Sometime mid-autumn 2023 I realised that my writing is not what it used to be. While I had kept on writing, the process seemed rigid and stressing. I procrastinated more than usual and asked for deadline extensions. It bothered me, since I remembered busier times with a sense of joy in writing. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had taken the first step in repairing my relationship with writing.
In a sociology research seminar at the University of Turku my colleague Dr Emma Lamber gave a presentation on managing postdoctoral life. In her presentation she had quotations from a book called Written: How to keep writing and build a habit that lasts (2023) by Bec Evans and Chris Smith. I immediately reserved the book from the Helsinki metropolitan area library and then forgot about it. In parallel to my observations, colleagues in academic work organised a virtual peer-to-peer NaNoWriMo writing spurt during one week on November mornings. I attended every session from 8–9 am for five days. Writing with the support of others felt amazing and I offered to organise peer-to-peer writing sessions, virtual writing dates every Monday at 8 am throughout December. Currently, I’m writing the first draft of this text during a session in February, since we decided to continue virtual writing dates at 8 am on three mornings per week until summer vacations.
The information about my book reservation arrived and I fetched Written. It got me hooked immediately and I found myself reading it at every possible turn. My colleague Emma was right: it is a supportive book with many tips how to repair one’s relationship with writing.
The key message of the book from the first pages is that writing is relational. There is no one (set of) way(s) that make sense for everyone. Writers’ life changes, and hence should their writing. It seems simple to state it like that but it does go against many general writing advice that, for example, state that “write the first thing in the morning” or “avoid binge writing”. It might be that writing in the evening and binging on are the best possible routines for someone.
The book does not stop there but offers 8 “sandboxes” full of tools for writers to develop their craft. The sandboxes are integrated between the chapters and they provide action points for writers to reflect and test their own writing. Evans and Smith have developed these tips and tools based on their extensive experience as writers, researchers of writing, and coaches of numerous writers over a decade. The themes of the sandboxes are
- Time
- Goals
- Starting
- Stopping
- Resilience
- Habit
- People
- Mastery
There were many perspectives that revolutionised my thinking. Following the ethos of the book, these differ depending on the writer. Yet, here’s a collection of my takeaways.
First, time. I’m a mixture of a habitual and binge writer. I love doing my writing the first thing in the morning (like during the virtual writing dates we had in late 2023 and continued in 2024). I book my writing time and guard it furiously. Yet, to get a massive piece of work thoroughly done, I need to concentrate for more than an hour or two. The time varies depending on the size of the project. Sometimes it is hours, sometimes days, weeks or months. With research projects and children to care for, taking time off to binge write is difficult, but I have done it at times during my academic career. And what’s most inspiring about this, is that I can do it again when I need it, because binge writing suits me at some stages of writing projects. Of course, this can change and I may realise that no, binge writing is not for me. Such is life and writing, ever changing.
Second, goals. I’ve been paralysed by large goals, such as “write a 60 000 word book manuscript on postgrowth work practices”. When reading Written, I realised I had been too vague, but also that I had given myself a deliberate pause in my book writing project, when I started to work in a new project “Toward post fossil working life” in January 2023. Taking a pause has been very kind of me toward myself, since feeling bad about writing does no good for anyone. What I had been less aware of was how I had cut the project in smaller steps. While I thought I had to do this on paper and sign it off (where do these expectations come from?), it has been perfectly fine for me to have a mental frame of my book that I “fill” by working on essay, article, and book chapter manuscripts elsewhere. In other words, I use shorter texts to develop my thinking, so that I can eventually write the book. Now, I’ve slowly started to browse my book plans and the manuscript dating to late 2022. And I feel good about it.
Third, starting. While I’m bit of a project hoarder, since I think the world is full of interesting matters, I realise that writing requires being clear what I want to achieve and scaling back (p. 100). In order to build up work, I need to do it first. In order to do the work, I was interested in learning that many writers have a prompt embedded in their behaviour. It might be note-taking or a beverage before writing. For me it is a morning routine, during which I get ready to do my daily writing and think about my day as a whole. Another routine is keeping track of my writing projects by listing deadlines and finished tasks as well as tracking my time used for writing (I use a tracker). At times I experiment with counting words, but this has not proven to be that useful for me (while again for some it may be the best thing ever).
Fourth, stopping. I realised how much I’ve been distracted by too many things, which I won’t even list here. Evans and Smith urge writers to engage in “obstacle thinking” (p. 120) to identify these distractions in a neutral way. They write how stopping the flow of writing (or any activity) uses up energy and causes irritation, so minimising distractions really pays off for overall wellbeing. Now, we all have those days that we just cannot help it. It is not possible to write on those days, let it be a sick dog, house issues, problems at work, you name it. The key is to minimise the distractions we can impact directly, such as social media use or reacting to the emails. And it might be that there are days when there’s a sick dog in a flooding house with problems at work and still it is possible to write, and that’s fine too. Lack of stimulation might also be a distraction for some people!
Fifth, resilience. I love routines, but I need regular changes in my routine. There’s a constant push and pull between my urge to stick with a rigid plan and go off road. Thus far I have solved this by doing my writing the first thing in the morning, because I can control the circumstances a bit better, and go wild during other times with writing related tasks, such as reading, analysing, talking with other people about the topics, listening podcasts, doing other academic work, and so on. My travels to Turku and Joensuu, visiting Viikki campus, and conference trips in Finland add to the variety. As a result, I feel I have found a reasonable balance with enough writing stability and changing writing and thinking locations, also due to necessity. So stillness and movement, one after another.
Sixth, habit. Over the years I’ve become quite good at knowing myself, also that I try to cheat and not reflect what suits me, since I feel it would be easier just to do the same thing. As mentioned above, more of the same does not work for me in the long run. In addition to location and time, my emotional state differs (as listed by Evans and Smith on p. 160). As a general tip, Evans and Smith suggest rewarding the effort, not the output. This is an excellent advice in academia, where projects may take years to mature, and there are always new projects already going on. I have not yet found my reward that would match all moods and situations, but I shall keep on testing. Tea is great, and also texting loved ones.
Seventh, people. Our virtual morning writing dates have been a success this year. They have given me structure and peer-support that I have needed wildly. It seems I’m quite capable setting goals and achieving them in my individual works, but the actual writing can get lonely and dull without other people. Writing dates at 8 am in the morning may sound like a medieval torture, it has been lovely to see the same faces one to three times per week and briefly hear how they are doing before we start to write independently. I suspect exercising in a group has a similar effect.
Eight, mastery. After more than a decade into writing as part of my academic work, I have started to see patterns. My rough patch in late 2023 was not the first one, but it was the first major one after I defended my dissertation in 2016. So it hit me hard. Mastery, it seems, is about staying humble, improving one’s craft deliberately, and resting. I’m glad I took the time and read Written thoroughly and reflected my writing. I feel I’m on a better path now knowing that pausing and thinking about my writing is necessary to find joy, and not only ploughing through the icy piercing requirements and deadlines. After all, I wanted to work as researcher precisely because I want to write. So why not make it pleasurable.
It has been a long time and no Browsing through Books post – which by the way seems to feature more books read from back to back than “browsed” ones. Yet, I’ll stick to promising only browsing, since this line of work has enough astronomically high expectations attached to it. If I do read a book from cover to cover, that’s great, but even greater is that I’m interested in other’s work, familiarise with it the best I can, and use this outlet to create a sense of accountability. Moreover, writing and posting this post is a sign that I’m back on the horse again: reading, thinking, writing, processing, reading more, thinking more, writing more, and processing more. What not to love about books? And writing.
Eeva Houtbeckers 
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