How to Write a Book When You Have a Full-Time Job

The three slow-and-steady strategies that worked for me

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

I’m thrilled to have Dr. Rebekah Peeples guest posting today! Rebekah is an accomplished scholar whose career reflects a deep commitment to sustaining meaningful research and writing while balancing the demands of a full-time administrative role and family life.

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I recently met up with a friend from graduate school who I hadn’t seen in years, and we predictably ended up reminiscing about how young and naïve we were when we started our doctoral programs. We both laughed when remembering how one of our professors warned us that we’d never have more time to devote to our scholarship and writing than we did in graduate school.

At the time, of course, we thought this was ludicrous. We were struggling mightily to balance the work for our classes with being teaching and research assistants, not to mention making headway on our own research and scholarship.

Now, twenty years later, we both agreed: that professor was right. We had no idea, at the time, how much harder it would get to find time to write once we were actually established in academic jobs.

My own journey through the chutes and ladders of academia was entirely forged through contingent faculty positions. I never had a sabbatical or research leave, which meant that from the moment I finished my PhD, I was either teaching or working full-time. In theory I could have had some of those summers free, but they also came without any compensation, so I routinely picked up extra summer teaching work to help pay the bills. All of this meant that I learned by necessity how to make headway as a scholar without any time off. I ended up turning my dissertation into what would become my first book by working in the early morning before my then-young children woke up and needed parental attention.

It turned out that these skills were still useful when I decided to work on a second book project, which culminates in the book Unchanged Trebles: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity, forthcoming this fall from Rutgers University Press. By the time I started working on this project in 2019, I had a full-time administrative job that expected me to work all day, all year, unless I was logging vacation time.

I realize now that this experience isn’t all that unusual. There are plenty of academics who don’t have abundant sabbaticals to accommodate extended projects, not to mention people who have left academia but are still working on writing projects alongside other full-time jobs. And of course, there are scores of academics who must work intentionally to carve out time and space to work on their scholarship in the midst of heavy teaching loads and mandatory university service.

I hope that this brief reflection on the three things that made me successful in launching a second book might be useful to anyone who finds themselves facing a similar conundrum.

1. I established a daily writing routine.

When I decided to start working on my book project, I knew I needed dedicated daily time for it I’m a morning person, so I set aside 6:00 – 7:00 am each day to devote to my writing, on weekdays only. (I made a deal with myself that I was “allowed” to write on weekends if I wanted to, but not required, which also reinforced the accountablity to the weekday routine.)

I found that the daily routine was critical beyond just ensuring daily progress. Having a daily routine meant that there wasn’t the same “ramp up” required to get my head back into the project for each work session, and it also meant that I became more comfortable with the inevitable ebb and flow of the writing process, since some days the work felt easy and effortless, while other days it felt strained and plodding. Establishing a daily practice put those highs and lows into perspective. If I had a day that felt like a waste of time, it didn’t matter so much because I knew I’d be back at it again the next day. If I had a day that felt especially exciting or productive, I’d still wrap up at 7:00 and leave myself notes for the next day to remind me of what I’d wanted to think about or explore the next time I had the opportunity.

Having this dedicated time also made it feel a bit more sacred, too. It enhanced my accountability and released me from the constant pressure to “do more” that academic work often brings. In other words, I no longer felt guilty when I was watching TV at night because there wasn’t that interior voice saying, “You know, you could be working on that book project right now.”

2. I defined “writing” broadly.

Years ago when I was teaching first-year writing at Princeton, I would constantly remind my students that only a small amount of the work we do on an academic paper ultimately makes it onto the page. Much of our work is preparatory and exploratory, with countless drafts ultimately cast aside in favor of a few paragraphs where you discovered what you really meant to say.

I took my own advice to heart this time and used my daily writing practice for a broad range of things that weren’t always typing out finished prose. Sometimes I read books and articles that I thought might be relevant or would help me better frame the larger stakes of my project. I was faithful about taking notes while I read. I kept computer files organized by broad subjects and maintained a running “tickler” file of questions that those readings raised. Sometimes my morning time was devoted to building a database of the respondents I wanted to interview and then writing to them to explain my project and ask if they’d be willing to talk. As the project continued, my morning hours were devoted to reviewing transcripts and highlighting quotes, effectively beginning the analysis of the interviews.

I can’t recall exactly when I started writing any of the text that would eventually become a book proposal and, later on, book chapters, but I’d estimate that I spent a solid year or more doing these other “pre-writing” tasks that were essential to defining the larger stakes, focus, and structure of the final work.

3. I found a writing partner.

By the time I was deep into my book project, the pandemic was well underway and it felt like I was living more and more of my life on Zoom. In the midst of those lockdown months, I reconnected with a friend and former Princeton colleague, Neil J. Young. We’d scheduled a Zoom lunch just to chat and catch up, but in the course of our conversation we both realized we were working on new writing projects and that it might be helpful to trade drafts of our work in progress.

For a year and a half we met almost weekly. Though our fields differed (Neil is a historian, while I’m a sociologist), the overlap was enough to let us read as both specialists and generalists.

We didn’t always exchange complete drafts. Sometimes we’d workshop a couple of paragraphs; other times one of us would use the time to share with the other one how we were thinking about prioritizing revisions or structuring a book’s chapter outline. Occasionally we would just complain or vent and accept the other’s steadfast encouragement and empathy.

Without question, Neil’s comments made my book better and stronger, and the accountability kept me on track. I can’t emphasize enough how essential this was for my project. So often we think of scholarship as a solitary, lonely endeavor, but we all know from experience how this go-it-alone attitude can keep us from making real progress. I’d encourage anyone contemplating a new project to find a writing partner you can trust and rely on –it made the work of writing less lonely, more fun, and much more productive.

Of course, I’m thrilled that I was able to finish a book through this process, but I also learned some lasting lessons about myself as a writer, too. By the time I started on this project I’d been off the research and teaching track for about ten years – something that initially seemed like an insurmountable eternity. Returning to scholarly work definitely felt intimidating, but the slow and steady approach turned out to be just the right speed. Giving myself a lengthy on-ramp to read, think, and try out new ideas was just what I needed to get my intellectual muscles moving again, and having a writing partner affirm that my work was interesting and compelling kept me moving toward the finish line.

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BIO: Rebekah Peeples is the Associate Dean for Curriculum and Assessment at Princeton University. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, and mentioned on NPR. A common thread in her public writing has to do with how parents and other adults can help young people grow into adulthood with a sense of purpose, agency, and engagement with others. Her Substack newsletter No Small Thing brings these interests together in weekly posts that incorporate insights from the social sciences. Her forthcoming book, Unchanged Trebles: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity will be published next month by Rutgers UP.