Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Write through psychological barriers? [Book Review, Part II]

You probably noticed that sometimes, writing is hard. Maybe it’s always hard for you. Or maybe you’re suffering from a writing stall.

As it often happens, I started formulating my book review for Joli Jensen’s Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics (University of Chicago Press 2017) before I had actually finished reading all of it, so here’s more.

The strength in Jensen’s book, in my opinion, lies in teaching you how to deal with psychological barriers to writing. Not just by writing them down in a Ventilation File, but she also explains how to actually confront the most common psychological myths or thinking patterns that stop you from writing or keep you in some horrible stall.

Types of writing stalls you need to know about

According to Jensen, there are multiple types of writing stalls.

  1. I-Need-A-Vacation Stall: This stall arises from being overworked and energy-depleted, where the best remedy is taking a guilt-free break from writing, such as a week off. In this case, a period of rest will be enough to replenish your energy and enthusiasm for the project.
  2. Resistance Stall: If a break doesn’t resolve the stall, it may be due to underlying psychological resistance. Use your ventilation file to identify the psychological barriers stopping you from engaging in this project.
  3. Structural Stall: This occurs when there’s a fundamental issue with the structure of your work that prevents progress. Discussing the project with others to identify and address these structural issues can not only help overcome the stall but also significantly improve the quality of the work. This may involve making substantial changes to the project. Read more for a personal example of a structural stall.
  4. Toxic Project Stall: Some projects become sources of extreme guilt, unhappiness, and unproductivity. The healthiest and most self-loving act you can do at this stage is simply to abandon them. The toxicity could stem from the project’s concept being flawed from the start or from a prolonged stall that has led to an accumulation of toxic feelings like guilt.

My experiences with a structural stall turned into a toxic project

Structural stalls

A structural stall means you’re stalling because something doesn’t feel right. You need to discuss this with others and find out what’s stopping you. Fixing the structural issue with your work, i.e. what makes it not work, will both help you with the stall and also make your work better, so it’s a win-win situation.

A structural stall may be a natural part of a bigger writing project sometimes and may just mean that your project evolved from its initial conception. Now things don’t work anymore and it needs fixing. It’s not actually a big deal but can become one if you panic and don’t react appropriately. She brings up an example from her dissertation research and I have similar experiences that I will share with you, so you don’t make the same mistakes.

How does it unfold? As you continue working on your project, something that you initially had in your outline or set out to do just doesn’t make sense anymore. This is where you need to be brave and change it. It’s as simple as that. The stall is nothing but your inner alarm bell telling you something is off.

Toxic projects

Toxic projects, however, are often flawed from the start an are best abandoned, even if that’s hard. We all have toxic projects every once in a while that just don’t work anymore. It may be because the project never really worked to begin with. For example, I once committed to submitting this article for a special issue. They asked me to do something very specific, but during the writing process it wasn’t really working out. I can articulate this now but at the time I couldn’t see or articulate it. At the root, it was a structural stall, but then I stalled it for so long and it became such a source of guilt that I just never ended up working on the article. I never submitted anything, which was kind of rude, I should have just dropped out officially. I ended up writing an email to say sorry a year later. That was childish and unprofessional of me. But that’s what happens when we’re stuck in toxic projects.

My story

This is how it all went down (in more detail): I realized that my idea didn’t make that much sense anymore. I think I needed to do the work first to get there, but of course that’s disheartening. I somehow had it in my head that I needed to continue this project (it was actually a side project).

I had given a talk on it. People liked that. Back then, I had something to say on the topic. The project was about elaborating more on that talk and a previous paper I had written. But the difference was, I now realize in retrospect, that I simply didn’t have enough to say anymore. I had used up my good arguments in the first paper. The talk, a collaboration with a colleague, added new aspects to this. But these aspects were more my colleague’s expertise than mine. I thought I had interesting things to say and ways to connect my ideas to my co-authors. However, the co-author dropped out of the project (didn’t want to take on a bigger project like a full paper submission) and I decided to continue. I thought I had enough to say on my own. But actually, I didn’t feel comfortable in my co-author’s area of expertise. I felt myself stretching too thin. But I didn’t change course because I had already agreed to contribute to this special issue.

I should have just canceled it. But at the same time, I somehow still believed I had something worthwhile to say, so I didn’t drop out. I missed one deadline after the other. At some point, I became so embarrassed about it that I felt I needed to finish it now just because of the delay. Looking back, missing the first deadline could have been a good time to drop out. I should have taken the hint.

The fact that I wasn’t able to complete the project on time wasn’t just me being disorganised. I didn’t know clearly enough what I wanted to say. I didn’t have a detailed outline and I thought that I could fill that in after doing a literature review. But the more I realised that all the other contributors to this special issue were experts in this topic, I felt more and more compelled to do a super detailed literature review. But I never had enough to say. Literature review is never capable of saving you from that. Incidentally, “one more source to cite” is another myth that Jensen discusses.

Also, I should have realized that this behaviour is out of the norm for me. Yes, I may occasionally be late in a submission. As I have learned since my PhD days, this is not a sign of a character flaw but rather, just a normal result of having too much on your plate, which is the norm in academia. I just didn’t want to believe it because, contrary to my own impression, I truly had much less on my plate during #phdlife.

Anyway, in a particularly desperate moment, I decided to pivot to more familiar territory. But it was much too late. And even though the new niche was more familiar, it was still one I needed to do extra research for. If that ever happens to you, take it as a hint that you’re not ready. If it still makes sense for you to explore and fill that gap (especially when you’re fresh into a new project), go ahead. But don’t do that for a paper that’s due soon. Don’t write without a properly fleshed-out outline in mind. Make outlining the first step in your writing. And yes, I came up with this Article Outline Template but, shockingly, I have stopped using it. It doesn’t really work for me anymore. Yes, it makes for a good rough draft but it’s not a detailed outline that tells me what to write exactly. I’m currently in the process of coming up with a new template. I will let you know once I have it. Anyway, I think this template was appropriate at the time but I know to do the things it says to do by heart. I don’t need a template for that anymore. But I need a template to help guide me through the new writing skills I’m learning.

Conclusion

A structural stall means you need to change course, but if you don’t, either you’re going to procrastinate forever on a project that is not working if you don’t address the stall, or if you do continue, it’s just not going to be a strong project. In my example case, it became a toxic project. Don’t let that happen. But when it inevitably does anyway, be kind to yourself and give it up. Yes, it’s research and time down the drain. The longer you’re in the business, you’ll realize that some articles just don’t make it. Actually, more than you might expect. You need to learn to deal with that.

If you don’t let your toxic project go, you’ll only lose more time (remember the sunk-cost fallacy). Let go. If it’s a big project you can’t drop (like a book project or dissertation), drop the chapter and course-correct. You only truly lose time if you avoid facing this truth. You have learned something from your stall. Take that. But leave the toxicity.

Each type of stall requires a different approach to resolve, ranging from taking a break to reevaluating the project’s overall viability. Jensen’s categorization helps diagnose the specific type of stall you’re suffering from and then apply the most effective strategy to overcome it. Knowing about this earlier might have saved me lots of time and energy.

Most importantly, you need to recognize when to persist with a project and when it might be time to let go.

That’s it for today.

Best,
S


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (August 15, 2024). Write through psychological barriers? [Book Review, Part II]. Epigrammetry. Retrieved November 3, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/126o4


You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.