There is a seeming contradiction in Boice’s advice for writers. It’s hard to figure out how to wait and start early. I mean, I read what he says and it all seems to make sense, but figuring out how that is going to look in my own writing practice is a bit difficult. And I realized the other day that, done a certain way, free writing could end up adding a lot of slightly random notes to the already huge pile of same generated by fieldwork. Daunting!!

But today I had a pretty successful experience with waiting and starting early, so I thought I’d recount it for any out there who are wondering about Boice’s techniques (or for those of you who are specifically and utterly interested by my writing practice. There’s hundreds, nay, thousands of you aren’t there?).

I got up early and did a little bit of stretchy/breathy stuff to get the blood flowing. Then I plopped myself in front of the laptop to try to focus on a free writing session. I’ve been working on a proposal-style thesis outline that my advisor has set as a task for me, but I was not really able to get going this morning. I felt frustrated. I felt dubious that squeezing these words out of myself when I don’t know what to say is a worthwhile exercise.

So I decided to take a step back from the more linear prose thing I was trying to do, and just set myself to a task that isn’t exactly writing: I sat down on my reading chair with my notebook and just started making notes about what authors I plan to cite in which chapters. Now, this is already something I have a fairly clear idea of, and I wasn’t making any notes about how I was going to cite them. The notes look like this:

Ch. 1 -not much need. Maybe find some cross-cult. anth.

Ch. 2 -Fortes. McCaskie. Oppong. Clark. Maybe more general kinship

Ch. 3. -Rattray, Fortes, McCaskie, Wilks. GLR (Ghana Law Review). Law writers.

Ch. 4 (Funerals) DeWitt. Fortes. Some ritual-related stuff. Inheritance: more Fortes.

My general thinking in doing this was a) at least I’m doing something and b) this will help me make a library list.

But then something neat happened. I had a thought, a pretty simple thought: in order to get a handle on my book proposal, I have to answer a simple question: Why is inheritance an important and interesting thing to look at?

I started making notes on this question, and there it was, my freewriting. Then I had an idea about how to approach the answer in a way that links what I’m writing about to what my potential non-specialist audience and I almost rushed back to my computer to start writing it with the snappy first sentence I had in my head. I could feel the shape of what I wanted to say, and I was eager to begin getting it out.

But then I decided to employ the “wait” part of writing. Instead of trying to spell everything out linearly, I made a few structural notes, first this point then that point stuff. Then I took a break, during which time I told some friends (B. and R.) about it on gchat. B. asked a question that prompted a pretty linear response, so when I was done with my break, I took my outline and my gchat conversation and started writing something linear.

On my next break I showed the rough draft to B. and an anthro friend A. They gave me some feedback that showed where I could fill in some more detail. I was going to rewrite immediately, but I noticed two things that made me reassess:

First, I had been happy and mildly excited throughout the initial two writing sessions, but I was getting much more attached and heading into the euphoric writing state that Boice argues (convincingly) for avoiding. I was also having a harder time focusing, concentrating, and figuring out what I was going to say. Diminishing returns were about to set in!

So, instead of writing, I summarized my two friends’ suggestions in my notebook with a note to make those the subject of tomorrow’s freewrite. Then I finished up my work day by transcribing an interview (which gave me more to think about for tomorrow’s work).

Today I managed to employ several of Boice’s suggestions: wait, start early, monitor attachments, and stop. Oh, and “let others do some of the work” (in this case by getting really early feedback). I’m quite satisfied with what I’ve accomplished today, and I’ve left myself with a clear starting point for tomorrow. I’m happily (and mostly calmly) anticipating tomorrow’s writing session, which is maybe the biggest boon of all.

Filed under: Boice thesis

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