How I Sustain Momentum on Writing Projects

How I sustain momentum on my writing projects

Writing an academic book typically takes years. Complicating matters, you often have to work on other projects (like journal articles) while working on the book. Sustaining momentum on any writing project—let alone such a big one—can be challenging. Below are a set of practices I use to set myself up for success.

Planning & Pre-Work

Set realistic expectations

Creative work (like producing scholarship) depletes our mental resources, and most people have a finite amount of good, focused, daily writing time. In fact, it might surprise you to learn that many sources suggest humans can work on creative tasks for a maximum of four hours per day total. While this maximum excludes other, less creative work (like reading, copyediting, etc.), it does suggest that you should not plan to write for more than four hours per day, even on breaks, during postdocs, or during sabbaticals.

Keep in mind, too, that four hours is the maximum. You can absolutely finish a book and publish regularly working two hours or fewer on a regular basis.

If you currently don’t have a regular writing practice, I suggest starting with a daily goal of 25–30 minutes. As you build your writing muscles, you can always increase the time.

If you currently have a regular writing practice, you should, ideally, know what amount of writing is comfortable and sustainable for you. But please don’t plan to try to force yourself to write for more than four hours per day.

Match work to mental bandwidth when possible

Did you know that we naturally have daily peaks and troughs in our mental energy that tend to coincide with our chronotype (early bird vs. night owl)? Conveniently, however, not all research and writing tasks use the same type of mental bandwidth. You can position yourself for greater success when you match the type of work you plan to do with the type of bandwidth you have available.

For instance, I’ve found that I tend to struggle to draft new rough prose (a more creative activity) once I’ve depleted my mental bandwidth through teaching or other activities, but I can still engage in other types of revising and editing work when I’m tired. So, when possible, I reserve my precious morning writing slots for drafting new material and save tasks like reverse outlining, revising topic sentences, or revising paragraphs for cohesion for other times of the day.

If you’ve never noticed your own energy and mental bandwidth patterns, you can track how your energy fluctuates for a week. Ask yourself whether your tasks seem to match your current mental bandwidth. Then, you can begin to schedule your drafting/revising/researching sessions to proactively match your day’s rhythms (or, at the very least, prioritize your key work during your peaks). 

Minimize distractions

Apparently, it takes people approximately 23 minutes to recover their focus after each distraction. Consequently, one of the most important things you can do to maximize your work sessions is to proactively minimize distractions when possible. Consider turning off notifications, closing (or, at the very least, pausing, using a tool like Boomerang) your incoming email, or setting your devices to “Do not disturb” mode.

Sustaining Momentum in the Short Term (1 Session to 1 Week)

Set actionable session goals

At the start of each writing session, I set an actionable session goal—something tangible I think I can accomplish by the end of that session. Setting a session goal can help you focus better and remind you that larger projects (writing a book, revising an article, etc.) consist of very small, tangible tasks (close reading a passage through the lens of X, revising the topic sentences of paragraphs 1-3). It will take weeks—if not months!—to develop a good sense of how long tasks take you, so to begin, start small.

Use a closing routine

One of the biggest challenges authors face is maintaining momentum from session to session and from day to day. I overcome this challenge by setting my actionable session goal for the next session at the end of each session, as part of my “closing routine.” About two minutes before I need to stop writing, I open my writing log, record what I accomplished, and set my actionable goal for the next session, while my progress is still fresh in my mind. That way, all I need to do next time is sit down and work toward my goal; I don’t need to spend precious time refamiliarizing myself with what I was doing or asking myself what I should work on.

Track your sessions

Maintaining momentum on projects is often about seeing your little wins add up into finished projects, which also trains you to trust that your large, nebulous projects (like writing a book) really will be completed through incremental progress over time. To this end, I recommend tracking your writing sessions using whatever method works best for you. My preferred method is a spreadsheet. At the start of each session, I enter the date, time, and actionable session goal. At the end of my session (during my closing routine), I say what I accomplished, when I’ll write next, and what I’ll do during my next session on that same project (my actionable goal).

Over time, you’ll start to see trends: how many hours per week you tend to write comfortably, how many hours per week you can write during “crunch” or “easier” times, and how long various tasks take you. In turn, tracking will help you norm what you expect of yourself and help you set more realistic goals. 

Sustaining Momentum in the Medium Term (Every 8–12 Weeks)

Submit your writing

Recently, I learned that I have a clear soapbox when it comes to academic writing: authors should not work on a chapter or journal article for longer than twelve weeks without getting another set of eyes on it. Please don’t misunderstand me here: I’m not saying you need to finish a piece of writing every twelve weeks. Instead, I’m saying you should submit imperfect or even incomplete work to a trusted interlocutor after twelve weeks.

In my experience, submitting your writing for feedback according to a rigid schedule—rather than waiting to submit it until it feels “ready” or “done”—has myriad benefits:

  1. It accustoms you to sharing imperfect writing and helps you overcome perfectionism
  2. It can give you valuable feedback, given your project’s stage
  3. Talking with an interlocutor about your project typically renews your enthusiasm and momentum for the project

I’ve put together an entire course on developing a writing exchange partnership, but even if you don’t go that far, I highly recommend you get feedback on your writing after twelve consecutive weeks of working on a project.

Use this feedback form to ensure the feedback you ask for and receive is helpful.

Learn your project arc (and trust it!)

I tend to be a messy writer, generating my scholarship from the bottom up. That is, I start by writing to analyze the evidence (with a vague sense of what it’ll add up to), producing thousands of very drafty words—only some of which will ultimately be usable. Only after writing through what I see in the evidence am I able to produce a focused argument and revise my draft to support it. Consequently, my projects spend a lot of time in the “revising” stage, where I revise my argument and its development (through sections, paragraph order, topic sentences, etc.). 

Over time, I’ve learned that at several readily identifiable points in what I now think of as my projects’ “messy middles”—when I am close to finishing a zero draft or am wading through the mass of material, and when I am working with revising paragraph order—I feel like the project will never be done. The good news is that these feelings are both predictable and temporary. Continuing to work on tasks I know will lead to a finished project (like reverse outlining, assessing my outline, and revising my topic sentences) will, over time, lead to a finished piece.

As your writing project unfolds in the medium term (approximately every 8–12 weeks), review its arc. Are you in the “drafting” phase? The “macro revising” phase? “Micro revising” and copyediting? About how long does each phase take? Are there points in the process where your project feels like it’s stagnating? 

Review and norm your session goal setting

In my experience, you need a lot of data (months at least) before you can begin to draw conclusions about how long various writing tasks tend to take you. But every 8–12 weeks is a good amount of time to review the smallest building blocks of your writing momentum plan: your actionable session goals.

Ask: Are your session goals actionable and concrete (e.g., close read passage X through the lens of Y, reverse outline paragraphs 3–7) or nebulous (e.g., write chapter 2)? How frequently do you actually accomplish your session goal? If the answer is “rarely,” how could you scale down your goals to increase your chances of success?

Sustaining Momentum in the Long Term (Quarterly to Annually)

Review your logs and revise your estimates

If 8–12 week periods are a good length of time to review and norm your actionable writing session goal setting practices, longer periods of time will allow you to get a better sense of how your projects evolve holistically. On average, how long do various drafting and revising tasks take? Review again the stages your projects tend to proceed through (drafting, revising, micro revising, copyediting). Do any last longer than others? Use these data to inform how you estimate how long projects will take you.

Using conferences to move projects forward

When thinking about moving larger projects (books, book chapters, journal articles) forward in the longer term, consider proactively using conference presentations as a motivator to draft new material. For instance, I know I’ll need to draft a chapter on Léonora Miano in my second book; in October, I wrote an abstract for a presentation version of the book chapter, which I’ll present in March. Committing to give this conference presentation for a project I know I need to write for the book ensures that I cannot postpone it indefinitely.

If you need to put a project on the back burner

Sometimes you will need to put a project on the back burner. When this happens, I highly recommend that if at all possible, you package the project up to help maintain momentum across the gap. When I package up a project like this, I pack up all of my handwritten and printed material, preceded by a letter to myself that includes:

  • A record of the most up-to-date files (file names)
  • A summary of the packet’s contents
  • A summary of the project’s status and argument (including major decisions I made or questions I have)
  • A list of first steps to reacquaint myself with the project (e.g., what I should read or consult)
  • Some suggested first session goals
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