Improving my writing Part I: Exploring Fear in the Writing Process
I am always looking for ways to improve my writing. Part of the problem is my tendency to underestimate my own abilities, second-guess myself, and generally over-analyze. In the process I make myself pretty spooked about writing major papers that have major consequences for my life. I have come to realize that fear which might be surrounding an activity or a goal is the key factor that deters success. When the fear is eliminated or was never there in the first place, the activity (no matter how challenging or large) becomes a fun process.
I have been trying to develop strategies to avert or conquer my fear surrounding writing. I know that when fear is gone, I will be able to have fun and actually enjoy the process much more without that overlying dread. I really want to consistently enjoy writing; it’s such a big part of my life. So far I love learning, researching, thinking and interpreting in the writing process, but the actual writing part is sometimes terrifying. Of course this depends on the topic sometimes – if I’m really excited about a certain topic I will be able to launch myself right into it. But more often than not with important endeavours, I experience this.
This fear in writing makes me procrastinate. I will, however, research voraciously and seek to stay in the comfort zone where I am having fun learning and formulating my thoughts about the topic. The actually writing down of my thoughts, structuring them effectively to support my argument, is the process infused with fear.
I wanted to share with you a few strategies I have been working with in recognition of this issue.
1) I have set up an Early Deadline system to deal with the procrastination from fear. I ask several people if they would be willing to edit a draft of this important paper, then I make an appointment with them approximately one week in advance of the deadline and put it into my calendar. While I still may be afraid and procrastinate, I will procrastinate to the early, safe deadline. Then I can actually have a workable draft to make changes to long before it is due.
This has been working really well, but I am still trying to find ways to actually eliminate the fear at its source. What is it that I’m afraid of when I write something important?
- That I will sound stupid, intimidation in thinking I will not write as well as some of the major researchers in the field.
- I’m afraid of the difficulty of shaping a well-structured argument out of something very complex and multifaceted.
- That I won’t be able to come up with anything original.
2) I learned how to begin to deal with this issue by reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s a book devoted to helping people either revive creativity they’ve lost, or for those who do not feel they are creative to be able to find that kernel within them. It’s extremely effective in proposing strategies that help you to reconnect with yourself, and generally free the mind of surface worries to have the room to explore other parts of yourself. Julia proposes the habit of writing Morning Pages. The idea is that every morning you write 3 pages of whatever you would like. What you’re thinking, what you’re worried about, anything at all that ends up coming out. This takes a long time, and if you’re as busy as I am you end up getting less inhibited as you write in a stream of consciousness style to make it go a little faster. The key to this activity is that you do not censor yourself at all.
The Morning Pages made a big difference in my life. They gave me an excuse to write freely without worries about perfection or whether I was ‘sounding intelligent enough’ or ‘funny enough’ or whatever high expectations I normally have for my writing. I ended up feeling much more connected to who I am through this process, and in the long term, it was what made me realize I need to go to Graduate school next year. I am really grateful that I was finally able to make that decision and instinctively feel it’s the right choice.
After doing the morning pages for a few weeks, I noticed that when I went to write a review for a local art exhibit, instead of typing out my ideas I was drawn to write with pen and paper – since I was used to writing freely this way, I found the thoughts flowed much more easily and were very well developed. It helped me brainstorm and write the final review. The activity of writing every day makes it seem much less of a huge, scary process, and much more just a simple way of expressing thoughts. Once you’ve written something, anything, it can always be edited and improved through a revision process. The important part is the brainstorming that comes through writing freely and without censorship.
So far, it looks like blogging will be another way in which I can make writing a more natural, daily and fun process. The first few entries were a little rough, I was censoring myself too much and feeling worried about how the writing would appear published virtually in the blog space. But I did read this great article by Amy Gahran about how to “Blog Without the Time Sink.” She suggests that effective blogging comes from treating it like a process for “research, notetaking, and communication.” Your blog then becomes a kind of “backup brain” or “public notebook,” which functions doubly as an archive for your ideas which is then searchable to benefit your own research.
While I will be posting a part two to this entry, taking the cue from Amy Gahran I am also going to be blogging on my own research I’ve been doing for my Canadian Graduate Scholarship proposal on the topic of web 2.0 and the art world. I have found some rich resources at the library and have lots of interesting questions coming up. So far I’m still in the extremely messy notetaking stage of research…
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