How to use writing structure to get more writing done
Plus some data from the December Academia Made Easier Reader Survey. Data! Everyone loves data!
Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here.
In my December Academia Made Easier Reader Survey (thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond despite my terrible over-the-holiday timing!!), I asked about your interest in different topics. The number one ranked topic, by a decent margin, was writing. Indeed, 86% of you wanted to read more about writing, making interest in this topic even greater than the proportion of dentists who recommend sugarless gum for their patients that chew gum. (That fifth dentist hasn’t budged for decades! I admire her conviction on the issue.)
The good news for me is that I LOVE thinking about writing, talking about writing, reading about writing, and writing about writing. It is one of my favourite topics. (Take that, “networking”!) And today I am excited to share with you one of my top writing tips.
But before I do, allow me to take a moment to direct you to some previous Academia Made Easier newsletters that are also about writing, in case you missed them:
How to create a writing habit despite all the great reasons you can’t work on your writing right now
How to write a book when life keeps interfering with your efforts to write a book
As the titles suggest, I am a pragmatist rather than a perfectionist when it comes to writing. And today’s small thing to try immediately is super-pragmatic.
One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Create a Targeted Outline
Many of us start writing projects by creating a generic outline. In the case of a journal article, this outline is often something like “introduction, lit review, methods, data analysis, conclusion” (or insert your own standard disciplinary writing structure). In the case of a grant application, it is whatever categories are required by the review committee.
That generic outline is a decent start. It is certainly better than a blank Doc, mocking you with its pristine whiteness and blinking cursor. But the categories are still a bit … wide open. How long should the introduction be, and what should be in it? “Methods” sounds fairly straightforward, but how detailed should you get? And “literature review”?!? Surely there must be some email you need to deal with before you get started on that section.
The problem is that the generic outline leaves you with a lot of decisions to make. Decisions are exhausting. Seeing a near-blank Doc full of decisions to be made and that damned cursor judging you with every blink can easily provoke procrastination. And the fact is, there are emails that you need to deal with.
As I have said before, the best way to reduce decision fatigue is to eliminate decisions. A targeted outline helps you achieve this. This is an idea I adapted from Anthony Ocampo and Kerry Ann Rockquemore’s 2018 Inside Higher Ed column, “Dealing With the Curse of the Blank Page”. The steps are below. I use a journal article to explain how the targeted outline works, but if journal article writing is not your thing, substitute grant application, dissertation chapter, teaching award nomination, book proposal, or whatever is appropriate for your needs. Okay, let’s hop to it.
1. Pick your target. I used to have a highly inefficient approach to writing journal articles. I would have a research question, collect my data, spend a long effing time writing the paper, and then think, “what journal might take this?” As the International Journal of Loleen’s Random Interests was only a fever dream, the answer was usually “none” - at least not in the paper’s current form. I would then find a mostly appropriate journal and rewrite the paper, usually with a strong sense of resentment, to fit the journal’s author guidelines. After a few painful repetitions (sigh) of this pattern, I learned to select a target journal before starting to write. Knowing the target journal saves so much time.
2. Use target examples to create the basic outline. Your selected target journal will almost always contain articles similar to the kind of article you want to write. (If not, it is likely not a great target journal.) These articles were successfully published in the journal, so you can use their structures as a guide for your own. Select a few recent articles and take note of their section headings. Use these examples to create your basic outline.
3. Estimate word counts for each section to create the targeted outline. It is at this point that Ocampo and Rockquemore’s approach gets exciting. (Yes, I am a writing geek!). As they explain, you can use the example articles to create word count goals for your own paper. Specifically, they suggest that you take an article in the journal and “1) count the number of sections in the paper, 2) determine the page length of each section and 3) calculate a ratio to determine how many words should be dedicated to each section.” You might discover that, across the target article examples you selected, introductions tend to be about 400-700 words (or 750 words on average) and methods sections tend to be 800-1200 words (1000 words on average). You could then add to your outline a word count of ~750 words for your introduction and ~1000 words for your methods section. Do this for all sections of your paper and your targeted outline is complete.
What I find powerful about this approach is that the process eliminates all sorts of decisions. By selecting the journal, you have defined your audience, maximum word count, and bibliographic style, among other things. By creating a basic outline that fits with that journal, you have made broad decisions about how you will structure your argument and present your evidence. By attaching word counts to sections, you have made important decisions about how focused or broad a particular section will be. (Just think about the differences in how you would approach a 400-word versus a 1200-word methods section.) Whoosh - just like that, many tiring decisions have been taken care of.
With the targeted outline in place, you can chip away at completing the sections to get to a shitty first draft. Personally, I like to start with whichever section seems easiest, then move outward to the next easiest, and so forth until it is done. Then I celebrate with chocolate or wine, or chocolate and wine, and then come back a week later to edit it into a less-shitty second draft.
When it is all said and done, the final submission version of my paper usually deviates from those original word counts. A 400-word methods section might not have been appropriate for my study. So what? The important thing is that the targeted outline got me over the decision-paralysis stage and helped get my writing launched - and I have a final submission draft to prove it.
If you haven’t tried this approach, give it a try. And be sure to read Ocampo and Rockquemore’s column yourself to fully understand the idea.
Until next time…
What are your personal strategies to move your writing along? Do you have any habits or approaches that work for you? Please hit “leave a comment” or reply to this email and let me know. I would love to hear from you!
Stay well, my colleagues.
P.S. Due to an abundance of meetings and other important but not noteworthy activities, I have skipped the “chipping away” section in this and my last newsletter. Rest assured that the running, TV binge-watching, and chocolate consumption continue to go strong. And of course, my cats continue to be goofballs. In related news, Storm say hi:
Want to help support my chocolate habit? You are very sweet. Buy me a coffee is a site that allows readers to show their appreciation for the unpaid labour of writers, artists, and other creatives. Check it out!
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Loleen Berdahl, Ph.D.: I am a twin mother, wife, runner, cat lover, and chocolate enthusiast. I spend far too much time binge-watching television and my house could be a lot cleaner. During the work hours, I am the Executive Director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. I am the author of University Affair’s Skills Agenda column and my most recent books are Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD and Explorations: Conducting Empirical Research in Canadian Political Science.