles now, I use “I” and talk about “we.” I try to talk to readers as if we were having a friendly conversation about my research, using short words and short sentences.

5. Blogging has made my writing more social.

Sometimes people read my blog posts for new ideas to use. Sometimes I use blog posts to think up new ideas. Sometimes a blog post will spark a whole conversation on Twitter. Because blogging involves sharing, my writing and ideas bump up against other people’s. People share and respond in turn. Writing is often lonely, isolating, and difficult, but blogging makes me feel less alone in my writing.

Et voila! Five ways that blogging has helped to improve my academic writing!  

[Photo: Butterfly Pavilion, Westminster, Colorado, 2015]

Writing as Self-Care

True confession: I love reading books about writing far more than I love writing. I read them in hopes of becoming a productive writer with little or no effort on my part. Much to my disappointment, books about becoming a productive writer always repeat the same boring advice: make a writing schedule and stick to it.

For many years, I thought I was somehow exempt from this advice, like it applied to everyone else but me. “Writing schedules are for people who struggle with writing,” I’d think to myself with no small sense of smugness. I congratulated myself for not being one of Those People. As I found out much later, it’s true what they say: denial is one hell of a drug. Yes, I wrote regularly, but only when forced to crank out pages because of non-negotiable deadlines and serious feelings of guilt and shame. To stave off panic, I wrote in frantic binges that left me exhausted. And then I wouldn’t write again for days or weeks because I told myself that I needed to “take some time off” to recover. I rationalized that creativity and brilliance couldn’t possibly be forced, but would instead strike me like lightening at just the right moment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, little writing was accomplished.

I wish I’d read a few books about writing and the importance of making a schedule and sticking to it while I was still in grad school. This week I’m reading Paul J. Silvia’s book, How to Write a Lot. In his book, he argues that people who write a lot do so by writing a lot. If this sounds like the same boring obvious advice given in so many books on academic writing, it is because it is. This is exactly the kind of advice that I didn’t want to hear and yet should have heeded. I was always somehow hoping that academic writing would involve something other than writing on a regular basis. I think I was hoping that thinking a lot about writing would equal actual writing.

When I’ve tried to make a schedule, I often find that I flagrantly disregard my own rules. The problem, of course, is that even I don’t respect my own writing time. Other people do not respect my writing time, either. People will want to hold meetings. Students will want office hours. Friends will want to have coffee. I attempt to help people and take care of their needs, congratulating myself on my altruism while ignoring my writing.

I know that to be a productive writer, I need to write. However, lots of people (including me) still seem to expect to write a lot by not writing. I was thinking this week about WHY it is actually so incredibly difficult to follow the simple advice to schedule writing.

I’m sure that there are lots of reasons why we find it hard to stick to writing schedules. For me, sticking to a writing schedule is difficult because it requires me to prioritize myself. I confess that the idea of making myself my own highest priority often feels foreign.

I know lots of people who struggle to make themselves their own biggest priorities in life. Life includes all kinds of people and things that need our care and attention. Nevertheless, I think academics in particular struggle with prioritizing themselves and their own writing. We put other people, their projects, and their priorities above our own. Academic lore is full of stories and anecdata about busy people who take care of everyone but themselves. I think of grad students I knew who always came to seminars with huge dark circles under their eyes from not sleeping. I know professors who don’t eat regularly. I know academics who are too exhausted to write. We go without sleep, we don’t take breaks, we work to the point of exhaustion. Who has time to prioritize themselves, let alone their writing?

Keeping in mind the idea that to write a lot one must write a lot, I’ve started to try to change how I think about writing. In the past, I thought of academic writing as a mundane and boring chore. I decided instead to try to think of writing as a form of self-care. I’m now scheduling self-care time into my day. My current morning self-care routine includes exercise, meditation, and my own writing. I try to remind myself to view my scheduled self-care time as something sacred. It is time for me alone. It is my time to think, reflect, take care of myself, and write to create something new that has never existed before. I’m trying to throw out the idea of churning out X number of words per day or meeting page limits. Even if I only write for fifteen minutes, I make it a point to congratulate myself for taking care of myself in one more way.

Writing feels so much better when I think of it as a way to take care of myself as opposed to a chore. The best part is that I’m actually getting more writing done than ever.   

[Photo: Sedona, Arizona, 2011]

Twelve Week Article: FINISHED!

I’m taking a break from doing the happy dance around my house to write this post. I’m doing the happy dance because I JUST SUBMITTED MY TWELVE WEEK ARTICLE!

I’m so thrilled! Now I only have to wait six to nine months for the initial decision from the editors. (Seriously, the academic publishing pipeline is bananas. But that’s probably another post.) In that time, I could probably pump out two or three more articles. In fact, I might. I have other decaying drafts of conference papers and article drafts that I could revise into publishable articles.

I put the finishing touches on my article this week. I converted all of the footnotes to endnotes. I changed all of the American spellings into British English. I proofread one more time, even though I am to the point where I can’t even see my own mistakes any more.

Is my twelve week article perfect? Far from it. I should have revised for six more months. The article lacks a coherent conclusion. I don’t think I made my main point clearly. I’m not sure my evidence supports my argument. The part of my article where I connect the specific to the general feels like a tangential leap, rather than a logical step. I hope that the abstract matches the actual article.

However, I reached a point where I realized that there would be diminishing returns on continuing to revise my article to a state of perfection. I’m glad that I was able to stop the revision process long enough to get brave and click “SUBMIT.”

During the process of writing my article, several things kept me motivated throughout the twelve weeks of writing.

Writing Buddy. My writing buddy has been indispensable, from the early stages of figuring out what my article even about until the crisis a few weeks ago, when I couldn’t figure out how to revise my argument to match my evidence. Making writing social not only improved my productivity, but also helped me to manage anxiety and impostor syndrome. I appreciated having all of Writing Buddy’s help and support.

Blogging. I blogged about the process of writing my article as a way to commit to the full twelve weeks of writing. Once I went public on the blog about my intention to write an article, I had to follow through. Even though only a handful of people read my blog, I didn’t want to be that person who gets bored and quits after the first few weeks. (This blog now has twenty-five posts, a good chunk of which are the twelve week article posts. Twenty-five! This is a new personal record for me. Usually I get bored with blogs after the first three posts.) Blogging about my progress kept me motivated to finish, as well as kept me talking about writing and sharing writing struggles with other people.

Twitter. The Twitterverse, for all of its faults and flaws, is sometimes just brilliant. There are lots of academic writers on Twitter willing to cheer on other writers. I’ve received so much writing support from both close friends and total strangers in my efforts to finish my twelve week article. I was also fortunate to follow (and be followed by!) Wendy Belcher herself. I tweeted her a few questions about journals and writing and she was always willing to answer.

The Spotify Deep Focus Playlist. I only listen to this playlist when I’m editing or writing. I’ve trained myself like one of Pavlov’s dogs: the minute I hear the first few notes, I immediately shift my focus to writing.

Daily writing. Daily writing is absolutely key to writing productivity. I think about how I used to write in the past, in long marathons full of angst and self-recrimination that resulted in little writing. Short daily writing sessions kept so much of my anxiety at bay. I didn’t feel stressed about writing because I was actually doing it. Turns out that writing is the cure for writing dysfunction. Go figure.

Scrivener. I’m using a wonky beta version of Scrivener for Linux (most, but not all features work) and it’s still the best writing solution I’ve found. Trying to work out big structural issues within a Word (or in my case, LibreOffice) document is a nightmare. Scrivener makes writing so much simpler, especially when performing the kind of developmental editing required at the beginning of any article. I made separate texts for each paragraph, which I could then move around and reorder at will. I liked using the snapshot feature, as I could see improvements in my article week by week. I moved my article to LibreOffice only when I was ready to insert Zotero citations.

Letting go of perfectionism. My article is imperfect. I got a bit tangled up in some theory-dense stuff that had me performing mental gymnastics. I’m not convinced that what I wrote makes sense. Nevertheless, after I clicked the big SUBMIT button, I felt elated, yet vulnerable. I’m terrified that the reviewers will be mean to me and tell me that my article is dumb. I’m doing a lot of meditation about letting go these days. Lately, when I meditate, I focus my awareness on the process of of letting go any feelings about my article. I am not my article. My article is not me.

The best part is that I have a few friends who want to work through the twelve week article writing early next year! I’m already planning my next article. I’d also like to teach the twelve week article method in the future. In the meantime, I’m off to new writing adventures, including turning my dissertation into a book that people might actually enjoy reading.

[Photo: Gates Pass at Sunset. Tucson, Arizona, 2014.]