Post date: Apr 01, 2020 4:37:44 PM
I was talking to a dissertation writer yesterday when the topic of how to "practice" writing came up.
She'd submitted something to her advisor. It would be a while before she had the information she needed to embark on another part of the project. How should she use this time to help her writing?
One answer: short assignments.
Annie Lamott uses the phrase "short assignments" to describe short pieces of writing she creates to build up to longer piece. Mind you, Lamott's take is second hand information-- I picked her phrase up in another book that refers to her work. (I don't have a copy of "Bird by Bird" handy.) But the advice sounds familiar and the phrase works, I think, nicely, as a complement to the idea of open ended writing-- free writing-- to churn up ideas and churn out prose.
It comes down to this. You will need to do certain things in any piece of writing you produce professionally. You'll need to define terms, tell the story of a problem, and summarize the points of view of prominent commentators. You'll need to analyze a phenomenon-- to do that you'll divide it into parts, name the parts and then show us how the parts fit according to your analysis. You'll describe connections, make and support claims.
You may be working on a specific piece of writing, such as an article, chapter or prospectus. Or you may be working on a project, taking notes and writing them up while, at the same time, planning out texts that haven't made themselves clear to your yet.
"Short assignments" works in both situations. Give yourself a topic. You might give yourself a purpose and audience, as well.
In a talk on her approach to writing, I heard Monika Mehta, a professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University, describe the role of short assignments while in graduate school. To help her learn to write with clarity about new, difficult theories she encountered, she wrote imagined letters to her father. While Monika may not have called it a "short assignment" at the time, she recommended the practice to a room full of graduate students.
Some people write summaries of everything they read. They may decide on a form to use: summarize the main points, describe the methods and data, situate the article in my project or thinking.
I have been working on a project that will need me to define and describe "Executive Function". I knew that I'd have to be able to define and describe in anywhere from a sentence to a paragraph, for a general audience and an insider audience.
I also needed to understand the concept itself. It is an old saw in writing instruction that people's writing gets worse when they encounter new ideas and information in a class. It's sometimes just too much to write clear concise prose on a difficult topic.
"Short assignments" help in two ways. You practice your voice, your way of explaining and organizing information. You also send and re-send what you're trying to understand through your brain, rearranging and re-articulating ideas, building up connections and familiarity-- and fluency.
So, I spent a lot of time on this assignment.
Summarize what X says executive function is and how their understanding of EF fits into their approach
Describe EF for college students
Describe EF for adults recently diagnosed with ADHD
I did them many times, always with the same idea: IT NEEDED TO BE SHORT. IT NEEDED A PURPOSE. AN IMAGINED AUDIENCE HELPED. SOMETIMES GIVING IT A TITLE (LIKE A BLOG POST OR SUBHEADING) HELPED, TOO-- FOR FOCUS.
This is not about ten, twenty, or thirty pages.
You are building up small pieces of text that will become part of larger texts and also will help you explore your ideas.
Monika Mehta's "short assignments" were the length of a letter her father might read. My assignments ranged from 50 to 250 words.
Short Assignments: try it. It's something to do.