by Cally Guerin
As I sit down at my laptop set up on the kitchen bench, I find myself wondering where all those PhD theses get written. I’m not quite certain why this is where I choose to write. Sure, it’s a bit warmer here in the kitchen during the cold, wet Adelaide winter, and I can get up every now and then to stir the quince jam that’s bubbling away on the stove. I do have a perfectly good study here at home, but when I’ve got the house to myself, I always seem to end up here on the kitchen bench to write. And I know of others who actually prefer the busy life and noise of the family to surround them as they settle into their writing at the kitchen table.
A friend confided that she really needed to go into her work office to do any serious writing and never seemed able to make much progress anywhere else. She described entering her office as ‘putting on her carapace’ and harnessing herself to the intellectual activity of writing. Trying to write while in another country on study leave just didn’t have the same soothing sense of habitual scholarly demeanor.
Laptops and wifi make it easier than ever to work in cafes with a lively buzz of activity in the background (it’s harder to fall asleep in such public places, too!). The local park might beckon in good weather. For those with busy work and family lives who choose to undertake doctoral studies part time, a lot of writing can be done in the car while waiting for children to finish their sports practice.
Doctoral students are often encouraged to establish regular habits around writing times and places (e.g., Kearns & Gardiner, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful PhD Students). This writing might take place in in brief snatches of time (snack writing) or it might be planned out in extended writing binges (Murray 2002/2011). When we talk about ‘writing as a social activity’ (Aitchison & Lee 2006), does this also call into play the social nature of those spaces at some level?
There are times when I grumpily tell students that they can’t complain about feeling isolated during their candidature if they choose to work at home alone every day and not participate in the collegial life of their discipline. But then those students have told me that sometimes the spaces provided by their university are problematic because of the noise and activity levels of open-space offices shared by 10 to 20 students. While such arrangements might be great for creating a sense of community, there is always someone chatting or taking a phone call, or entering or leaving the space, distracting and disturbing others’ concentration.
Where do you write or encourage your students to write? What kinds of writing spaces are most conducive to the kind of rigorous intellectual activity that is required at doctoral level? Are we sometimes kidding ourselves about how much writing actually gets done in those institutionally sanctioned, relatively public spaces? I’d love to hear more about where theses are written and why those spaces work so well.
Murray, R. (2002/2011) How to Write a Thesis, Open University Press.
What great thoughts Cally. Thanks. You raise a serious concern of research students. One thing research students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) love is the opportunity to participate in writing retreats that I have facilitated over the last 2 years. The idea of writing retreats is not new, but here is how I aim to encourage productive research writing habits for the EAL research students. The writing retreats if facilitate vary from 1 to 3 days. For the students who come, they are amazed at how productive they can be! They have now become part of the regular workshops on offer. This year I experimented with four monthly 1 day writing retreats with commencing students who were writing their proposal with the aim of getting them into the groove of research writing.
Inspired by Claire Aitchison’s writing retreat (as a participant) and Rowena Murray’s book on writing retreats, I have since established retreats as a quiet space for writing. My ground rules are banning email, internet and phones! I start by establishing goals and positive thoughts about myself as a writer (e.g. I do my best research writing when …), etc. Then 1.5 h writing; 1/2 h break and networking with homebaked biscuits (makes it more community oriented!); 1.5 h writing; 1 h lunch (we go together to a casual cheap place to eat & tell more stories), 1.5 h wriitng, 1 h workshop/discussion at the end of the day. During the day I also provide opportunities for individual encouragement, discussion and feedback on writing. Sometimes I co-facilitate with a colleague, which provides more opportunites for dialogue and discussion about drafts.
Here are some snippets of student feedback:
— ‘I wrote more’;
— ‘It helps me to focus on writing and thinking and really make some progress in writing my research proposal’;
— ‘No distraction to my writing’;
— ‘I liked how the writing session forced me to avoid distractions and just write. I think I should make it a daily habit without worrying about how I’m writing etc.’
Of course students want more, but there are resources and space implications (aim to get a computing pool which we try to imagine is a beautiful space near the seaside). Next year have plans to make more modifications!
Monica
Monica Behrend (Lecturer in Research Education at UniSA, Adelaide)
(monica.behrend@unisa.edu.au)
Hi Monica, your retreats sound great – for everyone, not just EAL students! I’ve organised a couple of writing days for staff along similar lines, and was particularly pleased when one person commented on how ‘nurtured’ he felt by the experience. Where do you hold the retreats? Are they on campus, or do you take people away from their usual space? Cally
For all three of my degrees I have never been able to write in a library. I go in, grab what I need and get out. I think that there is something to the idea of the “buzz” of others around as you mentioned, which is oddly absent in the constant drone of a library. Don’t get me wrong, I love libraries, I just can’t work in them.
I tend to write away from desks – the floor in my office, in bed, sometimes (if my partner is working at home that day) at the kitchen table. I often wonder, if there is something almost territorial about the places we choose to write in: “this is mine, all mine, and I’m not sharing!”
Maybe this is why I can’t write in a library, it is not “mine” I’m just here for the duration?
Hi Alexis, I really do know what you mean about libraries. For me there is also an element of ‘nesting’, where I want to spread papers across all surfaces so I can see various ideas simultaneously to keep everything at the forefront of my mind. Cally
I find that where I write depends upon two things: where I feel comfortable, and what I am trying to write.
I tend to draft on paper first. This often works best in a busy environment, like a cafe or library foyer. People around, but not too noisy. With pen and paper, I can sit in a corner or on a small table and scribble and sketch.
For writing up, and redrafting, a laptop or tablet comes into play. Now I prefer a quite office-like space to work with minimal distractions. But I also need to take breaks more often to clear my head and reset my perspective.
Editing on paper tends to be a split of the two, depending upon how I feel at the time – how much focus I have.
Structure for careful writing, more chaos for creativity.
Notetaking works better in a quiet place, a library or office … Away from Internet so I’m less tempted to check or cross-check things and get distracted.
Hi Maelorin, this combination sounds helpful for identifying the tasks that are the focus of any particular writing session, too. I’ll be passing on these suggestions to my students – thank you. Cally
My favourite places to work are in my home office with my colleagues on Skype and I also enjoy a day or two a week at a café with a colleague, surrounded by other students at work.
Hi Jacqueline, perhaps there’s an important element here in having a few different places to write? Do you find that you tend to focus on different kinds/stages of writing in different places? Or is it more about having some variety built into your week if the work itself feels much the same most days?
Cally
Hi
I cannot participate in any collegial life at university as I am Victoria, and my uni is in Queensland, so it is very very hard. But I do have two wonderful and supportive supervisors.
Until November last year, I generally sat at my desk in the kitchen/dining area. But we have built a two-storey shed and I occupy the upstairs – all 24 sq metres of study space. Computer, books, TV, and a bed for those moments when it gets all too much. Just waiting for the fridge and I am set 🙂
It is great for me and the family as I no longer have to nag them to turn the TV/radio/music et al down; and they no longer have to listen to me groan, and tip-toe around the house.
Thanks for sharing your story, and for the opportunity to participate and share.
Hi Brian, the life of a remote doctoral student brings all sorts of challenges, not least where to set up a workspace. Your new shed sounds like a wonderful retreat – and all households are happier with a little less nagging (at least, that’s my own experience ;-).
Cally
I have found the “shut up and write” plan advocated by Thesis Whisperer (http://thesiswhisperer.com/2011/06/14/shut-up-and-write/) to be so inspiring, we are starting a group next week! Communal space, common focus, collegiality, but rules about silence in small chunks… sounds good for academic writers as well as the fiction writers I know who work in coffee shops. Lets see how it works..
Hi Ingrid, my own small experiments with this style of writing space have been very productive and enjoyable. I’m sure it’ll go very well for you – and that between you a lot of good work will be done!
Cally
I write in my office http://patthomson.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/finding-the-right-writing-timeplace/
Hi Pat, thanks for the link to your blog about writing spaces – clearly a topic that people feel strongly about! I love the images this creates of people all over the world carving out their own special niches to get their writing done.
Cally
I wrote the first four and the 7th chapter from home during the evenings and weekends – as I struggled to find chunks of undisturbed time in my office (I still had other parts of research, such as testing and calculating for my funders going on). I then blogged about my struggle here: http://phdtalk.blogspot.be/2012/03/finding-time-for-writing.html
For the final chapters, I wrote almost exclusively in my office, enjoying the benefits of having 2 monitor screens for having my spreadsheets in one screen and my writing in another screen. I had then managed to empty my schedule and to reserve uninterrupted blocks of time for writing.
Thanks for your insights, Eva, and yet another variation on where and how theses get written. I particularly like hearing about your attempts to try all sorts of different combinations of times and places. Good luck with it! Cally
This is a great topic. I love my study at home, but also value the collegiate support of the postgrad lab on campus. I’m lucky to have a choice. Mostly I go to uni, but as I get intensely into writing up the solitude of home is more inviting. Maybe it depends on what stage you are at?
I think you might be right about the stages where different requirements kick in. The collegiate support is a very important part of all this, as you say. Great that you’ve worked out what is best for you, so that you do in fact get the writing done! Cally
I am also 2000km away from my university but have two very supportive supervisors who are pushing me to get me to my goal of doing my final presentation in February. I work full time and doing my PhD and to stay on target I know I need to do about 65hrs/per week of work and study to stay on target.
I am doing my doctorate by publication which means I get little rewards along the way with acceptances. I have the luxury of having another university in my home town and I go there to write. For the past five years I have managed to have the same desk, which faces the same way and it is “my space”. In a pavlovian type response when I am in that spot it is study time. I am able to focus totally when I am there. An added benefit is that there is no internet so I can sit and surf the internet. Ironically when I am at my own university library I cant study there.
I have never been able to study at home. I get distracted ++++ e.g. I need to mop the floors, dust, clean the venetian blinds, clean the fan, clean the oven…even the ugly jobs look good when you need to study. I do literature searches in front of the TV…it works for me.
I use to have a cafe that I went to after work on Thursdays which was my reading/proof reading day. The cafe had lovely big chairs that I could sink into. The owners would keep me topped up and it was really great. Unfortunately the health dept closed them down and I haven’t found a replacement yet.
I have studied at the beach, at the esplanade, camping, on planes, in air port lounges, during meetings and at retreats etc.,
The challenges of being a remote PhD student are enormous – it sounds like you have some wonderful strategies for creating writing spaces! I’m also impressed by your dedication to getting the work done and the time management that is required. Good luck with it, and keep that February deadline in mind.