Some Considerations for Academic Writing

If you're stuck in your writing, or if you're tired of procrastinating, this page might help.

Inspiration/Motivation

Let's get this one out of the way first. I could offer you a very long screed on the use and misuse of these terms by students. But almost every time they're used, they support some form of justification or apology for not getting work done, or not working up to the best a person can do.

I'm not the only one who sees the idea of "being inspired" or "being motivated" as a shibboleth that separates a dilettante from a real writer. Here's a post from an anonymous classical musician who was asked about his or her practice regimen. And if you think you have it rough because you have som much to write, don't tlalk to any serious Music Performance students, because there's no way you could duplicate both the length and the granularity of their daily practice regimens. (Sorry, but my site is already blocked by enough school districts, so the language in this post means that this has to be an image rather than text.)

Yep, that pretty much sums up the writing process as well.

Deadlines

A corollary to the point above is my standard line: "nothing motivates like a deadline." That's true, as far as it goes. But what is that statement really saying? Essentially, what's so motivating about a deadline?

A deadline is nothing more than the demarcation of a specific time. There's nothing inherently motivating or intimidating about that. Rather, it's the consequence of missing that deadline that is the real motivating factor. Those consequences come in three varieties:

• apparent and specific (e.g., "Late papers will lose one letter grade for every day that they're late.");
• apparent and non-specific (e.g., "I do not accept late papers." There is an apparent penalty for submitting a late paper. Is it a 0 for the paper? How does an unsubmitted paper figure into your grade calculation?); or
• implied and non-specific (e.g., "The deadline for this paper is the last day of classes.")

Many students (and I was one of them) use the effect that deadlines have on them to motivate themselves when writing a paper. Papers are usually assigned weeks, if not months, in advance of their deadlines. Perhaps it is in the nature of every student to procrastinate until the deadline becomes more real to them, and the due date is counted in days (or even hours!), not weeks or months.

Fear

Take a look at the final paragraph in above. If you're using a deadline to motivate you, what you're really doing is acting solely out of fear. You're writing because you fear the consequences of not writing.

There are many things to fear in the writing process. Fear writer's block, when you stare at a blank screen and can't think of anything to write. Fear a lack of library resources (especially at a place like Georgia Southern). Fear discovering that your idea has been addressed by many other writers, and all of them did a better job of it than you could. Or, worse than that, fear discovering that your idea has been considered by many other writers, but they've all dismissed it as either too obvious, too ridiculous, or too elementary. Fear computer failure. Fear printer failure. Fear the arbitrary assignment of grades.

Yes, there are many things to fear about writing. but if the spark that makes you write is just fear, then perhaps you should find peace in another vocation.

Love

If you don't like to communicate, why are you spending all this time and money to get better at it?

If writing is a chore, or a hoop to be jumped through, why do it?

Do you write because you see how much cash the latest Insta Poet made? Or do you write because you have to? Because you have to get things down on paper, because you have something like a burning coal on your tongue?

If you don't, at some level, love it, go find something that will pay you buckets of money for far less work. Try the B school.

Get Smarter. Even STEM people know this.

If love of writing doesn't motivate you, if a sense of discipline as a student doesn't make you work, then how about getting a leg up on those who don't write?

Researchers in the STEM fields have conducted studies that show the following:

• Writers have greater emotional intelligence than those who don't write.
• Writers absorb information better and learn more than those who don't write. (Link to study abstract.)
• Writers handle negative life events better than those who don't write. (Link to study abstract.)
• Writers process information more effectively than those who don't write.