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6 tips to kick-start your writing in the new year

January 14, 2020
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By Aryana Soliz


6 tips to kickstart your writing in the new year

Whether you are working on dissertation or a two-page essay, writing can be hard work. As a teacher and writing tutor, I’ve heard countless students talk about experiencing writer’s block. Since I’ve also gotten stuck in the writing process intermittently, I’ve spent a lot of time reading about writing strategies and talking to other writers about their tried-and-true practices.

Here’s a list of my favourite tips for bringing a greater sense of ease to the writing process.

1. Build an ongoing writing practice

“Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.” — Spanish proverb

Try to think about writing like dancing, cooking or singing. It’s a skill that becomes more fluid the more it is practiced.

In the new year, consider starting a personal journal and commit to at least a page of freewriting per day. Give yourself a break from editing or pausing to find the right word. Think of the journal as a continuous stream of consciousness where no thought is too mundane, obscure or trivial.

One of the key benefits of freewriting is it helps to remove stress and self-doubt from the writing process. Writing becomes a habit or something we simply do every day.

Journal writing can also help us to claim our life events and situate ourselves within larger research topics. Sociologist Dorothy Smith suggests that everyday lived experiences offer a useful starting point for academic inquiry by aiming to extend “people’s ordinary knowledge as practitioners of our everyday worlds into reaches of powers and relations that are beyond them.”

2. Explore your topic

In addition to freewriting, an excellent way to explore a research topic is through brainstorming or mapping initial ideas. Students with more visual and tactile learning styles often find it helpful to sketch their research ideas to spur a more creative planning process. You may want to attend an Art Hive at Concordia to explore your ideas through mixed materials.

Once you have gathered your ideas, you can begin to select the main topics that you want to write about and organize them into a draft structure.

I find it helpful to make the planning process creative as well by drawing a concept map of the main themes I want to address. I then use post-it notes for sub-themes and references, which I can easily attach or move around as I write and discover new connections. I’ve attached a sample concept map of course syllabus that I designed.

3. Use available resources

Concordia’s Student Success Centre offers a number of useful online resources as well as one-on-one tutoring for both graduate and undergraduate students. Try to start with an appointment early in the semester to work through any of your writing or academic concerns rather than waiting for the day before your paper is due.

Some departments also have a writing tutor available on a drop-in basis — check with your department. You can also try this writing assignment calculator to plan each aspect of the writing process and to help allocate your time.

4. Try a writing technique

There are a number of books available on writing strategies. One of the best ways to explore these techniques is to join a writing group such as tais-toi et écris Montréal, where you can sit down with others to effectively “shut up and write.”

In my writing group, we use the Pomodoro Technique, a time-management strategy created by Francesco Cirillo. This strategy involves dividing writing time into roughly 25-minute intervals of uninterrupted work, each followed by a five-minute break. The reason the Pomodoro Technique is so effective is that it uses a principle called timeboxing, which involves setting aside a period to concentrate on one specific task.

Turning off your phone, text messages, emails and social media during writing times is key to avoid distractions and procrastination. This technique is incredibly useful for bringing a getter sense of flow and focus to the writing process. All you need is a timer to use this method, or you can try one of the many apps available.

5. Set realistic expectations

When working on a deadline,  I also like to set a realistic page per day — or words per day — expectation for myself (even if it’s just one draft page per day), rather than trying to simply sit in front of the computer for a set amount of time. This process can be especially helpful for people who tend to excessively edit while writing.

The idea is to commit to completing the draft pages for the day, no matter how unpolished or raw they may be. If you finish the pages early, then you can use the rest of your time to continue writing, to start editing, or you could give yourself some well-deserved time off!

Setting realistic expectations also involves creating the right work-life balance with your time as well as finding ways to manage the stresses of writing, studying and tending to other responsibilities. See Heather Herriot’s blog post on ways to reduce stress. You can always carry a pocket notebook with you to quickly jot down any writing ideas that pop into your head when you are away from the computer.

6. Share your ideas

When people think about writing a thesis or dissertation, the image of a solitary graduate student writing alone for months or years on end often comes to mind. This image is not always inaccurate, as I have heard many graduate students say “don’t ask me about my bleeping thesis” in frustration with the writing process.

At some point, however, most of us realize that good writing involves a lot of discussion and engagement with different viewpoints. Scholars such as bell hooks describe critical thinking as an interactive process that requires active participation from students, teachers and the wider community.

Whenever possible, try to discuss what you are writing with your friends, family, roommates or coworkers. This process is useful for spurring new ideas, while helping to loosen up any academic jargon. You may also want to consider forming a peer-review group with your classmates.

Not only does sharing our ideas make academic knowledge more inclusive to a wider audience, but it is also key to helping us move past our stumbling blocks and reconsider writing as something engaging, imaginative and interactive.

About the author

Aryana Soliz is a doctoral candidate in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. For twelve years she worked as a project coordinator for various non-profit organizations in Canada and in Latin America. In 2017, she helped co-found the Concordia Ethnography Lab,an interdisciplinary initiative aimed at promoting innovative ethnographic research. Her doctoral research focuses on cycling infrastructures and mobility justice in small and intermediate cities. Her research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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