Writing is the life-blood of research and scholarship. Regardless of your field, your career path, or the type of work you produce, your success depends on your ability engage multiple audiences with your writing. Writing, of course, is never easy. It is made more difficult, though, by the fact that with all the writing you do as a student, you often forget to be a writer. Some thoughts, then, on being a writer (and not just writing).
So what’s the difference writing and being a writer? Writing is the actual product of words, images, or symbols on a page or “page” that conveys information, reports findings, argues for interpretations, or constructs entire new worlds for audiences. To be focused on writing is to be focused on producing an end product, and getting done. Someone once said that it’s not writing that we enjoy, it’s the feeling of being done writing that we enjoy. Of course, we have to produce writing and we have to get done. The dissertation has to be written and the article has to be submitted. When I was a student here, I was told that the secret to getting published is to write. The wisdom in this obvious statement is subtle—if you want your work out there, you have to put it out there, consistently and persistently.
So, producing is critical, but that’s not the entire story or even the most important part of the story when it comes to writing well. The missing element for most of us is learning how to be a writer. Being a writer means moving beyond writing as simply a means of conveying information to cultivating the source of that writing—you. Being a writer means paying attention to the practice of writing, what it takes physically and mentally to get writing done, and developing the habits and mind sets that will give you the best chance to get your writing done. Ultimately, you will have to develop your own best routines and understanding of how you are a writer, but I humbly offer bits of wisdom I’ve learned from other writers, my students, and my own ongoing struggles.
The first bit is exemplified by the best title I’ve ever seen for a book on writing: One Continuous Mistake. Written by Gail Sher, a Zen Buddhist psychotherapist, the book explores the different ways in which writing is a practice. That is, it requires daily cultivation, a consistent practice, and the development of habits. And, as the title suggests, the most important habit is persistence. Writing is one continuous mistake not because you consistently get it wrong. It is a continuous mistake because as you write you will generate many more concepts and ideas than you can use. Each idea and concept generates a path that you have to follow to find out if it will work. This takes time and mental energy, so you have to cultivate that practice of making mistakes and learning from them.
Along with taking time, working through the different paths your writing generates requires you to make choices and to commit. To be a writer is to commit, in public. One of the most difficult aspects of writing is cutting perfectly good sentences, paragraphs, and even entire pages or chapters. Cutting and revising are not only difficult because it feels as if you are undoing hard earned work. Revising is difficult because it is a process of declaring what you are committed to and therefore what you will be accountable for. One of the scariest things about writing is that someone will actually read it and respond, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can amend, modify, add to, recant, or proudly defend what you wrote, but you cannot change the fact that you wrote it. As soon as it is in print, you have committed to it and are now responsible for it. In all my writing classes, this is the first thing we confront. I have found that a very effective way to do this is to ask folks to bring to class, in writing, a statement or position that they are willing to defend in public. The clarity that comes from this often gives them a focus and sense of purpose that gets them through the challenges of writing.
Learning from mistakes and making commitments as a writer are very challenging psychologically. And it is no surprise that much of the challenge of writing is psychological. But, perhaps the most important insight I’ve learned about being a writer is that writing is physical—it is its own form of manual labor. I can vividly remember talking to a good friend after a long day of working on my dissertation and telling him that I was exhausted. He asked me why I was so tired, because all I had been doing was writing. Because writing is one of the most intensely intellectual activities we do, we forget that it is not just our minds that are engaged. Writing is physically demanding. This means that being a writer requires you to take care of yourself physically. Understanding that writing is physical can be very helpful in overcoming some of the challenges of writing. I run, and I’ve noticed that in the same way that the beginning of a run can be sluggish and challenging, the beginning of a writing session can be sluggish. But, by the same analogy, if I persist through the sluggishness, I can find a rhythm in my writing and be productive (most of the time).
Finally, an essential part of being a writer is being willing to claim that you are a writer. I recently ran into a student who took my class several years ago. I asked her, with some nervousness, what she had ultimately gotten out of my class. She talked about some of the models and frameworks, but then she said that more than anything else she learned that she did not need any one else’s permission to be a writer. If she wanted to be a writer, she simply had to start writing, sending the writing out, and joining the conversation. Indeed, no one will give you permission. No one needs to. You simply declare yourself a writer. Next time someone asks you what you do, be sure you tell them that along with everything else you do that you are a writer. Whether or not you get paid for your writing per se is irrelevant. You are a writer, and writers write.
by Tommy Darwin, February 2008
