Listening to Yourself

Here's another reposted from my new blog.

Recently, I saw a motivational quotation on the order of “Do what you love and it isn’t work.” It struck me as unrealistic and unhelpful. It fails to capture the difficult and intimate interplay between love and work—whatever kind of love we may be talking about.  Love calls on us to do things that are difficult, even unpleasant or painful. Often we surmount difficulties and minor discomforts for our proudest achievements and best experiences. But it’s possible to face too much difficulty, and too much pain, and then love can be destructive.  To have a healthy relationship with the things we love—whether people or activities or otherwise—it helps to be able to listen to ourselves and make good judgements about how much difficulty is the right amount of difficulty.
Passion often lies where there is great difficulty. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that the best moments in people’s lives occur in activities that present significant challenges—the “Flow” state that Csikszentmihalyi has researched occurs in difficult activities, not easy ones. The activities that he describes as flow activities are ones where there is a danger of failure and a possibility for growth.
Shortly after seeing that motivational quotation, I was out for a run. (I’m not sure I go fast enough to call what I do “running” anymore, but I’ll call it running.) While running, I was thinking about the practice of listening to myself and the value of self-knowledge, and thinking about that in the context of writing and developing a writing practice, as well as the context of going running.
Going running is difficult and it is also something that I love.  When running well, I feel better than I do at any other time.  But I’m liable to aches and pains.  Tendonitis is a frequent issue, as is tightness or cramping.  Understanding these pains and being able to self-diagnose—listening to myself—helps me decide when to run harder and when to stop and engage in some treatment (like stretching).  You don’t want to keep running if running is going to cause more damage or prevent damage from healing; you do want to keep running if the exercise will help resolve the problem. Being able to listen to yourself helps you make a good judgement.
This ability to listen to oneself is valuable in all cases where love leads us to a difficulty: do we continue to follow our passion, or do we pull back because our passion is causing damage?

To develop a successful writing practice, it’s important to listen to oneself, and to understand which difficulties are a sign to stop and tend to yourself, and which are just difficulty and discomfort to work through. 
This is true at both the physical and emotional levels. Physically, to write, and to work on writing has real dangers—I have known more than one researcher whose work was brought to a near standstill by repetitive stress injuries.  RSIs are better understood now than when I was in graduate school, so fewer people are crippled by them—partly because we better understand the danger and the danger signs (as well as appropriate responses).
Danger of overwork also exists on the emotional level, I believe. It is possible to turn a work practice into something so unpleasant that it becomes hard to work.  The idea that obstacles to writing stem from psychological issues is hardly a new or inventive one. Two sources where I have seen this idea are Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit and Keith Hjortshoj’s book on writing blocks, both of which discuss different psychological issues that inhibit writing.
Whether the pain is physical or emotional, being able to listen to yourself and correctly diagnose the severity of various discomforts can help you develop a more effective writing practice.  And that understanding can help your realize a project that is important to you and also difficult—a project of the sort that is often called a “labor of love.”
A labor of love requires a positive and beneficial practice that provides sufficient rewards to justify the difficulties involved, and part of that requires the ability to listen to yourself in order to understand what the costs are relative to the benefits.

The “do what you love and it isn’t work” trope fails to explain or understand the idea of a labor of love, and so cannot support such a work. If you think that doing what you love means that you don’t have to work, then you will almost certainly interpret all difficulties as a sign of something wrong—perhaps, even that you don’t love what you’re dong enough.  A more realistic view of what constitutes a good relationship recognizes that significant difficulties are part of the best things in life.
For me, the difficulty and frustration of not knowing what to write, of feeling that my ideas are weak or of limited interest, of not knowing how to make a coherent argument, of feeling that my hoped-for and intended argument has totally fallen apart, all of these are real pains. There is real difficulty and distress related to these things.  But is it suffering that will cause long-term damage? Knowing yourself and listening to yourself helps prevent engagement from becoming unhealthy. 
Doing what you love takes work. It involves real frustrations and difficulties. That work and those frustrations and difficulties are not necessarily signs that you’re doing something wrong or that you don’t love enough.  That’s where listening to yourself is about: by listening to yourself, you get information about your processes and you can use that information to develop better, healthier practices.
In this post, I have focused on listening to yourself with respect to managing a writing practice, but as a final note, I want to point out that for a writer being able to listen to yourself—hearing your own voice, and trusting your own judgments—is crucial not only in managing the practice of writing, but in finding material to write.  To write original work, there is no other source than your own voice—but that’s a subject for a different post.

Reflections on seeking a publisher 3: Write the proposal before the book?

Another reposted from the TAAOnline Blog

Before I started the proposal process for my book, I had written a complete draft (as well as two almost-complete early drafts), and also hired an editor to check that draft. I had, in short, a pretty mature draft. But the questions publishers ask about the completeness of the draft, led me to wonder whether that was the best plan for seeking publication.

Common proposal questions ask: “When do you plan to finish the book?”, and “When can you deliver the manuscript?”, which seem primarily relevant for proposals written by people who have not yet completed their book.

Given the length of the process of proposing (at least as I have gone about it), and given the desire of publishers to shape books to suit their publishing list, I wonder whether I might have been better off proposing the book before I wrote it.

Intellectually, I have been aware that one can propose a book before one writes it, and, indeed, that most projects are proposed before they are carried out, but this has never before felt like a real consideration to me; it feels wrong to propose a book before it’s written. That could reflect a lack of self-confidence, or maybe it reflects uncertainty caused by the exploratory nature of writing: I learn a lot as I write, and there is usually a pretty big difference between successive drafts, especially early ones. Or maybe it reflects my fear of committing to a large writing project, because writing under a deadline (which would occur if I had a contract but no book) is an added emotional burden.

In terms of writing productively, it’s valuable to know how different choices affect the process, including the emotional dimension. But it’s also hard to predict how all the factors will play out. In this case, perhaps the emotional difficulties associated with writing the proposal first would balance out the emotional difficulties related to the length of time the process takes. As I discussed in the previous post, my proposal process has taken over 9 months. If I had proposed the book at an earlier point, I might have saved time with respect to any ultimate publication date.

Aside from the question of saving time in the overall process, one idea that has occurred to me in these considerations is about the value of writing a proposal in helping guide a successful writing project. Thinking of my book through the publisher’s perspective provides additional ideas about how to write a good book. For me at least, although I generally make a point of thinking about the audience, when writing a proposal, the focus is much more explicitly directed towards considering my audience, and particularly towards the big concern of most publishers: who will buy the work? This forces forces me to be much more explicit about who that audience is and what their needs and interests are, and that can help me write a book that will serve my intended audience and also please a publisher.

Additionally, the proposal forces consideration of the books that compete with mine, and to be able to explain why mine is different (and better!). I do, of course, want my book to be delivering something that is original, so, in a very strict sense, there may be no direct competitor, but even so, there are many books in the general area. While no one may be writing quite the book that I am, there are plenty of books written for graduate students to support them in the general process of developing research. The process of comparing my book to potential competitors helps me refine what makes my message special, and thus helps me write my book better in terms of expressing my strengths.
Looking to the future, I suppose that I will spend more time writing book proposals as part of the larger process of writing books. Indeed, at present, I have shifted efforts from writing a draft of my next book, to writing a proposal for that book. As I already have a substantial draft (about 25,000 words), I can’t write a proposal before writing any draft, but I can write a proposal before I try to write the next draft.

Reflections on seeking a publisher 2: A lengthy process

Here's another reposted from the TAAOnline Blog.

The process of proposing and publishing takes a long time, so patience is important. I started the proposal process nine months ago, and there’s a chance I may be working on a new proposal soon. There are ways that I could have saved time in the process, but even if I had been maximally efficient, I would still have been looking at a process of several months.

In February, I sent my first proposal to an agent who specifically requested sole consideration, which was fine with me, given that part of why I was trying an agent was to avoid doing multiple proposals. (I will discuss the question of giving publisher sole consideration in a future post.) The agent’s website said if I hadn’t gotten a response within six weeks that I should assume that my proposal was rejected, so I waited (and avoided the difficult task of preparing another proposal).  When I hadn’t heard within five weeks, I started to work again, thinking about to whom to send my next proposal.

At that point, I decided to try sending query letters to gauge interest, rather than a full-blown proposal. I figured that a brief query letter would require less effort than a full proposal, and being only a brief query about possible interest, not a full proposal, it skirted the issue of sole consideration.

At the beginning of the seventh week after sending out my first proposal (early April), I sent out my first query letter. My plan was to send out one every day until I got some interest. I chose to do only one a day because I wanted to write a letter that was specific to each publisher, and writing a good cover letter can take a few hours.

The fortunate circumstance of receiving a positive same-day response to my very first query derailed my one-a-day-to-several-publishers plan. The quick response was thrilling, of course, but it meant I had to do a full proposal, which took me away from writing another query letter. It was a few days of work and then a week to hear back. All of this felt like things were moving quickly and couldn’t be better—the first publisher to whom I wrote, and one of the top publishers on my list! The editor expressed interest in sending the proposal to reviewers (again, great!), but suggested some revisions to the proposal first. That took me a week, but by early May I had submitted a revised proposal. The editor confirmed receipt, warning me that she was going to a conference and then on holiday and wouldn’t be able to get back to me for a week or two. And that was really the end of it. Over the next couple of months, I received first a few promises to get to my proposal right away, and then later no response to my emails.

I procrastinated, hoping that the editor would follow up, so it was not until early August that I sent out a new proposal (yes, a whole proposal, not just a query letter—my strategy was not entirely consistent). It got no immediate response (and none since), and ten days later, I sent out another proposal.  This one got a next-day response—a rejection. It was as positive and friendly a rejection as could be imagined—the editor encouraged my proposing to other publishers, and even took time to answer some follow-up questions I asked in response to his rejection—but a rejection all the same. It was, by this time, late August.

For my next step, I returned to the plan of sending multiple query letters. And again, my first query letter received a quick response: the editor to whom I had written was forwarding my query to a colleague. The next day I received an email from an editor (the third in the chain) who  identified herself as the editor of one of the books my query mentioned as a competitor, and who invited me to send my proposal. That took me a few days, but my delay was basically irrelevant, as she was about to leave for a conference and then holiday.

Two weeks later—end of the first week of September—she decided to send my proposal out to reviewers.  That would take about eight weeks, she warned—an accurate estimate, as the reviews were returned in late October. The reviews were positive enough that, pending my response to the reviewer’s concerns, she was interested in taking it to a publisher’s meeting with the intention of offering me a contract. My response only took a day, but it was Friday, and the editor is in the UK, so she didn’t get to it until the beginning of the next week, and, as the weekly publication meeting is held on Tuesdays, she didn’t have sufficient time to prepare the book for that week’s meeting, which brings the process up to date at the moment I write, over nine months since I started.

Maybe I could have cut a few months out of that process by acting more swiftly and aggressively, but even if we disregard my proposals that were rejected, by the time the publication meeting has been held, it will have been nearly three months just with one publisher, and everything moving relatively quickly (my editor warned that reviews don’t always come in in a timely fashion, for example, but mine did).

Publication is a long process, even when everything moves quickly. Finding a publisher takes a significant chunk of time.  It is one reason for writing a proposal before you finish your book, which is the subject of my next post.

Reflections on seeking a publisher 1: Introduction

Reposted from the TAAOnline Blog.

For most of the past year (2018), I have been seeking a publisher for my book for graduate students about using scholarly literature. As I write this, my proposal is scheduled to be discussed at a publication meeting a few days from now, and by the time this blog post gets published, I will either have a contract offer or another rejection.

In this and the following posts, I reflect on some of the issues that have come up in my process—issues that might be of interest to writers who are not yet experienced in proposing books to publishers. Those with more experience might view my reflections as naive (and if so, feel free to comment), but those with less experience might at least find comfort in someone else struggling with similar issues, even if they don’t find useful suggestions.


I am not an entire neophyte to the publication process, but my early experiences with proposing a book were brief. The first time, I was second author of a book that sailed through the publication process on the strength of the first author. After that, I wrote a proposal for my first single-authored book—a book on dissertation writing—that I submitted to two publishers who both rejected it. Then, feeling frustrated by rejection and inspired by a friend who had self-published, I tried self-publishing—a process in which the publisher never rejects the manuscript. Self-publishing gave me an appreciation of the many things that publishers do, and of the good reasons to try to get published, despite the whole difficult proposal process. There is a huge amount of work between a complete manuscript and a published book, and then another huge effort in promotion. Publishers offer all this. And they also offer a certain prestige that self-publication does not carry: a respected publisher is sharing its reputation with the author. For these reasons, I set out to find a publisher.

In January 2018, to prepare for contacting publishers, I gave my completed manuscript to a copy editor to review. The manuscript was the culmination of several years of effort that had been started of the plan of self-publishing again. (This touches on one of the big issues I’ll discuss more: whether to write a proposal before or after a book is complete.)

The very first question in the process was intimidating: To whom would I propose? I had given some casual thought to this in the past, but I had never done any serious research into what criteria make a good publisher, and which publishers met those criteria. I had some personal familiarity with the books of different publishers who published books that I saw as aimed at the same market as mine, but I didn’t have any organized or systematic sense of all of the publishers who might have been interested, nor did I have any knowledge about differences between how publishers treat their authors. Just navigating the decision of where to send submissions was difficult as I felt overwhelmed by all that I didn’t know along with my doubts about how my work would be received by others.

For me, one of the greatest difficulties in writing is the anxiety about giving my work to others. For me, writing itself is difficult but rarely anxiety provoking when I’m focused on the ideas I want to communicate. But when I think about getting feedback, anxiety kicks in. When I was writing the book, I was thinking about scholars I had helped in the past, but when I’m writing an actual proposal and my audience is someone I can expect to be critical, the possibility of rejection is that much more prominent, and anxiety is more of an issue. Combine that anxiety of rejection with the myriad details of the publication process, and the whole can feel overwhelming. To whom do you propose? What publisher? How do you identify a good publisher? What does that publisher want in the proposal? Do you want to propose to one publisher or many? When I started looking at different publishers’ websites to see their proposal process, this anxiety kicked in, as I was suddenly comparing my book to the material from the various publishers and to the standards those publishers explicitly stated. For me, the difficulty was sufficient that I skipped some of what might be considered due diligence. I didn’t research which publisher treats their authors the best, or which does the best job of promoting books, both of which would be reasonable concerns for an author. For better or worse, I picked  a single specific target to whom to send a proposal and just started writing.

Now, nine+ months, and four unsuccessful proposals later, my fifth proposal has an editor who is to recommend it for publication to her publisher. To have reached this upcoming publication meeting, I have successfully passed through the editor’s initial review of my proposal as well as the reviews of two reviewers. The meeting offers hope that I will move on to the next stage—a contract—but also the peril of a return to the proposal process in which I revise my proposal for the next publisher. While I have no desire for the latter, I do feel that my experience has given me a better sense of how to proceed, and the process does feel less intimidating now that I’m in it. Proposing a book is fraught with the danger of rejection, but if you don’t try it, your ideas may never be heard. For many, it’s a risk worth taking.

At present, I have four additional posts intended as part of this series. The first following post discusses the lengthy nature of the process. The next post considers when to write a proposal: before or after you have written the book. The following post discusses writing a proposal. The final post considers the question of giving a publisher or agent sole consideration.

Are you struggling with a project for publication? Contact me; I can help!

Reposted from my new blog.

A writer recently expressed to me the concern about her work being too simple, a concern triggered by, among other things, being told that her work was pedestrian (which I discussed n my previous post). But for the great majority of scholarly work, if done carefully, complexity is almost unavoidable. The real world is not simple, and a scholar trying to document the real world is not documenting something simple.  Analyzing data gathered in the process of documenting the real world is not simple, either.

My experience of writing blog posts often goes something like this: an idea formulates into a basic message and plan for what I will say; I start writing; I think of an example to use; I start to describe the example, and in so doing, I find complexity where I thought was simplicity. No matter the clarity of my plan, once I start writing, I discover complexity.

It’s easy to find complexity if you are being careful and trying to focus on details. All you need do is be curious and careful.

Suppose, for example, you try to describe a simple household process like getting a glass of water.  That’s simple, right? You get a glass; you hold the glass beneath the faucet; you turn on the water and the glass fills. But complexity lurks. Where do you get the glass, for example? In your own home, you know where the glasses are, but if you’re visiting somewhere, finding a glass may require extra steps, such as opening many cabinets or asking your host. Getting into details might lead to asking what criteria are used for choosing a glass: do you take the one closest to your hand? To which hand? Do you prefer a large glass or small? Do you look to make sure that there is no visible smudge or dirt on the glass? Do you prefer one material over another (glass vs. plastic, for example)? If a glass has a colored material or an image printed, does that matter?  Beyond these practical questions of how to get a glass (we haven’t even started talking about locating or operating a faucet yet), if our aim is to describe the process, we might choose to try to define what we mean by “glass”—does, for example, a mug get included? A mug is not a glass, but it will be effective for drinking a “glass of water” if we interpret the phrase loosely? In many contexts, such an interpretation suffices: imagine asking a friend for a glass of water and them giving you a mug filled with water. Would you complain that they had failed because your water was served in a mug not a glass? And beyond these questions relevant to getting a glass of water in practice, if we are describing the process of getting a glass of water, we might examine how or where the glasses (or mugs) were procured, and how they were made. Although they are not questions for the practical situation, for someone documenting or describing a process, those questions directly follow (even if we might decide that they are not sufficiently relevant to include in a description of getting a glass of water). So trying to describe something simple, quickly leads to complexity if you just ask questions.

Another way that complexity can arise for a writer is by trying to define terms. Suppose you want to write about [term/concept].  It’s good form as a scholar to define the crucial term to your audience, so you try to define [term/concept]. You may turn to a dictionary, where you find multiple different meanings of [term/concept]. You look at the literature in your field, and you find several different authors have all defined [term/concept] in their paper, and they have all done it differently. If the observed complexity of the use of the term hasn’t stymied you, you might sit down to try to write your own definition of the term. In that process you use [term2/concept2], and that leads to the question of whether you need to define [term2/concept2].  Defining terms is a rabbit hole of complexity, as every definition requires using terms that could themselves require definition.  In his beautiful essay “Avatars of the Tortoise,” Jorge Luis Borges describes this as an infinite regression first identified by a Greek Philosopher (whose name escapes me, and I don’t have the Borges text at hand). Defining terms/concepts is not simple, and scholarly writing requires definition.

Complexity arises in the process of argumentation/justification, and there is a similar regression of questions. Suppose, for example, I want to explain why I have chosen a specific research method—methodX.  Every statement I make in favor of methodX can be questioned. If I say I have chosen methodX because it’s appropriate to my research question, the natural question that follows is why (or whether) it is appropriate to the question. If I then offer two arguments—argument1 and argument2—for why the method is appropriate to the question, I have two new arguments that each require some defense. Logically speaking, any argument can be questioned, and each answer offers new arguments that can be questioned.  

It is exactly this kind of logical path from one question to the next that leads many writers down discursive rabbit holes that can inhibit the writing process. And it is one reason that citation is so valuable for the scholarly writer: you can end the string of questions by saying “because FamousAuthor said so.”  It’s not a logically perfect foundation, but what the heck…we all need to find a foundation, and even the greats rely on the foundation of the scholars who have come before—Newton said “If I have seen farther, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

If you want to describe something, and you are careful about it, complexity will arise.  If you are a scholar, you’re supposed to be careful, and, in my experience, that leads to what most might consider a surprising result: good scholars almost almost always have too much to say. I’ve known lots of writers who worried that they had nothing to say, and I’ve known lots of writers who wrote very little for fear that they have nothing to say. But I can’t remember any writer who, once writing, wasn’t able to say enough. The far more common (and more difficult) problem for writers is to have to cut material to get their article or book down to a word limit. (Because of the difficulty of cutting down a draft, I strongly recommend writing first drafts that are short!)

So, don’t worry that your ideas are too simple, embrace that simplicity. Try to capture that simplicity in writing. If you’re careful and attentive to detail, complexity will arise. Indeed, so much complexity arises that there is great danger in getting lost in it, and the writer needs to learn to say “here’s where I stop asking questions.”

On Bad Feedback

Reposted from my new blog.

Writers benefit from getting good feedback and can be severely hindered by bad feedback—issues that I have covered in previous blog posts, as well as in my book.

Recently I was speaking with a graduate student who once received feedback that the work was “pedestrian.”  Not surprisingly, the student did not find this feedback helpful—indeed the feedback has been a positive deterrent. 

My response to this feedback is to say, basically, “f—k that.” It’s lousy feedback, at least if your expectation is that a professor would give feedback from which the student can learn something.  A pet peeve of mine is when professors waste their time (and their students’) by fixing grammar when they should be focusing on more important issues, like the content,  But to call a work “pedestrian” is worse. It’s worse than useless—what possible guidance could a researcher gain from being told that their work is pedestrian? Complaining about grammar at least gives the writer something to work on (even if it’s wasted effort).

 

But saying that a work is “pedestrian”? What guidance can you get from that? Does it imply that they should just start over and find some different project because their current project is “pedestrian”? It almost doesn’t even matter if that professor gave other more constructive feedback because that overall assessment of being “pedestrian” discounts not only the value of the work already done, but strongly suggests that future work on the project is unlikely to lead to anything worthwhile. Seriously, I can hardly think of a response to that particular comment that doesn’t require profanity.

That comment is bad guidance for an alleged ‘teacher’ to give a graduate student writing a dissertation, especially if that student has been struggling. It’s a fail because it’s not realistic about what real scholars (including graduate students) do, and it’s a fail because it does not provide any guidance. 

Firstly, it’s not realistic about the bulk of published work in research—most published research is pedestrian in the sense that it does not shake the earth—it’s what Thomas Kuhn might call “normal science”—the research that is done within a paradigm. Look at the best journals, even in those, there is work that may be interesting but isn’t earth shaking. Looking at less prestigious but highly respectable journals shows work of even less general interest. Every published work is supposed to be original, but published originality often includes small developments of previous work. This lack of a realistic view of the great bulk of research done by scholars is exaggerated when turned on a dissertation writer, because, realistically, for most scholars, the dissertation will be the weakest work of their career: how many scholars do their best work as graduate students and how many do their best work after graduate school?  Part of the point of having students do dissertations is to help them learn to negotiate the research process, and setting the expectation that the only work worth publishing is rock-star quality is a lousy guide to how to proceed in a research practice.

Saying a work is pedestrian is just gilding the lily on saying “it sucks.”  Using a four syllable word does not mean that it’s well thought-out feedback.  If a reviewer considering a work for publication, wants to reject a work because it’s “pedestrian,” that’s fine: the reviewer considering a work for publication is responsible to the publication/publisher and has to allocate his/her effort accordingly; the reviewer does not have a responsibility to help the authors, and writing good feedback that gives useful guidance is hard.  But a teacher? A professor working with a dissertation writer? A teacher does have a responsibility to the student—a responsibility to give the student guidance along the way (that’s what a teacher does!).

Can we turn “pedestrian” into something that can provide specific guidance? As far as I can see, not without additional detail. Suppose the professor means “not original enough”? Well, how do you assess originality. If the professor sees some similarity to a specific work or specific set of works, then it would be more useful feedback to explicitly mention the works that they see as similar.  Does it mean “not ambitious enough”? Well, that complaint could certainly be delivered in a more constructive sense by suggesting the value of expanding the project. Does it mean “not interesting enough”? That’s a wasted complaint, especially in academia, where so much of the product of academia is writing that is only interesting to a very limited audience. If you’re a teacher and your only critique to your student is that you don’t find their work interesting, you’re not helping.

If you’re a teacher, then your job is to give constructive feedback so that students can learn. Saying that work is “pedestrian” offers no guidance on moving forward, while also insulting the student and deterring them from continuing to develop their project.  If you’re a student, you have a reasonable expectation that your professors will give you usable guidance. If your professor tells you your work is pedestrian…well don’t say “f—k that” to their face, but…if your professor insults your work ask: “can you clarify ways that I could change my work so that it’s less pedestrian [or other insult]?”

(On a personal level, my response to that critique is not scholarly, but general: what the hell is wrong with being a pedestrian? I’m often a pedestrian, and I don’t think that makes me less—indeed the choice to walk rather than take some common alternative forms of conveyance is socially responsible. The idea that a “pedestrian” is lesser is classist, elitist bullshit based on conspicuous consumption. I choose to walk for several reasons, including the low carbon footprint (as opposed to driving, or even taking public transport). As far as I’m concerned, the world could use more pedestrians and fewer drivers right now. But that’s not really a response to the critique that a work of scholarship is “pedestrian.”)

Jargon, complex prose, and the writing process

Reposted from my new blog site

Recently I was speaking with a writer who bemoaned the fact that in her field of study people (including her) tried to write complicated, jargon-filled papers. This was not a new idea—I have heard that in many fields, especially those that value post-modern philosophies that writing complex prose is a matter of pride, or perhaps of ego: I have heard it suggested that writing prose that no one can understand will actually earn the author respect because people will assume that they’re just so smart. (Of course, there are also many who mock these same authors as being bad writers.) Many famed scholars are known for their difficult prose—Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida are particularly renowned for these issues.

I don’t know what other writers are thinking when they write—at best I can interpret the words they have chosen—but I believe that often difficult and complex writing is the product of honest attempts to clearly convey complex and difficult ideas.

Consider, for example, legal writing—another field notorious for difficult, jargon-filled writing.  Do we want to assume that that lawyers and judges write difficult prose because they want to impress everyone with their erudition? It seems much more likely to assume that lawyers and judges want to be understood, but the nature their work involves significant complexity that is difficult to communicate.

The way I see it, ideas are complex. And, in the world of scholarship and research in which new understanding is sought, it seems possible that a new idea—a new perspective—will not easily be conveyed in the language that developed to express old ideas. I’ve struggled to understand some very difficult writing that, in the end, rewarded me with very interesting ideas. Those ideas might possibly have been written in clearer and simpler language.

But, as the post title suggests, I’m more interested in this question from the point of view of the writing process. Getting back to the writer I mentioned in the opening paragraph and the idea of trying to write complex prose, I want to speculate on the impact of such an attempt to the scholarly writing process.

It seems to me that trying to write complex and jargon-filled prose adds a layer of difficulty to an already difficult task. Doing good scholarship is hard. Analyzing data and developing theoretical explanations for observed phenomena is hard. Exploring logical concerns with theories is hard. Coming up with a clear, coherent, and consistent explanation for anything is hard.

Not only is it hard to come up with good explanations, it’s also hard to write clearly about those ideas.  Perusing any user’s manual will demonstrate how easy it is to write unclearly about something that is often fairly simple. So, if you’re a scholar trying to develop explanations/theories, your job is made difficult both by the conceptual complexities and by the difficulties of writing.

To me, it seems like trying to write complex and jargon-filled prose adds yet another layer of complexity and difficulty.  Not only do you have to figure out the ideas that you want to express, but you also have to work to make the expression complex. it’s an extra layer of effort.

Therefore, my suggestion is always to try to write as clearly and concisely as possible while also paying attention to important details.  My belief is that if you focus on the ideas and the details, and you try to be as clear as possible, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with difficult convoluted prose anyway. For my part, I try to write clearly and often end up with weak and muddy prose.

I don’t know what Butler was thinking when she wrote, but it’s easy for me to believe that she (and other scholars who write difficult prose) was doing her best to be clear, and that at some point she said “I have to stop working on this project to move on to another.” What was left was no exemplar of elegant prose, but it was not (necessarily) the product of an attempt to obfuscate.

For a writer who is struggling, I think the most important thing is to focus on what  you want to say and on expressing that as clearly as possible.  Trying to meet some stylistic standard is secondary and only worth your effort once you’ve gotten a good handle on the ideas that you want to express.