Writing During The COVID-19 Pandemic, by Don Orth

Stay healthy and learn something during the pandemic! That’s been my credo since COVID-19 sent me home March 7^th. I created a nearly impossible writing schedule, and then realized I budgeted no time for reading, research, responding to survey requests, writing letters of reference, many rounds of editing, interruptions, zoom meetings, and finding my copy of that article or book I know possesses the wisdom I lack. In this post I follow the advice of Yoda “Pass on what you have learned.” It's been 10 weeks of stay-at-home, so I must have learned something that may help at least one writer. 

Highly erratic writing is my style. I tell my students to just finish the first shitty draft. I don’t like my shitty writing. And I hate to read the first shitty draft of a student writer. Yet "Write the shitty first draft" is Rule One.  Fear perfection — it is your enemy.  “Named must be your fear before you banish it you can.” — Yoda.  Only after you have some sentences can you get on with clarifying, organizing, polishing, and trimming.  

In graduate school and my early days as Assistant Professor, I wrote with a pencil on lined paper. Shitty it was.  “The greatest teacher, failure is.” — Yoda.   You may never get a manuscript ready to share with others if you do not first write that shitty draft.  Before I ever attempted to type up a draft for someone else to read and edit, my lined paper was all marked up with carets, circled phrases, arrows, insertions, strike throughs and erasures. Only then did I attempt to sit at a typewriter and compose the draft. A double-spaced draft meant the shitty draft could at last be read and edited by someone.

IBM Selectric typewriter. Photo by Oliver Kurmis.  CC Y 2.5. 

I learned later that Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994), wrote that “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”  I still chuckle thinking about her phrase, “fantasy of the uninitiated,” when I hear a graduate student say “Everything for my thesis is done, except for writing it up.”

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” 

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

The last phrase has stayed with me — I often tell myself “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”  How many revisions are needed? Don’t worry about it.  Just focus on one sentence and then one paragraph at a time.  In the graph below I plot the word count against the version number for a manuscript currently in review. I wrote the first shitty draft (version 1) in January 2018! Maybe the 31^st version will be acceptable for publication.

Plot of word count for thirty one versions of one manuscript awaiting reviews. 

Today, I am not as fond of the pencil and lined paper. And haven’t typed on an IBM Selectric in almost 40 years.  My high school typing teacher will always be remembered for shouting “Ready! Type!” to signal the start of timed typing. We would type furiously “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”  This sentence is undoubtedly the best-known pangram. It contains all 26 letters of the alphabet (as it must do in order to be a pangram) and is 35 letters long. Students today have no clue when I rattle off this sentence. I know there are alternatives, but I never in my life typed  "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." another panogram.

I am sad to learn that typing teachers were replaced by Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and other computer software. Typing courses were provided by typewriter manufacturers like Remington over 100 years ago, in an effort to establish the typewriter’s status as an essential technological aid in business.  I eventually learned to compose at the typewriter, a skill that has served me well when keyboards replaced typewriters.  “A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.” — Marshall McLuhan.  I will record a lecture soon for a summer class and I needed to transcribe my thoughts on the subject (5,681 words pithing 24 hours) because I cannot speak on the subject extemporaneously. 

As I tap these words out on my iPad’s keyboard app, I use two fingers. I never mastered the thumb typing required by modern “smart” phones. Or the iTap or T9 predictive text technologies for mobile phones. I still use the old multi-tap on my flip phone.  I also resent Outlook when it suggests how to complete my sentences. I’m sure I could write more per day if I learned to accept these suggestions.  Go ahead, call me a luddite! We all adopt new technologies at our own pace.

Writers block. “Happens to every guy sometimes this does” — Yoda.    Photo Pickpic.com

What I am learning during my stay-at-home time? Uninterrupted by on-campus meetings and drop ins, I can produce upwards of 5,000 words per day.  However, I’m still not sure how to measure time required to create meaningful, polished prose and I won’t use daily word counts to measure my work productivity. Apparently certain famous writers, such as Michael Crichton, writes 10,000 words per day.  That just makes me feel inadequate.  😖  I am also easily distracted by social media. The latest Ray Stevens song interrupted my daily writing recently — “I stay at home. Shelter in place. Social distance, don’t go work.  I wear a mask, gloves, and stay away from church.”  For a distraction, listen to Quarantine.  And, of course, I had to share the “I will survive” parody by History Professor Mark Bruening, Missouri University of Science and Technology, with all my friends and followers. Whenever I have any self-doubt, I now sing “As long as I know how to zoom I know I’ll be alive.” Thanks to Professor Bruening!

It was easier with pencil, lined papers, and a typewriter, but harder to do a word count. It was a world that I had some control over.  As author Joan Didion wrote “I’m totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.” There were no incessant notifications from Outlook, Twitter, Facebook, New York Times, Washington Post, and...well, you get the idea. The process of stopping writing to look up a word in the dictionary slowed me down to think about definitions, synonyms, and word choice.  I will keep my preferred technology even as I long to be a slow professor and rail against the corporatized academy.  

Among the many books I cannot quickly locate on my shelves is How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, by Paul J. Silvia.  He wrote about excuses, bad habits, and barriers to productive writing. I am sure I assimilated something from this book and passed it on to someone struggling to write more. “I can’t find time to write.” and “I need large blocks of time to write.” are two common complaints. I use these frequently. If I ever return to campus, I will use them both.

Pencil and paper are low tech and easily sharpened and updated.  CC 0

The following is my humble advice learned from years of trying to overcome the imposter syndrome as a writer.

People who write a lot make a schedule and stick to it.

Write the shitty first draft.

Fear is the path to the dark side. -- Yoda

Stay off social media and TV.

Walk.

Write. 

Sleep.

Sleep some more.

Set goals and measure writing progress somehow.   

Consider the sage advice from Anne Lamott “But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life