I often find that the hardest part of writing a paper isn't actually writing it--once you get going, especially if you get one interesting idea, it kind of takes care of itself (so long as you know some tricks). Instead, the hardest part of writing a paper is actually sitting down to start it. So this Intervention will be about ways to trick yourself into sitting down to start it. Not tricking yourself into writing the whole thing, just tricking yourself into starting it at all. This past year I had a few students who just had tragic procrastination problems, and the issue was just getting them over that mental hump to START it, at which point it pretty much wrote itself.
So the larger picture is that for any paper shorter than 7 pages, you can write a passable (though not necessarily good) version in 2-3 hours provided that you type fast. BUT, you can't tell yourself this when you start, or else you will never start. Because for most of us, 2-3 hours of writing a paper sounds about as inviting as 2-3 hours of getting tased in the butt. Why start at all, if it's just going to be prolonged agony???
So here are some things to tell yourself instead. You'd think that it'd be hard to lie to yourself, but in my extensive experience with self-deception I find that oneself is actually the easiest person to lie to: "These pants just shrunk in the wash...5 years after I bought them." Or, "I'll do a full set of bench presses NEXT time I'm at the gym." Or, "I can make one paycheck stretch for five months." Ahem. Anyway, what I always tell my students is, "Academic success is the result of an intricate web of self-manipulation and self-deception," and I mean it. Do you think I finished my PhD in 5 years (that, tragically, is extremely fast) by sitting down every day and saying, "All right, well, time to work on this 248-page paper that has to incorporate every important piece of recent scholarship on my subject and also contain a fully original argument that pushes the field but stays within disciplinary convention, now GO!!"? No! That kind of thinking is what gets you stuck in grad school for 17 years! I'm telling you, the following snippets of self-deception work, from the high-school essay all the way up to the doctoral thesis.
1. "I will just read this source for long enough to get two good quotes from it." The problem with densely-written academic prose, which most of us are forced to use for secondary sources, is that it is written so densely that every single sentence seems vitally, tragically important. Multiply that by a stack of 10 equally-dense books on your desk, many of them written in a non-English language, and you have a recipe for permanent deferral of research, which for many of us also means permanent deferral of work (though it shouldn't, see below). Though of course I hope you treat my work like that, don't. What you need to do for secondary sources is be able to paraphrase the author's main thesis, and react appropriately (i.e. with full knowledge of their context) to two good quotes. As soon as you can do this, proceed to skim the rest of the article unless it is so fascinating and entrancing it might change your life (Henry Sussman, I'm talking about you!), and before you know it you're through another source. And if you're a good quote-extractor and note-taker and summarizer, the notes you make about this sources should be able to be incorporated directly into your paper.
2. "100 words and I'm done for the day." It doesn't matter how much you hate writing--anyone, with ten minutes and a remotely interesting idea and equally remote grasp of the English language, can write 100 words. Just take one quote from your text and spend three sentences talking about it--one sentence that SUCCINCTLY rephrases what has happened in context, one sentence that highlights something interesting about that quote, and one that relates it back to whatever brilliant idea you are currently rocking in the paper. Guess what? I just wrote (approximately) 100 words just now, in this entry. YOU CAN DO THIS, no matter how little you want to work, no matter how little you have read, no matter how drunk/high/tired/harried you might be. The worst-case scenario is that you eke your paper out 100 words at a time over the course of a few days. What will probably happen is that once you get going, 100 will become 200, 300 and then 500 as you get into the rhythm of writing. The secret is to start with no pressure on yourself, with the understanding that papers do sometimes get written 100 words at a time, and that on a bad day (especially for you dissertaters out there!!!), 100 words can be the biggest victory in the world. At my worst and most depressed I eked out 50, 100 words at a time, and called it a "full work day" and resumed moping, and you know what? Not a good way to spend your life long-term, but those mothertruckers added up and soon enough I was Dr. Me.
3. "I'm just going to open this document up and LOOK at it." I'd like to amend my previous explanation that the hardest part of writing a paper (from a 2-pager to a dissertation) is starting to work. The hardest part is actually opening the document up on your computer and looking at it (if you still write longhand, you perplex me, but just think of the luddite equivalent of this). So if you tell yourself you're just going to open the piece UP to read through a few paragraphs for spelling and grammar, that is often sufficient to get you working. The important part of this, however, is to not beat yourself up if for a few times you do just open it up and proofread a few paragraphs and tweak a word here and there (ESPECIALLY you dissertation writers!). That is still keeping the work in sight and therefore in mind, and infinitely better than keeping it hidden in a faraway folder like I currently have the pigsty of a draft of a conference paper I'm due to give in less than three months (in professional-scholar time that is both forever and hopelessly insufficient). In a few days I'll be bringing it up "just to look at it," and then slowly employing the other two methods of deception and manipulation to get myself back on track to finish it.
Well, I hope this suggestion has been helpful, whether you're writing a one-page response paper due tomorrow or a 500-page dissertation due in three years. As always, email me or comment below if you have any questions, comments or funny procrastination stories to share.
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