Are We Talking About Writing the Right Way?

If your grad student or department parties are anything like mine, then you talk about writing a ton; what we’re writing, what we’re procrastinating writing, and how we should be writing (more, more often, earlier in the day, without distractions…). 

What we don’t talk about as much, at parties or elsewhere, is how we actually get our writing done. 

This is surprising. Writing is a big part of our job as philosophers, so it seems odd that we don’t talk about the nuts and bolts of how we write. And it doesn’t matter if we’re writing “the right way” if we’re not actually getting done what we need to get done. So instead of talking about how we should write, shouldn’t we be talking more about the writing habits that are actually working for us (even if it’s not working as well as it could be)? 

Why don’t we talk more about how we actually write? My current hypothesis is that many of us (grad students and professors) worry that (or at least wonder whether) we aren’t writing enough or writing “the right way.” So we avoid talking about how or how much we write, because we don’t want to find out we’re falling short. When writing comes up, we avoid the subject. But even if that’s not the right explanation for the phenomenon I’ve observed, I still think we should talk more about our actual writing habits.

The class that convinced me that our conversations about writing were missing something was the Dissertation Research Seminar (or DRS) I took last semester. DRS is taught by a different pair of professors each semester, and in Spring of 2023, it was taught by Dr. Carla Merino-Rajme and Dr. Rosalind Chaplin. 

The main purpose of DRS is to give Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to present dissertation research and practice other professional skills like chairing. Dr. Merino-Rajme and Dr. Chaplin’s version of DRS added another element, which is what made me realize what our conversations about writing are missing. 

In DRS, we shared and discussed how we actually write. We discussed what counts as writing, how long a typical writing session is for us, and what we do when we get stuck (I spend a few minutes with my dog or take a stroll). We also talked about the when (mornings were popular), where (lots of people prefer a place other than their office/desk), and how (I was the only one who sometimes preferred writing by hand over typing). 

It was deeply affirming to hear that my fellow graduate students and my professors don’t all have the same writing habits, to know that despite deviating from a lot of the standard academic writing advice (write daily, write for long periods of time, write first thing in the morning, etc.) they were still productive, successful philosophers. They get their writing done even though they take (extra) long snack breaks, don’t write every day or on a rigid schedule, repeatedly check their email/social media, sometimes hate what they write, can’t write first thing in the morning or for a few hours straight, and so on! 

I think we should normalize sharing our writing habits (and work habits in general) more openly because doing so will help dispel the myth (or at least what I think is a myth) that there are only a few ways to write that lead to success as an academic philosopher. Do we have to work hard at writing? Yep! Do we have to write a lot? Sure do! But that doesn’t mean we all have to have the same writing habits. 

Demystifying how we get our writing done has a few potential benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked:  

1) It can help us. Not talking about how we actually get our writing done doesn’t seem to help with writing-related self-doubt. As I said above, I found it valuable to learn that my writing habits weren’t unusual. And other grad students I spoke to said they too felt a sense of relief after discussing their writing habits openly. 

Absent any real evidence about other people’s writing habits, many of us believe that we’re not writing enough compared to our peers. If we find out that other people write more than us, we’re no worse off than we were before; we’ve just got some actual evidence for our belief. But if we learn that we’re writing about as much (or even more) than others, then we’re better off because we can get rid of the false and damaging belief that we’re falling short in some way.

2) It can help others. Sharing how we write with others means they don’t have to reinvent the wheel when developing their own writing habits. We’ve all tried a bunch of different ways of getting our writing done and cycled through different writing habits, strategies, and routines. Sharing the writing habits we’ve settled on (as well as sharing those habits that didn’t work for us) with others can help them identify habits that will work for them without them having to go through the months or years of experimenting. 

3) It can help the discipline. Normalizing discussion of how we actually get our writing done is a small way to make our profession more accessible to people who come from historically/currently underrepresented groups. As someone with ADHD, I’ve learned a ton from talking with other philosophers who have ADHD about how they get their writing done on a day-to-day basis. 

Similarly, someone with caretaking responsibilities or who is a first-generation grad student can benefit from hearing how other people write because it shows them that they don’t need to force their writing habits to conform to a specific vision of what academic philosophical writing involves. 

None of this is to say that we should just accept our writing habits as they are, or that our writing habits may never need improvement. By framing the conversation in terms of how we actually write, Carla and Rosalind encouraged us to think about whether our writing habits were working for us (as opposed to whether we were writing enough or whether we had cultivated the best possible writing habits). And that, whether it works for us, is really the important thing in cultivating the writing and writing habits that will see us through graduate school, the job market, and beyond. 

We should move past the myth that successful academic philosophers must write a certain way (in short but intense bursts of brilliance, or doing their best Descartes impression alone in their office). Being transparent about how we get our writing done will (I believe) show that being a good academic philosopher doesn’t require cultivating a particular set of writing habits. Normalizing sharing our actual writing habits, particularly in the graduate seminar classroom, has the potential to make us feel better about our writing, make our discipline a bit more welcoming, and perhaps make conversations at department parties a bit more fun. 

Gabriella Hulsey

Gabriella Hulsey is a 4^th year PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill. She works primarily in ethics, with a special interest in the ethical issues that arise in interpersonal relationships, tech ethics, and in the moral questions raised in the context of sports.