Writing Microgoals: One Sentence a Day
Most of the structured writing I’ve done has been for academic writing projects, and in recent years, that has meant writing articles for peer-reviewed journals. A year or two ago, I wanted to make space to write more. I’d like to write a book about art and politics in contemporary British literature and film, and my leisurely article-a-year pace would probably have me finishing this book in, like, ten years. I dug through what records I had–just counting the days when I had written at all, and not looking at the amount–and I was really surprised by what I found.
I expected that I would write the most during breaks. I teach 28 credit hours of writing a year to recalcitrant college students. I spend a lot of time giving feedback on writing when we’re in session, and I daydream about doing my own writing during the breaks. I was shocked to find that the time of year when I wrote the most consistently was in the first five weeks of the semester, before the first major assignments get submitted. I was very inconsistent during both winter and summer breaks.
Once I had the data in front of me, it made perfect sense. I thrive with routine. I am a slow and steady writer. When I don’t have the structure of the semester and teaching to anchor me, it’s easy to skip a day of writing. I am terrible at getting any writing done when I am traveling, and we tend to travel a lot in the summer since most of our family and old friends are scattered to the far reaches of the states and the globe.
So I tried to curb my expectations that I would get a bunch of writing done during summer break this year. Instead, I tried to get a bunch of research done, so that when the semester started, I would have the raw material to work with. When we were home and I could work in my office, I read monographs. I made a point of watching some movies that I needed for background. When I was traveling, I read peer reviewed articles, film reviews, and other short online pieces on the Reader app on my phone. (Aside: I learned about Reader this summer, and it is THE BEST. It integrates with Evernote, and ah! It’s making my life so much better.)
This fall, I did hardly any writing in the first half of the semester, not even in the first five weeks. I had a new course prep and some other things that ate up all of my margin. When I checked in with one of my writing buddies in late October, I was secretly dreaming about NaNoWriMo and also realized I had only touched my article draft about three times since the semester had started. Horrors. I decided to channel that NaNoWriMo energy into writing one sentence of my article first thing every day in November.
I started early, on October 26, because I was so excited to try this out, and it went so well that I’ve kept it up well into December. On at least forty of the days, I have written at least one sentence in my article draft. In my books, I am counting this as a massive success.
Some things that made this work particularly well this time around:
This isn’t my first journal article. I have not published a lot, but I have published enough to feel comfortable with the genre. My first journal article was a mess for a loooong time, and the sentence-a-day thing would not have worked.
Like I said above, I had already done a lot of the research. I didn’t have to spend much time looking things up or reading new material, so I could usually get at least one sentence written in 5-to-15 minutes.
I already had done a bunch of freewriting toward the article in the spring and summer as I was figuring the project out, so I had several thousand words. On the days when I REALLY didn’t want to write a sentence, I went to my zero-draft material (my understanding of zero-drafts is taken from this fantastic book on dissertation writing by Joan Bolker) and just copied something over, maybe editing it a little bit.
I hadn’t totally figured out the argument. I am working with a new theoretical text that I am really interested in but haven’t completely digested yet, and I think it’s going to be pretty central to the piece I am working on. I have been focused on writing the introduction and literature review, and the sentence-a-day pace has given me so much time to sit with the meatier stuff. I am hoping that the result is well marinated and fully cooked.
For the first week of my winter break, I have a handful of virtual writing dates set up with a writing buddy. Because I have been checking in with the project most days for the past two months, I am hopeful that I am going to be able to jump in and make good progress. And I am going to keep the one-sentence-a-day tool in my back pocket for the really busy seasons.
