Where do I buy a peak-fare ticket to Productivity Junction, please?

[ajnabieh]

I'm sitting here, with my cup of tea, watching the snow that fell this morning on the half-melted remains of the last storm, and contemplating what the hell I'm supposed to do next.

I just hit a fairly pleasant milestone: I completed the first draft of my final substantive dissertation chapter. (For the record, this means I have an introduction and a conclusion to knock out, and some revisions; some of those revisions will take work, and some of them will involve a good reread and a few days of pacing around and red-penciling.) At the same time, since I'm unscheduled this semester, I don't have pressing needs like syllabus writing, teaching, grading (although, oops, I haven't uploaded last semester's grades yet...I should do that), meetings, or the assorted detritus that fills up one's time. But these two facts conspire to result in a great floundering period. What, precisely, should I do next? Where should I go? What are my priorities? Even once I've chosen a new project, how do I frame my progress on it?

I usually start out using these floundering periods as a way to play catchup. Yesterday, I went on Proquest Dissertation Abstracts and searched for "Arab-American," and did some searches to find dissertations that looked interesting. (I now have two whole dissertations sitting on my Kindle, and a bunch of the Proquest samples, and a couple of others that have made it into print to go find in paper copy. Whoo hoo.) I also used the excuse of a trip to Manhattan with only one scheduled event to run by the library and return old books and pick up new ones. (Amazingly, of the 3 books I went looking for, I only found one. And yet, also amazingly, I left with three books. Oh, Library of Congress system, never fail me with your suggestion of interesting and related texts.) So, that's sorted. But this only gets me so far.

The problem is that these gap moments are a great way to get stuck. Oh, I can't possibly start on $nexttask (and, by the way, that I used that syntax to phrase this problem is entirely due to hanging out with People What Write Code here on DW, so, thanks, I guess), because I have all these dishes to wash/books to read/navels to gaze at. Oh, I should really be making that chapter an article/turning that old paper into an article/writing more abstracts for more conferences/whatever, so I should start on that, except I never do, I just kinda...stare. I don't have time to get stuck. Stuck is bad. Very bad.

So now it's time to break out of Stucks-ville. I mean, maybe I'll spend this weekend reading other people's dissertations and drinking tea and being emo contemplating my goals as a dissertation-writer. But on Monday, I need to sit down and take the train to Productivity Junction.

I've already picked my next task: writing my introduction. (The conclusion I'll save until after I've revised the whole thing.) This is my vague plan for how to get started:

• Set a clear self-imposed deadline. The one I'm working with right now is "a draft introduction, partial and with gaps where necessary, before I leave for my visit to my in-laws in two weeks." Possible (I'm a fast writer, and I'm planning on having the intro clock in around 25pp, so that's not too many words) but will require concentrated effort, and won't screw me if I don't meet it.
• Write a detailed outline, complete with suboutlines. By which I mean, I should list the parts of the chapter, and then the sub-parts of each part, and if I can outline the sub-sub-parts that's even better. This is my technique for writing quickly. If it's a matter of filling in holes, then I just fill them as the mood moves me, and eventually fill them all, put them together, and then edit the crap out of it (moving sections, rewriting where I've used things twice or been inconsistent, changing the framing argument where I've written myself to a new one, etc).
• Um. This is where I start running out of techniques.
• ...
• PROFIT DISSERTATION.

As you'll notice, I run out of steam mid-plan there. I'm sure that the later steps should be somewhere on the order of WRITE ALL THE THINGS, but...does anyone have any techniques they use, in order not to lose a bunch of time to this transitional moment?

Not that a little bit of tea-and-emo ever hurt anyone.

Comments

[ein_myria]

Speaking as someone who spent the last month writing, perhaps you might prioritize the data in terms of what you think is important to get across, rather than what might be interesting. The flowery addenda can come later, if you have time. :)

[ajnabieh]

Ooh, that's a good rubric to keep in mind. Given that this is the introduction, there is quite a bit of "necessary," but really being ruthless about what's gotta be there and what can be elided is going to be important.

[sheddingkhawatir.blogspot.com]

I'm not at the dissertation writing stage yet, but for the other things I've had to write I usually try to write as much as possible quickly, just dumping everything on the page under my outline headings. Then, I "just have to revise." In actuality, this takes far longer than the initial writing as I move stuff around, add in more details etc. But psychologically, it feels so much easier to "revise" than to "write." I also don't have to worry about whether or not it's good, because I can always revise later--but usually, it's not that bad after all.

[ajnabieh]

This is a good tactic. I have a little bit of a problem with cutting out things once I've written them, but I got better at it after my last chapter, which was this total sprawling mess and then grew and contracted like eighty times. In any case, it's jsut too much love of my data. "But, but, but! That story! That funny anecdote! HOW CAN I LOSE IT?!?!?! THE WORLD MUST KNOW!"

This is one of those places where the gap between my storyteller-consciousness and my argument-maker-consciousness becomes clear.

psychologically, it feels so much easier to "revise" than to "write."

Exactly. You've got words, fixing them is no problem.

write. now.

[loveanddisdain.blogspot.com]

I actually busted out laughing at this post, Ajnabieh! A friend of mine consistently mocked me with exactly the same gag about my own work:
1. Weird Pseudology project
2. ...
3. PROFIT DISSERTATION!

Hilarious academic memes aside, I don't see all that much value in drafting the intro and conclusion right away. (Especially the intro!) If you aren't yet quite sure what the meat of your diss says, what else can you write for the bookend bits except drivel? Then again, maybe this is too harsh an assessment, and you already have a much clearer idea at this stage than I had at the same moment. In that case, draft away! But if you start to feel like an actor stalling for time/space while someone backstage has lost their trousers, just set it aside and work on other stuff.

As for What Comes Next, just start writing, even if you are certain that it is drivel. One has to start somewhere. Write down any questions, no matter how trivial they seem, that you encountered in your research and could not answer in the diss. You need to start putting down something, anything, on paper, so that you have something to build on. The longer you go without writing anything down, the more you'll flounder. Whenever you have a nice massy amount of drivel, you can bring it up with your colleagues and see how they react to this or that. But if you let it all swirl around in your head without trying to order your thoughts, you'll psych yourself out.

Re: write. now.

[ajnabieh]

I think all of our projects start like that. "And then, through the power of MY BRAIN, it will be awesome! Just don't ask me how."

Well, all that's left is the intro and conclusion, you know? There's a little bit of substantive work to be done on the geography chapter, and obviously the drafts need to be polished, but...I've written everything else. (THIS IS A TERRIFYING SENTENCE.)

The other thing is, I really, really need to hammer away at "what is the argument I am making with all this awesome data?" My project gets 80% of the way there with "cool topic, cool data, cool methods," but it doesn't yet have that Big Giant Argument Thing tying it all together. I think that's what I have to hammer at; ten pages on "my ethnographic methods bring all the boys to the yard, and I'm like, they're better than yours" need to get written, but that's gravy compared to what comes after the sentence "In this dissertation, I argue that...[insert argument here]."

The longer you go without writing anything down, the more you'll flounder.

This is so absurdly true. I'm going to go write it somewhere to remind myself.