April 20…Back to Becker and Writing
How does Becker’s book match up to your expectations for a book claiming to teach you how to: “start and finish your thesis, book, or article?” Keep in mind that in spite of this negative-seeming prompt that I find the book to be worthwhile enough to assign it!
Becker’s book was by far my favorite reading for this class this semester. I found it incredibly easy to relate to, and honest about many things that people don’t usually talk about. I think Becker’s advice on starting was pretty good - just do it. Don’t worry about the end product, and just start writing (keeping in mind the idea that you will edit and rewrite so many times it doesn’t really matter where you start). The advice about “finishing” it though is a little…. Messier.
ReplyDeleteWhat I gathered from Becker’s book is a true message about how no one is a perfect writer, everyone has their own struggles with writing, and that no matter how great you ARE as a writer, it’s not going to be perfect the first time. There are some general rules to follow to help your writing sound good, and there are specific things that you have to do to meet the requirements of the journal/publisher. But I really don’t think Becker gave great advice other than just, “It’s hard, but you should do it anyway.”
Becker did help me solidify my desire to have people review my work, and helped me not take myself so seriously when it comes to sharing my work. He also helped me to recognize that if I want to write a book, article, or a thesis [I’m still undecided on whether I’m really going through with it], it’s a lot of work, it’s never perfect, it’s an iterative process, and I will learn a lot throughout the course of the work.
I thought the book was great. I enjoyed reading it, and it helped me be more realistic about the process of writing. The book made me more willing to take risks when it comes to writing, but I don’t know that it prepared me for HOW to complete the task of writing a book/article/thesis. It prepared me more for the mental challenges though!
Kori Mosley
ReplyDelete4/17/2020
I am laughing at myself because I JUST read the cover of the book after reading this prompt - and after finishing the book! I mean, maybe I read the cover at the start of the semester? - and I certainly KNEW what it was about… because I WAS reading it… but this just goes to show how disconnected my brain is - and how, when there are 50 million other things to do, the most important/obvious things can get lost (“doing an assignment” vs. making-meaning)(which is what happens when I have to “get it out the door” vs. “making it better”).
When we were “on a break” from this book and I was mired in writing hell, why didn’t I say to myself, “Hey, Kori, how about picking up that book that is about being mired in writing hell?” The truth is, I didn’t have time to pick up the book!!!! But I also wonder if that says something about my feelings toward the book? Did I NOT believe that it could help me? Maybe, because when we came back to Chapters 3, 4, 5 - and I read them AGAIN - I was shocked at how they so clearly summed up exactly what I was struggling with. I wonder why I didn’t pick up on that earlier? But it’s probably my fault more than Becker’s.
I appreciated this book for its ease of reading and its eerie insight into my brain. But Becker can get long-winded - and he tells bad jokes (or “wry” as per the praise-blurbs on the back cover) and/or states the obvious, which is ultimately not helpful to me (again, probably my fault more than Becker’s). Still, I recognize and appreciate the lessons he tried to illustrate - and their intent. Unfortunately, I am stubborn (and whatever else) and mantras of “just do it,” “will power,” “hard work,” and “try it!” DO NOT HELP. Every time I was reminded about the “just write it/dump it/edit it as a next step,” technique, I got inspired…. but it still didn’t help (I’m gonna keep trying, though).
So, based on my opening sentence, I didn’t have ANY expectations for this book. That may be a good thing, because I wasn’t disappointed. Even though I do think he’s (re)convinced me that academia is not my game, I do REALLY want to take some of his advice to heart (and leave some) but as he says on p. 173: “No one else can solve your problems. They are yours. You have to get rid of them.” Thanks, Becker! XO.
I think the book matched or exceeded my expectations. It was interesting, because a colleague who had gone through this class before had a copy of the book, and another colleague just had the book lying around. The second colleague has been in academic for 40+ years, and he described it with pure ambivalence, and he went so far as to say he never found it particularly helpful.
ReplyDeleteI did find it helpful. I find empathy to be very helpful, and I think Becker is really empathetic. So, more than any advice he gives, I think the intention behind the advice comes through. I liked the final words especially, including the quote Kori shared, and the points Becker made about having to change the way we do things, and to make them our own, to be able to see any kind of positive outcome. Ultimately, I think making changes to our routines, or our practice, is one of the hardest things. Maybe it's why we get stuck in those routines, our little habits to enable our writing, like cleaning first, or playing music, or writing an outline, or the things we do to procrastinate, or the feelings that make it so hard to start something, to the point where we just have to, as Becker says, and as makes most sense, get it onto the page.
I think it's also important that all of us face different constraints, exist in different social realities, or at least under different social circumstances. If my time at work is protected to write, which is very rare for faculty and even more so for staff, and indeed, it's a luxury, a lark, a laugh, but if it is protected, I'll try and just get it done. If I'm writing for work and my time is not protected, if there are other priorities, then that's where my time will go. I will say, when I do get protected time, I don't always handle it wisely. I think that's the part about making the effort to change the way you do things.
I think we also have different fears. I don't think I'm as worried about sharing my work, or opening myself up to critique. I still take it personally sometimes, but I take it less and less personally. I am afraid of wasting time, of wasting effort, of disappointing someone on the team by getting it wrong, by delaying other people in their work.
I think Becker gives broad enough advice and makes it clear that it is not a one-size-fits-all approach to writing. That's why the book, at the very least, matched my expectations, and, at most, it exceeded them.
As a side note, both colleagues mentioned earlier in this post gave me their copies of the book. One, because he was leaving for another job and didn't need it, and the other because of his ambivalence. I now have three copies of this book.
I'm not sure how relevant this is to the content of the book, but when I finished Chapter 10 and Becker's "A Few More Final Words" from 2007, I had to take some time to reflect on the historic qualities of it all.
ReplyDeleteObviously, it's hard to escape that Becker finished his PhD in 1951, and the social and material conditions under which he began his academic career have absolutely changed. He acknowledges this in his last chapter. But for me it was hard to escape noticing that this second edition was published just before the Great Recession, whose effects were only beginning to be felt when we all went into lockdown last month. Now we have to contend with spiking unemployment and shrinking household wealth (with something like half of American households having lost a quarter of their net worth).
On pages 174-175, Becker writes, "A second lesson of this book, implicit in every chapter and explicit in most of them, is that writing is an organizational act, done in response to whatever constraints, opportunities, or incentives the organization you write in presents to you."
The organizational constraints, opportunities, and incentives of the academy absolutely changed in the post-2008 period, when state support, philanthropy, and endowment returns dried up. With writing and publishing being a primary avenue via which academics achieve job security, I have to wonder how changing incentive structures affected the practice of writing.
I think one way in which we in this class are lucky is that few of us aspire singularly to be professors in the traditional mold. But education is subject to economic forces, and I can only begin to wonder what our discipline will look like in the years to come.
Jonathan
I genuinely enjoyed reading Becker this semester. It humanized the feelings that any student can feel when it comes to writing, and to having your writing critiqued. As someone that spent a lot of time in undergrad making sure that my first draft of a paper was perfect enough to submit it, I was able to laugh at the things he wrote about. In class, and in this book, we've discussed how particular we can all be when it comes to writing. For me, I've got to make sure that X Y and Z are completed, and that it's not on a day that i've had too many advising meetings, and that i've eaten recently. I thought I was nuts about my "writing process" but the book helped me to understand that writing is just writing, and that I'm the one that gives it power over my emotions. I'll still make sure that X Y and Z are completed though :).
ReplyDeleteAs someone above me mentioned, I don't believe that the book really taught me to write a thesis, but it certainly did a great job at making me feel like I'm not alone in how I feel about the process. I'll be able to better answer this question once my thesis is complete!
Maggie Brocklebank
My reaction was similar in that I also enjoyed the book. I always used the Becker book to take break up my homework. It definitely helped communicate the universality of our complex relationship with writing.
DeletePowerful conclusions that I also shared Maggie! I love how you said writing is just writing and we are the ones who give it power over our emotions... going to write that one down and tape it to my mirror as my morning mantra...
DeleteBecker's text set up an interesting (and refreshing) contrast with Pring, such that I would look forward to reading a chapter of Becker that might illuminate why Pring was so frustrating to read. I don't think the prompt for this discussion stuck in my mind as Becker's intended purpose, but I do frequently remember thinking of his text as his theme from chapter 1: freshman composition for graduate students. As someone who hasn't taken an actual "writing" or "English composition" course since high school, I approached Becker with hope that any messaging I'd lost as a wandering academic in the last 12 years would be reintroduced. (Interestingly, when cleaning out my parents' house a couple years back, i stumbled onto some old portfolios of high school work and even as a recent Master's graduate was dumbfounded with how clearer my writing was during high school...almost like all of that explicit feedback and instruction about the process was helping...)
ReplyDeleteSo overall, I think Becker has brought my writing "back to basics," and although I borrowed the texts for this class from a colleague, I will definitely invest in my own copy for my bookshelf.
Becker said it best himself “reading this book will not solve all your writing problems” (173). Though many personal examples were given, they were personal. Meaning, they can be applied to us and looked at as words from the wise, but they won’t solve any of our writing problems. I did find this part of chapter 10 to be important, but I also found it to sort of discount what Becker had been supporting the whole time. Becker set it up to be very applicable life lessons but then negated this by saying this book and no one else can solve our problems. I wonder if Becker deep down also feels victim to the writing pit of doubt or if he included chapter 10 to cover himself if people accused him of not knowing how to write any better.
ReplyDeleteI think depending on where one is at in their professional writing journey, certain chapters become more applicable than others. I am not sure if everyone needs to read the book all the way through or if it would be more applicable for people to select which chapters will help them the most. I found this book worthwhile for some of the chapters that talked about self-doubt and fear of writing. I found other chapters less valuable, maybe because I’m not there yet (like I mentioned in getting it out the door last week). Overall, I don’t think the book taught me how to write, it more so taught me how not to write and it reassured me of normal anxieties. Becker even alluded to his own anxieties, sharing that that doesn’t necessarily go away, you just learn how to manage it more.
Becker’s book was my favorite in this course. In fact, his advice to his readers is the same as mine was to my high school English students who struggled to get pen words to paper. I told them to brain dump on the paper, writing as much content as possible, and I would help them clean it up. I had to describe it in one word, that word would be "therapeutic". The time Becker took to describe the academic organization’s explicit and implicit constraints, parameters, rules, and expectations validate for writers the fear, pressure, and anxiety that come with trying to forge their way into the elite world of scholarly writing. At the same time, Becker offers practical advice for navigating these waters to avoid becoming paralyzed or drowning under the weight of the emotional roller coaster that accompanies this journey. He encourages and empowers writers to be themselves in a process that truly has no end (If it did, authors would not revise their published work.) and to open themselves up to being stretched by the process. For me as a writer, Becker’s book is summarized in the following statement in Chapter 7, “…you can decide when to let your work out the door by deciding what part you want to play in the world in which work like yours is done” (p. 126). This book is one that I see myself returning to from time-to-time when I need "therapy" during the writing process.
ReplyDeleteHere is my edited post.
DeleteBecker’s book was my favorite in this course. In fact, his advice to his readers is the same as mine was to my high school English students who struggled to pen words to paper. I told them to brain dump on the paper, writing as much content as possible, and I would help them clean it up. If I had to describe Becker’s book in one word, that word would be therapeutic. The time Becker took to describe the academic organization’s explicit and implicit constraints, parameters, rules, and expectations validate for writers the fear, pressure, and anxiety that come with trying to forge their way into the elite world of scholarly writing. At the same time, Becker offers practical advice for navigating these waters to avoid becoming paralyzed or drowning under the weight of the emotional roller coaster that accompanies this journey. He encourages and empowers writers to be themselves in a process that truly has no end (If it did, authors would not revise their published work.) and to open themselves up to being stretched by the process. For me as a writer, Becker’s book is summarized in the following statement in Chapter 7, “…you can decide when to let your work out the door by deciding what part you want to play in the world in which work like yours is done” (p. 126).
When initially opening Becker's book, I did not have any particular expectations, but I have left with an appreciation for his words. It was refreshing to come down from the clouds, strip it all back, and get to the very basics of writing. The book for me certainly had a humanistic approach that spoke to the human at the center of the academic writing experience. As I reflect on what I have taken from the book, I need to remind myself to look behind the final product of the writing experience. It isn't the end product that I should be paying attention to as a developing writer. Yes, the final product is important, but it is the writing process, the journey towards the final product that truly tells the story. It is the behind the scenes red ink, multiple iterations, late nights, and for me, the importance of working through one's vulnerabilities by writing and trusting the opinions of others to help you grow as a writer. As quoted: "If I can't trust them to tell me the truth, then their feedback will not help me trust myself. I will always wonder whether my ideas are really good, or whether they're just trying to be nice" (p. 118). To know how I am as a writer, I must write and share not only my work with others but to allow myself to grow through the writing experience and process.
ReplyDeleteYes Veronica - a humanistic approach! Like Maggie said above and you echoed, it didn't necessarily teach us writing techniques or what our paper should be like at this level of education.. but how to accept our fears and feelings surrounding the writing process and even how to begin healing and changing some of those more negative behaviors. It is comforting to know that people we now view as successful struggled the same we are now... just wish more people would admit it!
DeleteKori’s post had me chuckling in agreement. I mean I knew Becker’s book was about writing too, but I hadn’t thought about it as a how-to. I too have felt like I’m just churning through assignments, with little time to actually “make meaning,” and that’s not how I want my experience in this program to be. I get really wrapped up in “getting it out the door,” the anxiety keeps me up at night or has me waking up with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth in my sleep. I hate missing deadlines.
ReplyDeleteIt really does serve as a nice reminder as to the importance of being conscious of managing expectations with your work but also with how you work.
Becker’s book provided a nice sense of companionship, especially when I felt like I had the time to indulge in it and be engrossed. But sadly, this was rare.
Specifically, “Terrorized by the Literature” provided a concrete, logistical approach to piecing together literature and handling originality, which has been an idea that has always left me a little unsure of what was expected of me. Becker says, “You want to make an argument, instead of a table. You have created some of the argument yourself, perhaps on the basis of new data or information you have collected. But you needn't invent the whole thing. Other people have worked on your problem or problems related to it and have made some of the pieces you need. You just have to fit them in where they belong. Like the woodworker, you leave space, when you make your portion of the argument, for the other parts you know you can get” (142). Here he tells me that part of my job is to discover new opportunities in compounding different preceding research.
And in a perfect representation of Becker’s humor and style, he concludes by telling us, in part, “[N]o one else can solve your problems. They are yours. You have to get rid of them.” This is the companionship to which I referred to earlier in my post. These words buoy me through their direct, no bullshitty approach. It’s the kind of genuine, tough love from which I tend to thrive. That’s the kind of stuff from Becker that will stick with me most.
- Peyton B.
Overall, I had no beef with Becker! I think the the text was accessible, straightforward, and candid. Any hesitation that I feel reading Becker is just my own uncertainty about what, exactly I want to write about and study. I think his advice speaks more about the world of research and critique we want to create vs. the current realities. Academic writing is defensive and careful, at the expense of clarity and passion. I look forward to being at a place in my career where I can fire off publications with his style of writing. Since I don't foresee myself going for the pure-tenure track faculty route, it's helpful to have this insight when writing for different audiences outside of journal referees.
ReplyDeleteBecker helped speak to a lot of inadequacy and hemming and hawing that I've felt in my first year. Reading the ambiguous, shapeless thoughts from my head written down clearly on the page takes away a lot of the manufactured pressure that I've placed on myself. These readings have helped me work through my issues with being BAD. The radio host/producer Ira Glass has a quote about creative work that resonated with me after finishing the last reading:
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. .... And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
The stuff I read made me want to work towards a PhD, and the stuff I am making now is (comparably) bad. The only way to get better is to make a lot of bad stuff, and get more confident in identifying how it's bad so it can be better later. Becker framed this better for academia, but the sentiment is the same. Until I trust myself, my peers, and my faculty enough to help me complete and build off of bad work, I won't grow in my writing. So, shouts out to my peer editing partner Meagan for supporting my bad work!
In Chapter 3, “One Right Way”, Becker blessed us with some practical exercises that will help the process of writing. I thoroughly enjoyed Becker’s book because it was written in a way that resonated with me in my current stage in my doctorate. I am at the point where I need to be writing (and researching) more and this book gave some helpful tips. One sentence from Chapter 3 has helped me out a great deal already. Becker suggested to “begin taking notes on what you have written, putting each idea on a file card. Don’t discard any of the ideas in your draft. They come in handy, even if you can’t see how at the moment; your subconscious knows things you don’t.” This statement is something that I wrote out and pasted on my white board at home. I tend to get in my own way when it comes to writing and putting my ideas on paper and into motion. I must start writing everything down regardless if I will use it for the “final” product. This chapter helped me to understand to the importance of organizing my brainstorms so that can be useful to the process. Lastly, this is a book that I will keep as a reference. I love the practicality and the normalizing of risks, mistakes, drafts to writing. It takes a great deal of pressure off your work to think of it simply.
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