I’ve been working on wrapping up my research projects and writing manuscripts these days (as a 6-th year grad student, clock is ticking). Last week, the writing center in our university offered a visual 2-day dissertation retreat. I hesitated whether I should join when I saw the advertisement last month, because “they will talk about things everyone knows”, “their writing schedule doesn’t work for me”, “my simulations are not finalized, I can’t write like that”. But part of me is saying “These people are professional at writing, they can teach me something.” So I signed up. It happened on Thursday and Friday. It turned out to be very helpful and I wanted to share what I learned below!
The 2-day event happened like this:
Thursday, January 14 and Friday, January 15
9:00 Morning Check-In
9:20 -12:10 Writing Time
12:10-12:20 Afternoon Check-In
Optional Afternoon Retreat Programming
12:30-1:00 Lunch Chats
1:00- 2:00 Daily Workshop
2:00-4:00 One-On-One Writing Consultations
2:00-2:10 Check-in for Afternoon Writing Session
2:10-3:50 Afternoon Writing Time
3:50-4:00 End of Day Check-In
I attended the morning sessions and had one writing consultation appointment. Here are my takeaways:
1. Schedule your writing sessions
Initially I hear this advice from a Tim Ferris interview with Jerry Seinfeld, I have quoted below:
if you’re going to write, make yourself a writing session. What’s the writing session? I’m going to work on this problem. Well, how long are you going to work on it? Don’t just sit down with an open-ended, “I’m going to work on this problem.” That’s a ridiculous torture to put on a human being’s head.
It’s like you’re going to hire a trainer to get in shape, and he comes over, and you go, “How long is the session?” And he goes, “It’s open-ended.” Forget it. I’m not doing it. It’s over right there. You’ve got to control what your brain can take. Okay? So if you’re going to exercise, God bless you, and that’s the best thing in the world you can do, but you got to know when is it going to end.
So I started doing that in my writing process. Each morning, I use a Pomodore app and write for two or three 45-minute pomodore sessions. I could usually get the major task done. It also feels great!
2. Have A times and B times
Sometimes our brain can handle hard things easily, and sometimes even easy things seem hard. It’s important to know when you work best and allocate tasks strategically.
This part is from the retreat handout:
Try to keep your “A times” focused on your most important or difficult tasks, such as drafting new material or significantly revising material. Similarly, try not to let your A Times get bogged down with more mindless tasks (like formatting or cleaning up citations).
B-time scheduling should be the flipside of this same coin: schedule into your B Times those tasks that require significantly less mental energy and may even be tedious. For many writers that will be working on footnotes, checking references, proofreading, and so on.
3. About reading: think about why you enjoy what you enjoy
My advisor adviced me “read the paper you like and try to learn from them”. I tried but it seems I don’t really get it. So I asked the writing consultant during my appointment.
His advice is more practical: think about why you enjoy reading this article and take notes on those. Then try to incorporate to your own writing. I think this simple principles applies to many things. I remember reading about a book on how to build your capsule wordrobe, the author suggested to collect photos on outfits you like and try to see what do you like about those. I will try this more.
4. About revision: keep a checklist
My advisor always say my manuscript is not concise enough and the sentences are not polished enough. So I asked this during the consultation.
The consultant introduced this checklist: keep a list of things you need to look for, could be your common mistakes. He introduced Wendy Belcher’s “Belcher Diagnostic Test”, which offers a straightforward way to systematically move through your manuscript using the Find/Search function in your word processor, identify common issues, and apply relatively simple fixes. For more details on the checklist, I found an example checklist online. He also recommended the book: Wendy Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. This is a workbook, so there are lots of practical writing tasks to follow along. I am reading it and I would recommend fellow grad students to check this out.
5. Grammar or style?
I asked the consultant about my grammar when we looked at my own writing. He said my grammar is not too big a issue, the major problems is with style. As a international student, I always make grammar mistakes so I thought the major hurdle of my writing is with grammar. But after this, I think probably I should focus more on my style. So I think it’s important to talk to someone to figure out what’s the major problem with your writing and tackle that first.
These are my major takeaways from the retreat. It’s also great to see other students in my year! We were not close so we didn’t really hang out together lately, but it feels great to see fellow grad students coming to the end of the journey and working on the dissertation around the same time.