The Academy’s Bench Warmer

It seems that the longer I spend writing, the longer my writing process becomes.  I’m now up to no fewer that five steps:

1) The warm-up.  Getting the fingers going and the brain clicking.  Blog posts are good for this, although it means that you, dear reader, have to put up with it.  It’s kind of like the first batch of pancakes–the griddle’s not quite hot and the batter hasn’t fully set, but you’ve got to throw something on there anyway.

2) The page puke.  Get all that crap in my head out on a piece of paper so I can get a sense of what I’m dealing with and what ideas I want to hit.  Others call this a “brainstorm,” but that sounds far too creative.

3) The outline.  My outlines have become monsters.  We’re not talking broad ideas here; my outlines stretch from thesis all the way down to the pieces of evidence I’m going to use.  I have a feeling that this is going to have to change as I work on longer projects–say, a dissertation–but this has served me pretty well so far.  This is really where I’m doing the thinking and creating–building the argument, finding connections, creating segues, etc..  That’s probably why my outlines are so detailed–I want to make sure I don’t forget how it all goes together in the next step.

4) First draft.  A steaming pile of crap.  For a while, I was trying edit-while-writing, but that road leads to one sentence a day for me.  So I just try to push through without worrying about grammar, punctuation, slick sentences, etc..  Just get the logic worked out.  Evidence can also wait–put some brackets where I’ll want it later on.

5) Second draft.  Where the major revisions occur: style, argument, evidence.  This is also the point of no return; once I’ve committed to this level of revision, I’m committed to finishing the project.

6) Final-ish drafts.  Here’s where I put the thing out to my friend-reviewers.  Their comments can take me all the way back to step four.  Rinse and repeat until draft is shiny, soft, and full of volume.

I’ve been doing my level best* to confine my teaching–including prep work, etc.–to Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving M/W/F for dissertation.  But I keep falling behind, and this week I had to stay up late on Monday and get up early on Tuesday to grade and prep lectures.  Predictably, classes yesterday went poorly.  Fine; we’re allowed bad days, I say.  I’m more concerned that I was a truly grumpy and unpleasant bastard from Monday night through Tuesday.  The students, fortunately, didn’t bear the brunt of it.  My spouse, unfortunately, did.  Turns out I’ve developed an impossible need for absolute silence when I work, and it becomes even more exacerbated when I’m under the gun.  My spouse having the audacity to breathe or offer me a glass of water–well, that was simply unacceptable, and I delivered a few sharp and extremely ill-advised remarks.  Ugh.  Apologies galore, and my spouse forgave and understood, proving once again that I am the junior partner in the relationship.

Lessons learned?  Get my shit done during the day, especially if it’s due tomorrow.  If I’m going to work in the evening, choose stuff that’s not time-sensitive–reading a book for my dissertation is fine, but grading papers that need to be returned tomorrow is not.  And if that means that I need to do teaching prep during part of a dissertation day, so be it.

* I love that phrase.  It ranks right up there with “I don’t give a flying fuck.”  Which, of course, I shouldn’t say.  Dirty, dirty words.

Zotero’s a great tool for note-keeping, reference-gathering, and citation generation, but there’s something about punching a hole in a notecard that makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Yesterday, my adviser called me and told me to do two things.  First: don’t cock up the conference paper I’ll be giving in March at the American Society for Environmental History; apparently, my panel’s chair/commenter does not tolerate shit work.  Okay, my adviser didn’t say that exactly, but that’s the gist of it.  Second: make a dissertation schedule and work diary.  This is fantastic for at least three reasons:

1) My adviser seems to have a pretty good feel for what I need in the way of direction.  Just the other day I was musing about how to proceed as ABD, and then BAM!, a phone call telling me what to do.  I suppose there’s an off-chance that my adviser reads this blog, but I’d rather think that my adviser (a) knows me well enough to give me a push when one is needed and (b) has seen enough ABDs treading water to know that an adviser’s intervention can be very important at this stage.  In short: my adviser’s advising, which is excellent.

2) Turns out that maybe I do matter to my adviser.  Nice to get the attention.

3) I get to make lists and schedules and calendars!  I have a perverse affection for to-do lists and the like, and my adviser has basically given me license to schedule to my heart’s content.  In addition to creating a calendar for finishing the dissertation and making a schedule that builds in dissertation time every day, my adviser also wants me to write a work diary, to keep track of what I do (and don’t accomplish) each day.  At first I thought to put that on this here blog, but (a) how mind-numbingly boring would that be! and (b) I’ve come to see this blog serving a different function for my academic development, extra-dissertation-wise.  Plus, it means I get to buy a cool notebook.  Bonus.

About a month ago, I became/went ABD (All But Dissertation, for those fortunate to have avoided such a silly acronym).  I did so before the official beginning of my fourth year in the PhD program, which puts me right on track with the norm.  In our program, you’re meant to be done with your coursework, minor field, comprehensive exams, and dissertation prospectus by the end of your third year, and I just made it.  So hoo-ray for that.  Since then, I’ve been busying myself with teaching two classes (African American history is going quite well, thank you for asking), occasionally looking through microfilm for an article I’m revising, and playing Civilization, one of my favorite video games of all time.  What I haven’t been doing is my dissertation.  I’ve read a few books, spoken with some people in the field, and put in a few billable hours of “thought” or “conceptualization,” but I haven’t done any real research.  Nor have I looked into fellowships and grants, which I’m pretty sure I should be doing.

Today, I make a concerted effort to do what I should be doing.  But what should I be doing, exactly?  The last three years have consisted of identifiable hoops through which to jump.  Now I’m on my own, equipped with a vague sense of what I need to accomplish–get fellowships, write a dissertation, get a job–but little idea of how to do those things, exactly.  There are some more experienced graduate students whose example I can try to follow, but (a) I’m frankly unimpressed by much of their work and their (lack of) progress; (b) no one provides specifics on what they’re doing, exactly; and (c) everyone’s case is different.

So off I go.

In an effort to actually get through some of my reading, I’m going to try what aspiring marathoners are supposed to do: tell people.  The idea is that if you tell people you’re going to run a marathon, you’ll feel accountable to those people–”Hey, how’s that marathon training going?”  Or something like that.  Maybe it’ll work for me; I also hope that I’ll get some feedback on what other people think of what I’m reading.  So: today’s list.

1. Brad Delong’s review of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State
2. From Crooked Timber, Henry’s thoughts on Scott’s book
3. The Nation’s 7 April 2008 issue on the New Deal
4. Spencer Ackerman’s TAP article on “The Obama Doctrine”
5. Thomas Edsall’s 1991 Atlantic Monthly article “Race”