Thoughts in the Margins, Part Two: Treat It Like A Job (Because It Is One)
Second Installment of a Multi-Part Series about Writing Compelling Nonfiction
Why write? Why write academic nonfiction in particular? Why choose the most difficult form of writing? For some, the answer to these questions may be the requirements in their higher education programs, some of which are writing-intensive and necessitate considerable research. For others, there may be a strong desire to write the great American nonfiction book that captures a particular zeitgeist or moment. Still others may have aims to produce journalistic or academic articles that could get published in journals and other publications. Regardless of the motivations, the universal principle to be applied to these various scenarios is simple but essential: treat it like a job, because it is one. Approaching any kind of project that calls for the twin disciplines of skilled research and compelling writing with anything less than a borderline obsession is a mistake and a waste of one’s time. By treating it like a job, this does not mean treating it like that job you hated getting up in the morning and going to. Treat it like the job you always wanted; the job you feel lucky to have.
Something I have told people for many years now, which I began by first telling myself, is this: if you are stressed out about something you once merely dreamed of doing, you’re doing it right. This is a little-discussed fact of life. Stress does not go away, even (and especially) when you find yourself doing those things you fantasized about doing for years before getting the chance (or taking the chance) to go for it. Many successful writers admit to the difficulty of writing, no matter how long they have been doing it. Engaging and charismatic public speakers similarly have bouts of anxiety and nerves prior to giving an important lecture, public talk, or interview. Looking at your article or book as a job, a career, means accepting that there will never be a time when it ceases being challenging or even, at times, difficult. If these things were easy to do, everyone would do them. Instead, many never try in the first place and many others quit before reaching their goal. Seeing it as a process rather than a single moment, a marathon rather than a sprint, a career path rather than a hobby, provides a method and a mindset for embracing the numerous challenges ahead and the patience to endure them as they arise.
When I forecasted the writing of my master’s thesis, which was later reconfigured into my book, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court (published by McFarland & Company), I wrote out a projected timeline from the first week of August to the last week of April the following year. As I designed this schedule of about nine months to write the thesis/book, I had only conducted satisfactory research for two of the ten chapters of the project (the ten chapters were later reformatted for the book into eight chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion). By satisfactory, I mean exactly that, as further research was nevertheless required of the chapters I knew were the closest to being able to be written first. It was only because I had already mapped out the arc of the thesis, however, and had invested time into knowing how many chapters there would be (and what each one would cover) that I was able to make such a projection. The importance of organization, including the pre-planning of content that will be covered in one’s work, is discussed further in Chapter Five (“Organization is Everything”). It will do for now to simply note that in the early stages of writing what became my first published monograph, I was barely in a position to write two of its chapters. Most of the work was in front of me, both the research and the writing. Instead of feeling intimidated by this reality, I had prepared myself to accept and even celebrate the steep climb ahead of me. I was able to do so because of organization, pre-prep work, and seeing the project as an important facet of my career as a writer and historian. Envisioning the project as something closer to a fun but challenging pastime would not have done the trick. Such an attitude and approach may work for some, but for me—and likely for those reading this who have similar aims in mind—nothing less than full, professional-level devotion will get the job done (and again, it is a job).
The reality of approaching your academic nonfiction writing in this way means that rigid and uncompromising goals must be placed upon yourself, but placing such goal-oriented tasks must be done with a level of reasonableness and moderation. What this means is that it does no good to impose expectations upon yourself that are overly demanding and which will facilitate your own failure and disappointment by driving you to quit because you attempted to do too much too soon. The reason to look at a project in terms of a long arc (or, indeed, as a marathon) is for the purpose of reaching realistic yet challenging goals on a regular basis. The more goals you set, and the more you achieve them each day, week, and month, the more it becomes routine and a way of life. One should not try to do all of their research in one go, nor an entire book, article, or chapter. Set goals that will satisfy your level of feeling as though you are making progress as a matter of routine. Overly ambitious goals that don’t reap rewards for an inordinate period of time can be counter-productive and even damaging to your physical and emotional wellbeing. Counter the macro ambition of writing a book or an article with the micro ambition of reaching reasonable daily goals of written pages and/or examined sources. Not only will you be healthier in mind and body by approaching your work this way, but the project itself will be all the better for it.
It should be remembered that it is most certainly possible with research and writing projects to do too much too soon. One minor epiphany that has struck me recently is that ambition and impatience are sister sensibilities. They occupy a similar space. Don’t confuse or conflate your desire to have written a book or a substantial article with the impulse to do it all at once. It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done. View your project, no matter what stage it is in, as a series of building blocks prudently fixed on top of each other and slowly coming together to exemplify a larger vision that you wish to present to the world. Each of those blocks must be carefully constructed, repeatedly re-examined, and stacked with considerable care.
Realistic goals thus facilitate enormous ambitions. For this reason, one of the most important goals to set as a writer is a schedule of when you will write and how many words or pages you will write in a single writing session. It is easy to set such objectives either too high or too low. The importance of setting benchmarks is for them to become standard rules of your process in becoming a productive and consistent writer. No matter what is decided, the consistency of reaching these targets daily is of paramount importance. It is better to know that you will write two or three pages each weekday than it is to write ten pages once and not write again for a month. This exercise of consistency is especially important for those who write nonfiction and thus include substantial research as part of their process. With this in mind, it is also beneficial to establish a schedule for writing that is separate from a schedule devoted to research. These are two very different disciplines that require distinct skills. Approaching them as though they could or should be done in the same way and at the same time is a mistake. Devoting time to one that is completely separate from the other is essential.
As for the process I developed for myself, I separate research tasks and writing tasks into separate weeks. This means that, whenever and wherever possible, I will not research the same week I devote time to writing, and vice versa. This means that I can devote myself to writing, or to research, in one-week blocks. This is at a minimum. It is not at all unusual to devote several weeks to research. The point is that if I am doing research in a given week, then I am not also trying to write. This form of compartmentalization allows for the two tasks to be undertaken separately and on their own merit. The two possess very different challenges and understanding this is valuable. Because research is an ongoing endeavor that requires some discipline by the researcher not only to discern what data may be relevant to their project, but also to recognize when one has reached a level of diminishing returns, focusing on this practice on a week by week basis allows for an ever-evolving perspective. Similarly, at least in my experience, I am often burned out if I attempt to write for more than five days in a row. This facilitated a system, rather organically, where one, two, or even three weeks of research (and sometimes more) would be conducted, followed by a week of writing based on that preliminary research. Repeating the process allows for refinement in both the writing and the research. Drawing in information and synthesizing and analyzing said information are two extraordinarily different objectives. Give to each the time and effort they deserve.
As for writing specifically, and setting realistic daily goals for when I write, I have a self-imposed minimum of four pages (or, roughly a thousand-to-twelve hundred words double-spaced) when I am working on a project. This is a quota that may change with future projects, and this may be too little for some and too much for others. For me, for now, it seems to be just right. Less than four pages does not always allow me to flesh out my thoughts and ideas. It is important to emphasize, however, that four pages is my minimum. I will often write more than four pages on a writing day, but I will not do less than four. It has been common practice to write eight, ten, or even nineteen pages in a single writing session, but I do not recommend writing this much in a single session generally. One rule I utilize to moderate my daily writing further, and this is a critical detail, is that I require myself to write a minimum of four pages no matter how many pages I have written the previous day. This rule keeps me from writing ten-to-twenty pages on a routine basis, because it will not rationalize doing less than is required the next day. This process gives me the freedom to write as much and as long as I want in a single session, but also tempers my own expectations by reminding me that, no matter what, I will be writing four more pages the next day. When it comes to successful writing and keeping yourself to a certain standard and schedule, moderation is key.
With all due respect to writers of fiction, their process is considerably more simple. If a fiction writer chooses to (out of nowhere) put into their story, including one that is heretofore true to life, a flying dragon speaking Pig Latin and wearing a plaid trench coat who saves the main characters from their established dramatic conflict by magically making the sky rain candy and cash, the author has license to do so. It may not provide for a good story or conclusion, but there are ultimately no constraints put upon a writer of fiction the way there are for writers of real-life incidents. Those of us who want to demonstrate to readers why certain events, people, and concepts are compelling and significant, we must do so merely with the discipline of our research and the power of our prose. We do not possess the privilege of fanciful alternatives. We must instead take up the task of demonstrating how the real world is as exciting and strange as anything found in fiction. This is not a burden. It is a privilege all its own. It is a job worthy of engagement, but it is work that should be treated like the job that it is, because the effort required is as considerable as it is rewarding.
[End of Part Two]
[James M. Masnov is a writer, historian, and lecturer. He has been a contributor at Past Tense, Pure Insights, New Discourses, the Brownstone Institute, Armstrong Journal of History, and the Oregon Encyclopedia. His newest book, Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court, is available here. His first book, History Killers and Other Essays by an Intellectual Historian, is available here.]