Working Through Writing Pain Points
On Crafting A Reflective Practice
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. ~Hemingway
I’m going to let you in on a secret, dear reader.
Writing is hard for me.
Before you click unsubscribe on Publish Not Perish because I haven’t got it all figured out, hear me out!
In academic writing, we often have to think through complicated ideas in new ways. This work is inherently hard, requires a lot of refined thinking, and lacks full clarity in early drafts. We all, of course, know this as intimately as Hemingway did, but many of us still retreat when writing gets tough. We often doubt our own abilities to produce good work and assume that it’s not as difficult for others as is is for us.
Today’s post encourages us all to push through the pain points in writing instead of retreating from them. I advocate for the development of a reflective practice that will assist you in learning from difficult writing moments and better understanding yourself as a writer.
Yes, I’m urging you to write about writing.
Why write about writing?
I write about writing as a way to learn through reflection. “Reflective practice” is a teaching and learning model that emphasizes learning from one’s experiences. It’s “the act of thinking about our experiences in order to learn from them for the future” (Cambridge). At colleges, for example, we often require a reflection essay after a student completes an internship. The goal is to have that student think about what they learned, so that they carry the learning from the experience into their next internship or job.
A reflective practice in writing means taking a step back from the specificities of what might be happening in a research project and considering the process. The goal of this reflective practice is to learn about oneself as a writer and/or to think about the bigger picture of a project.
The benefits of a reflective practice are numerous. You can use it to identify self-limiting beliefs, weigh various options for your project, to push through writing blocks, to experiment with different ways of doing things, and to pinpoint where you have room for growth.
A reflective practice fundamentally understands writing through a growth mindset, or beginner’s mind. Each project has something to teach us and every writer has something to learn about writing. We don’t beat ourselves up for having challenges in our writing, rather we dive into them in order to learn from them.
One of the primary ways I use a reflective writing practice is to work through difficult sections of writing. There are two forms of pain points I come across in my writing: intellectual and emotional.
Intellectual Pain Points
Sections of writing sometimes become more challenging because I have multiple ideas coursing through my brain at a given time and it’s hard to be able to focus those into coherent arguments. My natural tendency when I encounter a point in my writing where the path is unclear or cumbersome is to abandon the writing because it’s gotten too difficult. I tend to seek distraction from the writing to instead do something that feels better because, as I write in Habits for More Productive and Less Stressful Writing,
Distractions are a dopamine fix when writing gets hard…Humans prefer to avoid challenges, so my natural inclination is to grab my phone and do something enjoyable, like scroll through Instagram reels of dachshund puppies.
The problem with this strategy for dealing with writing pain points is that the distraction doesn't actually make the problem in my draft any better. Instead, it makes my work session less focused and less productive.
I faced an intellectual pain point last week in an article that I’m currently drafting. I realized in the draft that my paper could develop into two separate articles because I had two major arguments formulating. As I stared at the words I had written, I thought “I need to focus this piece more, but which direction do I go?”
My first reaction was familiar: retreat!
I wanted to avoid a hard part of writing so I could do something that made me feel good, but I decided to use a reflective practice technique instead.
I used the strategy of flow writing as a means to reflect on the two directions I could go in the argument. Flow writing could mean just writing without stopping as I tend to use it, but as I note in Flow Writing and the Shitty First Draft, it also includes
list making, idea mapping on a white board or piece of paper, taking voice notes on a phone, or having a conversation with a friend about an idea we are working through.
I began flowing with one argument and wrote for about 10-15 minutes without stopping or editing myself. Once I felt like I had articulated that option well enough for myself, I moved on to argument option number two. Again, I flowed for about the same amount of time to explore my thoughts.
After I finished, I looked back over both argument options and asked myself “which of these paths excite you more? Which would you more like to write about?” Instantly, I knew that I was gravitating towards the second option.
My reflective practice took about 20-30 minutes of writing time and provided me with immediate clarity about my paper's focus. It would have taken me longer to reach the "ah-ha" moment of clarity if I hadn't written about it and allowed myself to retreat when the writing became difficult.
Emotional Pain Points
The brief intellectual exercise of writing through my potential arguments clarified why that paper had been difficult to write thus far. The initial argument with which I began writing did not excite me, and I became bored with the paper. After I wrote through my options asked myself “which paper would you be more excited to write,” my feelings about the article shifted dramatically.
Emotional pain points in writing are instances in which your feelings about the quality of your work, your interest in it, or metacognitive thoughts about yourself as a writer interfere with your ability to write fluidly and consistently. My article was a pain point for me because I wasn’t writing the piece that actually engaged me intellectually. My reflection clarified these feelings and provided a path forward.
Another example of an emotional pain point in my writing came when I was finishing my book. I was working on my final chapter and had this nagging feeling that what I was writing wasn't good enough. I avoided finishing the chapter for several days, unsure why these feelings had become so intense at that time.
Again, I decide to use flow writing to get through the pain point. I sat down and started with the question “why I am feeling bad about finishing this chapter?” I just started writing down my thoughts and didn't stop for a while. Again, this exercise helped me see things clearly.
I realized I had subtly and unintentionally shifted the intended audience for my book in my mind. Instead of writing for scholars in my specific sub-field, I was writing for a prolific senior faculty member in my department. I suppose I was looking for affirmation and belonging in my department through my writing, but using this specific scholar as a barometer for my work wasn't helpful in writing the book I had set out to write. Instead, it made me feel insecure about my work.
Upon realizing that I shouldn’t actually write for that scholar I admired in my department, I returned to my intended audience and the writing became much more fluid again. I was then able o finish the chapter and the book.
A reflective practice can also be useful for working through procrastination, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome as each of these can be emotional roadblocks to writing. Instead of retreating from writing to avoid the difficulty of overcoming these often negative feelings about ourselves and our work, I challenge you to sit with those difficulties and work through them on the page.
Slowing Down to Find Clarity
While I mostly use flow writing as my method for thinking through pain points, I also brainstorm out loud with colleagues or my partner in order to gain clarity. Putting what hurts into words and figuring out where writing problems come from is therapeutic, whether you do it on paper or in person.
Reflection is a useful learning tool for refining one’s craft. Because of the pressures of academia, we are often so focused on completing a piece of writing that we are afraid to slow down and reflect. We focus on the end result instead of the journey. Reflection forces us to focus on the process, which improves our writing and makes it less painful. While it may appear that reflection takes more time at first, I have discovered that taking the time to reflect propels my projects forward with greater inertia than avoiding writing challenges.
Jenn, your article is inspiring. I always wonder why writing is such a battle with oneself. Reflective practice is a way to bring the internal belligerents into dialogue :) Maybe sometimes is better to leave the battle field and to look for a neutral third party (talk with a colleague or friend, as you said)
I am not fond of flow writing... especially when anxiety went to the party. The next time, I will try to use the "shower" effect: let the problem percolate.