Introduction

My master’s program in musicology was what I had hoped for. It was challenging, informative, and it affirmed my decision to continue in the field. But writing my thesis was a struggle; I kept reading more texts and pushing back deadlines. Instead of finishing my thesis in the summer, I ended up writing into September. The experience traumatized me, and I resolved to do better next time. 

After months of winding down, reading articles, and reflecting, I realized that some of the biggest obstacles I faced in productivity were my perfectionistic tendencies. One book that helped me to better understand what I was struggling with was Joli Jensen’s Write No Matter What. Jensen talks about many of the “myths” that writers contend with when trying to write productively. With the help of Jensens’s terminologies, I write this blog as a cathartic reflection on what I have learned and wish I knew when writing my master’s thesis. 

Don’t wait to begin

In order to feel prepared enough to start writing, I read endless texts. But as Joli Jensen points out, it can be very tempting to stay in the safety of the preparation stage, never putting anything down on paper until we have read just one more source (72). “One more source” is a myth because there will always be more literature on your subject. Spoiler alert: I didn’t ever quite feel like I was prepared enough, because the more I read, the less I felt like I knew. Thus, Jensen aptly points out that “Our job isn’t to become impervious to critique but to participate effectively in the scholarly conversation” (73). We don’t need to read everything ever written on a particular topic before writing about it. We just need to be well-versed enough to talk about it.

I would also hesitate to write without having fully formulated my thoughts. My thesis advisor addressed this with a potent metaphor: writing projects are mazes that we can only get through by actually writing. We can stand and contemplate the different paths all day, which Jensen calls “ruminating.” But she points out that writers often make the mistake of only ruminating in the head and not on paper (67). It is only by writing that we travel down different paths, discovering ones that lead to dead ends and ones that bring us closer to the exit. I since learned that writing is a part of the thinking process, and we might as well start early if that is so. This gives us ample time to explore the different paths, as opposed to crashing through maze walls in a stress-induced panic!

You need that first draft to revise and edit

The “perfect first sentence” is a myth that also prevents us from putting words down onto the page. To dispel this myth, we have to first understand that edits and revisions are a necessary part of the writing process. This means that the first draft does not need to be perfect (and neither does the first sentence)! 

One of my favorite parts of Write No Matter What is Jensen’s emphasis on writing as a craft. It is not an innate skill we are born with, but one we hone through time and effort. As a professor told my friend, the first draft does not need to be perfect, it only needs to exist. Like the craft of sculpting, we first need the imperfect raw materials as something tangible to sculpt. That raw material is our first draft, which we can only get by writing down our imperfect ideas and thoughts. Perfectionistic tendencies have their advantages, but they often prevent us from writing productively. Jensen tells us to commit to the idea of writing an imperfect first draft, and to save “perfect” for the revisions (69). Otherwise we would have nothing to “perfect.”

Start early

Start early for all the reasons above and below. Ruminating, editing and revising all take time. More importantly, your advisors also need time to read your drafts, and you need time to reflect on the feedback you receive. One of my biggest regrets was not writing productively. My draft submissions were far and few in between, and I missed many opportunities to receive valuable feedback. Start writing early and take advantage of the valuable resource that your advisors could be providing you.

Finally, one of the most important lessons that I learned is the importance of taking one small step at a time, and having enough time to do so. While I knew that the master’s thesis could not be written all in one night, I thought if I just worked at maximum effort for a few hours a day, I could finish in a few months. My mistake was thinking this was sustainable without burnout. I viewed progress as a smooth incline, when in reality it was permeated by plateaus, spikes and dips. I forgot about the fickle factor of motivation. Small steps, such as writing for 15-minutes daily, lessen the potential for burnout and regularize the fluctuation of progress. Jensen describes this as “frequent, low-stress encounters” with writing (17). 15-minutes of writing isn’t so daunting when you need to get back into writing. But this means starting your project early enough so that you can afford to take small steps. There really is wisdom to be found in “slow and steady”!

Conclusion 

I still don’t really know how much or little I can write in 20,000 words. But now I know that if another 20,000-word writing project fell into my lap, I could figure it out by starting early. I would give myself time to take little steps to write-think, revise and edit, reflect on feedback, and to do it all without being too overwhelmed and burnt out.