Dr. Crazy and Dr. B have both written on finding time to do academic writing, and the comments for each post are also worthwhile. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this lately, because mine is no example to follow. I write regularly here, more or less, but my academic writing tends to come in the traditional bursts during the weeks before deadlines.

The problem is that I’m convinced I need stretches of time for writing, and of course those stretches rarely arrive. Part of my reason for thinking this way is because my writing process is ponderous, involving much circling around and fiddling. I blog to limber up. Then I write for a couple of hours, then I go clean for awhile. Then write, then go to store with Mister Husband or out with friends. Then write, then nap. Then write. At the end of this last semester, this struck me as a remarkably unproductive way to handle things, and I resolved to Just Write for the 4-5 hour stretches that I did during my undergraduate and thesis work. Didn’t work. The fiddling is necessary, because that’s when some of the most important thinking happens.

Looking at this just now, it’s obvious that I don’t need big stretches of time to write in because I don’t, in reality, write that way anymore. In fact, I think I only wrote that way as an undergraduate because I was also working full time, and when I came into any night or weekend time all the schoolwork had to be crammed in there. I write these blog entries in little pockets of time, and who knows how many words have ended up here over the past three years.

This is an interesting thing to suddenly realize, because I have been in awe of people who write in spare moments for quite some time now. A few weeks ago, Mister Husband pointed me to an interview with the famously prolific Umberto Eco. In it, Eco says

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.

Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article!

Collin wrote an excellent post on consistent, short practice last September, and in an earlier related post linked to Jay Parini’s Chronicle piece entitled The Considerable Satisfaction of Two Pages a Day. (The link is to Parini’s faculty page. He’s published a book every few years since the early 1970s, in addition to a slew of poems and articles.) In the Chronicle piece, he talks about the importance of keeping several projects going at all times, and dipping into them in the spare moments he finds in the day — twenty minutes before dinner, fifteen after teaching. He takes breaks, keeps a rhythm, and works incrementally:

It isn't really possible to concentrate for more than half an hour without a solid break. That is my experience, in any case. Even when I have the whole day to work, I stop every 20 minutes to make a cup of tea, eat a cookie, call a friend, do a little yoga or a few stomach crunches, shower, or take a short walk. At a certain point in my life I realized that I should not feel guilty about those breaks. (I try not to feel guilty about anything, even when I am guilty.)

Of course it helps to have writing time you can count on. I have gone to a village diner for breakfast at roughly 8:10 almost every morning for several decades. Over coffee and English muffins (with peanut butter), I write poems. Rough drafts, mostly. I have grown used to the chatter in the background, the easy flow of coffee, the local crowd coming in and out. I know most of the people. Many of them wave, nod, or speak to me briefly. A few will sit down for a short time. But they all know I'm working. My notebook is open. I have a pen in my hand. I've made it known in these parts that I write poetry at this diner in the morning, and my friends (and acquaintances) respect that.

A little work every day adds up. That was a concept I got from Updike, whom I heard say (many years ago, in some public forum) that he writes only two pages a day. Two pages a day adds up to a long book every year, even counting revisions. When I'm working on a large prose book, such as a novel or biography, I try to write two pages or so every day. I'm not neurotic about it — sometimes I don't feel like writing at all. But I aim for two, and I usually get two. The system works. (And, like Hemingway, I always stop at a point where I know what comes next; that makes getting into the material easier the next day.)

This semester, I have to be on campus five days each week, which I haven’t done in years. The trade-off is a consistent schedule: I know I will be there every afternoon. I will not be there mornings, and I have no night seminars. I have a nice variety of projects to work on: two seminars to take, one course to teach, two consulting projects, three articles in progress. I would very much like to move those articles along and get them out the door, even if they only come back to be worked on more. I also have some proposals that need to go out in the next few weeks.

So this semester my overarching project will be to train myself out of this mindset of needing long stretches of time to devote to a single project. Instead, I want to settle into a rather incremental rhythm that involves bits of time and bits of work.

There is more to think about here, things having to do with leisure and the loop between leisure and productivity. Right now, I have to go write.