The Right Place to Write?

Mark Twain finishing a chapter?

NIU’s thesis and dissertation writing group, Write Place/Write Time, met yesterday from 6 to 9 p.m. for our first fall meet-up. Four of us convened in our clean, well-lighted place—reserved every second Thursday—next to the Fourth Floor East windows in Founders Memorial Library. After greeting and chatting briefly, we each got down to business: composing in a quiet environment largely removed from everyday distractions. A great experience!

Writing alongside others working on projects similar to your own has many benefits: structure, support, accountability, and a spirit of healthy competition (in the positive sense suggested by the Latin roots of compete: com- ‘together’ + petere ‘to strive’). In previous posts, this blog has featured excellent overviews of Write Place/Write Time and its benefits in the context of one dissertator's routine and schedule (May 20, 2016, and December 4, 2015). Here I’d like to add a bit more on the topic of the places where successful writing happens through sharing of a few pieces of literary trivia.

Other Writers, Other Places

Virginia Woolf once famously said, to be able to write one needs money and a room of one’s own (in reference to women writing fiction in Shakespeare’s day). As any grad student can tell you, she was right about the money part.  But what about that other part? Is a room of one’s own the optimal setting for good writing?

Georges Simenon--
I think he's the guy at the desk.

Settings you can’t call your own may very well feature all manner of unhelpful distractions. Perhaps that’s why Belgian novelist Georges Simenon strongly favored working in a room just for him. Creator of hundreds of detective novels, Simenon was “perhaps the most widely published author of the 20th century,” according to his official website. Simenon would reportedly complete a novel in about eleven days of isolated, non-stop writing. He would take breaks to eat and sleep, but during these writing stints he would speak to no one, take no phone calls, and never leave his room (Salgado 66). No word on whether he ever considered grad school.

Writing in your own space may help foster constructive writing methods. In his later years, as pictured above, Mark Twain apparently preferred to write in his bedroom while still in bed. Twain isn’t the only successful author who developed a fancy for horizontal composing. The approach has been taken up more recently by DeKalb High School graduate, novelist, and Stanford professor Richard Powers.

Richard Powers: Standing up at Stanford.

In a 2003 interview in The Paris Review, Powers related that his dream “has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.” Perhaps this method is worth exploring.

Just as memorable and worth considering is Ernest Hemingway’s habit of writing in his bedroom while standing up. A fascinating portrait of Hemingway’s work habits appears in this 1958 interview in The Paris Review.


Summing Up: Write Place/Write Time

Ernest Hemingway thinking on his feet.

Certainly all writers need some sort of combination of place and time in order to get their writing done. May the above anecdotes and reading links refresh some of your ideas about writing, help you rethink places where your best writing happens, and inspire you to get back to it.

And remember: a room of our own is available every second Thursday in the library. We hope to see you there. Until then, happy writing!

                             Work Cited

Salgado, Gamini.  “The Novelist at Work.”  Novels and Novelists: A Guide to the World of Fiction.   Ed. Martin Seymour-Smith.  New York: St. Martin’s, 1980.  Print.

Write Place, Write Time

Trick and TREAT Yourself to Some Support!

As Halloween arrives, and as you hand out candy or get dressed up for the holiday, think about giving yourself a real treat: find a writing partner or another source to help keep you on track for your study.

In the MOOC “How to Survive Your PhD,” developed by Dr. Inger Mewburn and the Australia National University Online team, the moderators begin the course with a discussion into why PhD students quit (applies to thesis writers, too). As expected, “intellectual isolation” and “stress/exhaustion/mental health issues” were among the several reasons given for quitting. Other reasons, such as “mounting debt” and “being made to do non-thesis work,” were given, but the first two I mentioned can be addressed with a small amount of effort.    

If you are reading this, you probably know that the Thesis Office tries to help with isolation through our Facebook group (NIU Theses and Dissertations) and this blog. However, I’m of the opinion that nothing beats face-to-face interactions, at least occasionally!

And not long ago, a colleague, who recently earned her PhD (congratulations, Professor Probst!), offered me a related piece of advice for making progress. Dr. Probst said she found it very helpful to have weekly meetings with a partner. Here’s how she describes her experience:

“A fellow Ph.D. candidate and I decided to dissertate from afar while we assumed full-time positions. We understood the challenges of writing a dissertation being removed from constructs, particularly peer support, at the university. We planned to continue our regular writing sessions that we began at NIU, but difficulties in arranging our schedules to make time for our dissertations presented themselves. Our weekly meetings held us accountable to write regularly, one of the most important habits for completing the dissertation. Rarely did we review each other’s work—that is not the support we needed. We needed consistency, and a guaranteed weekly opportunity to write meant we had to prioritize that work over other tasks or interests. Furthermore, our meetings encouraged us to write and revise outside these sessions because our writing mindset never lapsed, however tired and discouraged we sometimes felt. We learned that allowing too much distance from the dissertation would make returning to it more challenging. Additionally, the emotional struggles of writing a dissertation are real and can be detrimental, so the emotional support we provided to one another often was more important than carving out time in our schedules to write.”

Wow! I think Dr. Probst’s words offer some good advice!

If you cannot find a partner or cannot work out the logistics, though, NIU offers other resources that might be of benefit.

For instance, if you are experiencing stress, anxiety, or any other condition such as depression, NIU’s Counseling and Consultation Services, located in the Campus Life Building (corner of Lucinda and Normal) Room 200, offers free groups and programs for NIU students. One of their offerings is a “Mindful Monday” group, which meets from 12 – 12:45 for meditation and relaxation, thus reducing stress while offering camaraderie.

They also have therapy dogs every 2nd Monday from 6:00-7:15 pm in Stevenson Hall. See one good dog in the photo to the right!

NIU counselors can get you to an appropriate anxiety/stress management group by referral from a walk-in appointment, available Monday through Friday from 11:00 – 3:30. For more information, see their website or call them at 815-753-1206.

Finally, don’t forget about us, the Thesis and Dissertation Office. We are here in Adams Hall 104 Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, and we have a quiet workshop area in our adjoining room (AH 103) where you can work anytime we are open. Stop in, call us (815) 753- 9405, or email thesis@niu.edu. We will be glad to help in any way we can.