Some resources that have helped me write

This post goes out especially to graduate students who are having a hard time with their writing, but also to undergraduates and other faculty members. Producing a thesis, or a dissertation, or a publishable article - or a decent term paper, for that matter - is tough, and one of the reasons for this is that many of us struggle a great deal to develop and maintain good work habits.

I'm a bit of a procrastinator by nature, it seems, but I've been fortunate enough to stumble across some resources that have helped me fight these tendencies and work more productively. I figured I'd share them here.

1. Professors as Writers, by Robert Boice. You don't have to be a professor to benefit from this book, which was probably the single most helpful resource I came across for getting me through the dissertation-writing process. The focus of this book is process, not product, and I can attest to the effectiveness of his tips for overcoming writer's block (which afflicted me severely in September 2005 and January 2006, if I remember correctly) and developing good writing habits.

I found Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day, which I received as a gift when I was writing my master's thesis, to be somewhat helpful, but it doesn't stand out in my memory as life-changing in the way that Boice's book does.

2. Getting Things Done, by David Allen. Believe the hype - this is an extremely useful book, even if you don't become a hard-core GTD fanatic. It's not about writing, of course, but there are some basic principles in the book that have helped me tremendously with my writing, as well as with productivity more generally.

For instance: you know how you sometimes get a great idea, and then you forget about it, and it's gone forever? One of Allen's basic concepts is to get "stuff" (of all kinds) out of your head and into some tangible form that you can get access to easily.

The tangible form that I've found the most useful has been the Hipster PDA, introduced to the world by Merlin Mann at 43 Folders (the title comes from Allen's book). Although I do use a conventional PDA daily (yes, I'm stuck in pre-smartphone technology here, but at least it's a good ol' Palm TX, which I've now had for almost 7 years), the simple act of carrying around note cards and jotting things down has revolutionized my life. Well, maybe that's a bit extreme - but the note cards have helped prevent me from "losing" numerous ideas that I would have otherwise lost.

3. Reassembling the Social, by Bruno Latour. OK, a bit of a non sequitur here, perhaps, but this was another one that helped me survive the dissertation process - and not just because I'm into actor-network theory and I shamelessly plug Latour's work at every opportunity. I think all graduate students would benefit from reading at least the chapter on "Writing Risky Accounts" (and indeed, he directs many of his comments in the book toward graduate students). It changed the way I thought about what I was doing, but it also provided considerable reassurance to me to read his description of the foibles, messiness, and inevitable incompleteness of social research (regardless of how we choose to define social).

I should note another book that I frequently recommend, if only because I find myself using the "situational map" so frequently to get my writing and thinking kick-started: Adele Clarke's Situational Analysis. Even if you don't buy the theoretical approach, I'd recommend trying out the practice of mapping. (I'm also eager to try out the software tool Free Mind, recommended by friend and fellow geographer Lee Hachadoorian on his new blog Free City.)

Part of what inspired this post is that the past three days have been some of the most productive I've had in recent months - maybe in recent years - and I feel compelled to give a little shout-out. I will direct this shout-out to the latest book I've found useful: Neil Fiore's The Now Habit. Again, it's not specifically about writing; it's about procrastination more generally. I also doubt that I'll ever use some of the tips in the book.

But I've been trying out his "Unschedule" idea this week, and so far it's working magnificently (knock on wood). The idea resonates nicely with Boice's approach, but the "Unschedule" adds a useful bit of structure to the "brief daily sessions" of writing that Boice advocates. I have to give credit once again to 43 Folders for introducing me to this book, even though Merlin Mann is skeptical of the "Unschedule" idea...

As a coda, I should also plug the book that did more than any other to help me learn to read academic books and articles: How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. None of my students have ever heard of it, it seems, but it's a classic, and it's worth every penny, and everyone should read it, right now.