Habits for Student Writers: How to Write Sustainably

Does your student hate to write? Does she fear it? Does she put it off until disaster impends and then sprint miserably through it? 

I wish that she understood something about the way writing should be. She would be happier if she knew that writing is play and treated it that way. 

To that end, I’ve recently made the case for writing in the morning or the early afternoon. Those times are when we feel fresh enough to engage in the kind of thought-play that gives over to good writing.

Today, I’ll take up the same theme. This post is about writing sustainably. Boredom and exhaustion will kill an essay. My aim is to show you - the parents of writers - how to ward those things off and keep your students happy with their work. 

Consider minutes worried against minutes worked

For the average student - the type who saves writing until a few nights before it is due - a baffling amount of time goes into the act of thinking about, and worrying about, and planning, and typing, and rewriting an essay. If we were to average the total minutes spent in thought and anxiety against the total words of the final product, what would we find? 

I assume that most students are procrastinators. And I assume that, if we include worry as a kind of work, we will find that they actually spend more time working than their non-procrastinating peers.

If a procrastinator has a paper due Friday, she will worry about it until she starts to write it on Thursday night. By then, what does she have to show? For all those minutes and hours of thought-work, what has she produced beyond a blinking cursor on a blank page? 

It would have been better if she had started to write at the very first moment when she started to worry. How much better, sturdier, and longer would her essay have been if she had started it the week before? How much happier would she be if, instead of worrying for a week and writing feverishly for a night, she had put in a mere 45 a day minutes for 5 days previous? 

Remember these numbers: 

It takes 45 minutes to write something good. It takes 90 minutes to make us miserable, and 120 to exhaust us for days on end. 

When I tell a new group of students that they should avoid writing for more than 100 minutes at a time, some chuckle as if they know something I do not. Many have written their best papers in brutal stints of 4 or 5 hours apiece. Others bear the scars of having written for upwards of 10 hours in a sitting. But not one who laughs actually likes to write. These students know writing as the thing that terrifies and exhausts them. The idea that it could be leisurely or fun is beyond their belief. 

I agreed with them until the professional strain of teaching forced me to reexamine my habits. I found that my days no longer allowed for stints of more than 2 hours in length, and that, if I wrote for longer than 90 minutes at a time, I often found myself lacking for words the next day. But, if I took that stint and spread it out over three days, something changed: I could work more quickly, and could repeat the work for multiple days in a row. My work was better, and I was happier; I had time and energy enough to build sentences that pleased the ear and felt good to write.

Over the years, my students and I have found that it takes 45 minutes of uninterrupted time to write anything that does not feel rushed. We’ve also found that, by the end of 90 minutes, writers become glum and restless. And after the passage of 120 minutes, a writer needs several days to recover his cleverness. Why? He’s worked hard for a long time - long enough to grow tired and bored. His mind needs rest before it can return to work. 

My work was better, and I was happier; I had time and energy enough to build sentences that pleased the ear and felt good to write.

Forgive the bad days, but leave enough time to have them

In the fall semester, I write more letters of recommendation than anything else. I’ve now written enough of them that I can draw an almost perfect emotional and stylistic roadmap of the process. I can tell you how long the letter will take me to write; how many sessions of writing I’ll need to put in to make it good; when I will write at a grating pace, and when I will write at a rapid one; what foolish things I’ll say at which points in the process, and when I’ll finally begin to say things that feel good and true. 

The point I mean to illustrate is that the writing process entails many things, and in fact, depends on its cycles of boom and bust. A slow and tedious day of writing is good for planning and is usually followed by a cheery day of running my fingers across the keys and producing good work. This can only happen if a writer knows 1) to forgive himself for the slow day, and 2) to use the slow day for what it’s worth and at least get something decent — an outline, a paragraph, or even just a good sentence — on the page. Likewise, a fast and cheery session should be followed by a slower, more sober-headed session of editing, because cheery, fast prose gets away from itself and needs slowing down. 

Your students will work according to different rhythms than me; they may boom when I’m more inclined to bust. What matters is that they understand this, forgive it, and account for it as they get ready to write a paper. They must budget for the bad days, or they are likely never to have the really good ones. 

Ian Atherton teaches literature at Golden View Classical Academy in Golden, CO. He works closely with students in various grade levels and believes that literature is valuable because it reminds us that life — any life, in any station— is worth living.