5 ms·

Prof. Robert Boice's Rules of the Road for Writers (2012)

83 points by yamrzou 3y ago

ian0 3y ago
>> Stop when you get to the end of your time limit, preferably in the middle of something (a sentence, paragraph, argument). Anyone know what the rational for this is? I understand the not-rushing aspect, but would have thought if your enjoying it and "in the zone" it would be good to see it through
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  It's less about the stopping side than the picking-up-the-next-session side. If you're in the middle of a sentence / argument, or in software, a function or module, it's going to be easier to pick up where you were previously. I'd suggest sketching out the general shape of the concept before you start, so that you don't find yourself looking at the half-written page wondering "what the hell was I thinking?", but instead at least have a framework of the structure which you can fill in and detail. Another possible upside is that you'll come back to the concept rested and refreshed, and might see aspects of it which haven't weathered well over your break, and might use shoring up or restructuring. Though that can lead to the editing-whilst-writing conundrum, which can be something of a swamp for some writers and/or programmers.
- yamrzou 3y ago
  Oliver Burkeman explained this in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: “One critical aspect of the radical incrementalist approach, which runs counter to much mainstream advice on productivity, is thus to be willing to stop when your daily time is up, even when you’re bursting with energy and feel as though you could get much more done. If you’ve decided to work on a given project for fifty minutes, then once fifty minutes have elapsed, get up and walk away from it. Why? Because as Boice explained, the urge to push onward beyond that point ‘includes a big component of impatience about not being finished, about not being productive enough, about never again finding such an ideal time’ for work. Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again, and thus to sustain your productivity over an entire career.”
  - koliber 3y ago
    Another reason is that writing and other creative work happens deliberately as well as unconsciously. If you stop mid sentence, it is likely that your mind will nibble away at it while you are not writing. The next time you sit down, not only do you have a clear starting point and next step, but also tons of unconscious prep work for the next burst of deliberate writing.
- nescioquid 3y ago
  From the explanations I've read, it is meant to get you "in the zone" quickly when you start your next writing time. Additionally, you will be (perhaps unconsciously) mulling over the completion of the segment and perhaps its continuation between sessions. A shirked task eats at you in the way the dishes you cleaned last night never do.
  - gizajob 3y ago
    But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to. I’m sure we’ve all been there when a document or piece of writing has been lost to technological failure - it’s essentially impossible to replicate by writing it out again with exactly the same spirit. Almost maddening in fact. I don’t agree with hard and fast fixed rules like those listed by the professor. They work for him but extending them into a universal generality for all writers is a huge fail from my perspective. Useful rules of thumb perhaps, and emphasising good discipline, but there’s no way I could stick to them.
    - broscillator 3y ago
      > But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to. This is true but if you've done creative work for a while, it becomes less true, and the coinciding of "I've spent a full hour writing" and "I have this magical sentence left in me" is not frequent enough to render the rule completely moot. In fact, breaking that rule because you have a freight train of paragraphs left in you after the timer is done is one of the greatest feelings, and that alone makes the existence of the rule justified. It's really a win-win situation, and in the long term it encourages consistency and commitment.
      - gizajob 3y ago
        I mean more the train of thought and perspective I’m in - if I’ve spent the day reading and thinking on an angle of an academic project I’m engrossed in condensing and referencing, then hard limits in terms of clock time just don’t work for me, I’ll instead just stick with it if I can and keep grinding. Some days I’ll have totally lost the thread and instead do nothing. I agree with the discipline and daily practice though, but think that his is an angle on that. I’d personally prefer a word count and a target to hit and then try and hit the word count and flex toward the target. But my days are often variable - I’m not a professor running on a similar clock every day.
- pro-kythera 3y ago
  > Stop when you get to the end of your time limit I understand this as a recommendation related to maintaining a consistent writing habit. Also, stopping in the middle of a thought provides a place to resume.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  This is a common recommendation for writers and across productivity guides. Ernest Hemingway and Roald Dahl both recommended it.. The idea is to stop when when you know what you'll be doing next. Maybe write a short note to yourself as a sort of place marker. There are at least two advantages to this. First, when you pick it up at your next work session, you can jump right back into your flow, or at least have a better chance of re-achieving flow. Second, cognitive researchers discovered the brain is less likely to forget if the task is left unfinished. Overnight, or between work sessions, the various parts of the brain will maintain some task awareness. My recommendation is to not work right up to a hard stop. Look at the clock (or have a reminder) half an hour before the hard stop, then take the next 20 minutes to outline the next steps and properly suspend the tasks. Another way of putting this is, "never keep working until you have to stop because you don't know what to do next". On the rare occasions you mention of being in the zone and enjoying it it's acceptable to continue working beyond the time limit, but it's still best to stop at a point where the next step is clear in your mind. You'll find that instead of spending 20 minutes trying to come up to speed on what to do next, the next work session will start smoothly. This works for programming, too. When I have a green build and know my next task, I can commit and go to lunch or go home for the day, then continue when I get back. https://www.fastcompany.com/90907757/train-brain-into-flow https://www.fastcompany.com/90907757/train-brain-into-flow
lsmeducation 3y ago
I feel like most artists make their rules after the fact. The stuff comes from the sky, and it’s only afterward that you convince yourself you had something to do with it.
- sfpotter 3y ago
  Your comment was only downvoted because the average HN reader is not artistically inclined.
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    I am not convinced about this. I can't really know what you mean based on this one sentence (or the parent comment from that one sentence), but the really good artists I know absolutely lay down rules for themselves. All art, fundamentally, emerges in part from creative constraints and from practice of communicating within them. And good artists absolutely know this (whether they would express it in this generalised way or not). Good artists can switch from medium to medium by exploring the constraints (beyond just the physical limits of charcoal or clay or stacking stones) and then figuring out how to communicate with them. But you don't really get very far without imposing additional restrictions on the work that help frame the message you're trying to convey. Artists who invent new mediums of expression do this same thing implicitly; the medium at some level is its constraints. So experienced artists usually do make up rules for themselves (or at least positive schemes and negative no-go areas) whether they write them down or not.
  - strken 3y ago
    I didn't downvote it, but I also don't agree that a set of rules that amount to "pace yourself to avoid burnout" is a post-hoc rational justification of mysterious otherworldly guidance from the sky. Since the actual rules from the article are about keeping yourself mentally healthy during the process of writing, the comment is obscure: does it refer to some other set of rules about art? (In which case it's off-topic.) Or is it making the claim that you could work in blocks of multiple hours and never socialise with other writers and see the same results? (In which case, why not clearly state a position so it can be discussed?)
gizajob 3y ago
“Watch particularly for thoughts about what you "should," "ought," or "must" be doing as a writer and recognize them as the irrationalities that they are.“ A huge one being what every writer should do based on this list of rules that work for me and now must be applied to everyone else.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
barbariangrunge 3y ago
If writers block is procrastination, that still doesn’t automatically help you get unblocked. Like if you’re stuck coding a feature, just forcing yourself to write code isn’t the answer, you need a set of strategies for getting unstuck, solving problems, and getting restarted afterwards
- themadturk 3y ago
  Many creative writers I've read say that this kind of issue isn't block, it happens because you're not "ready" to write this bit yet, for any number of values of "ready". It can apply to coding as well, I expect. In writing, it often happens because you've failed to plan. You don't know what to write next because you have no idea where the story is going next, and you'll be able to carry on once you've figured that out. There are exercises to get through this, which include going off and writing something altogether different. Letting your subconscious work on something for a while can work wonders.

83 points by yamrzou 3y ago

ian0 3y ago

>> Stop when you get to the end of your time limit, preferably in the middle of something (a sentence, paragraph, argument). Anyone know what the rational for this is? I understand the not-rushing aspect, but would have thought if your enjoying it and "in the zone" it would be good to see it through

dredmorbius 3y ago
It's less about the stopping side than the picking-up-the-next-session side. If you're in the middle of a sentence / argument, or in software, a function or module, it's going to be easier to pick up where you were previously. I'd suggest sketching out the general shape of the concept before you start, so that you don't find yourself looking at the half-written page wondering "what the hell was I thinking?", but instead at least have a framework of the structure which you can fill in and detail. Another possible upside is that you'll come back to the concept rested and refreshed, and might see aspects of it which haven't weathered well over your break, and might use shoring up or restructuring. Though that can lead to the editing-whilst-writing conundrum, which can be something of a swamp for some writers and/or programmers.
yamrzou 3y ago
Oliver Burkeman explained this in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: “One critical aspect of the radical incrementalist approach, which runs counter to much mainstream advice on productivity, is thus to be willing to stop when your daily time is up, even when you’re bursting with energy and feel as though you could get much more done. If you’ve decided to work on a given project for fifty minutes, then once fifty minutes have elapsed, get up and walk away from it. Why? Because as Boice explained, the urge to push onward beyond that point ‘includes a big component of impatience about not being finished, about not being productive enough, about never again finding such an ideal time’ for work. Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again, and thus to sustain your productivity over an entire career.”
- koliber 3y ago
  Another reason is that writing and other creative work happens deliberately as well as unconsciously. If you stop mid sentence, it is likely that your mind will nibble away at it while you are not writing. The next time you sit down, not only do you have a clear starting point and next step, but also tons of unconscious prep work for the next burst of deliberate writing.
nescioquid 3y ago
From the explanations I've read, it is meant to get you "in the zone" quickly when you start your next writing time. Additionally, you will be (perhaps unconsciously) mulling over the completion of the segment and perhaps its continuation between sessions. A shirked task eats at you in the way the dishes you cleaned last night never do.
- gizajob 3y ago
  But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to. I’m sure we’ve all been there when a document or piece of writing has been lost to technological failure - it’s essentially impossible to replicate by writing it out again with exactly the same spirit. Almost maddening in fact. I don’t agree with hard and fast fixed rules like those listed by the professor. They work for him but extending them into a universal generality for all writers is a huge fail from my perspective. Useful rules of thumb perhaps, and emphasising good discipline, but there’s no way I could stick to them.
  - broscillator 3y ago
    > But by the same token, a fruitful creative nugget left unpicked can quickly evaporate, and won’t be there when returned to. This is true but if you've done creative work for a while, it becomes less true, and the coinciding of "I've spent a full hour writing" and "I have this magical sentence left in me" is not frequent enough to render the rule completely moot. In fact, breaking that rule because you have a freight train of paragraphs left in you after the timer is done is one of the greatest feelings, and that alone makes the existence of the rule justified. It's really a win-win situation, and in the long term it encourages consistency and commitment.
    - gizajob 3y ago
      I mean more the train of thought and perspective I’m in - if I’ve spent the day reading and thinking on an angle of an academic project I’m engrossed in condensing and referencing, then hard limits in terms of clock time just don’t work for me, I’ll instead just stick with it if I can and keep grinding. Some days I’ll have totally lost the thread and instead do nothing. I agree with the discipline and daily practice though, but think that his is an angle on that. I’d personally prefer a word count and a target to hit and then try and hit the word count and flex toward the target. But my days are often variable - I’m not a professor running on a similar clock every day.
pro-kythera 3y ago
> Stop when you get to the end of your time limit I understand this as a recommendation related to maintaining a consistent writing habit. Also, stopping in the middle of a thought provides a place to resume.
cratermoon 3y ago
This is a common recommendation for writers and across productivity guides. Ernest Hemingway and Roald Dahl both recommended it.. The idea is to stop when when you know what you'll be doing next. Maybe write a short note to yourself as a sort of place marker. There are at least two advantages to this. First, when you pick it up at your next work session, you can jump right back into your flow, or at least have a better chance of re-achieving flow. Second, cognitive researchers discovered the brain is less likely to forget if the task is left unfinished. Overnight, or between work sessions, the various parts of the brain will maintain some task awareness. My recommendation is to not work right up to a hard stop. Look at the clock (or have a reminder) half an hour before the hard stop, then take the next 20 minutes to outline the next steps and properly suspend the tasks. Another way of putting this is, "never keep working until you have to stop because you don't know what to do next". On the rare occasions you mention of being in the zone and enjoying it it's acceptable to continue working beyond the time limit, but it's still best to stop at a point where the next step is clear in your mind. You'll find that instead of spending 20 minutes trying to come up to speed on what to do next, the next work session will start smoothly. This works for programming, too. When I have a green build and know my next task, I can commit and go to lunch or go home for the day, then continue when I get back. https://www.fastcompany.com/90907757/train-brain-into-flow https://www.fastcompany.com/90907757/train-brain-into-flow

lsmeducation 3y ago

I feel like most artists make their rules after the fact. The stuff comes from the sky, and it’s only afterward that you convince yourself you had something to do with it.

sfpotter 3y ago
Your comment was only downvoted because the average HN reader is not artistically inclined.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  I am not convinced about this. I can't really know what you mean based on this one sentence (or the parent comment from that one sentence), but the really good artists I know absolutely lay down rules for themselves. All art, fundamentally, emerges in part from creative constraints and from practice of communicating within them. And good artists absolutely know this (whether they would express it in this generalised way or not). Good artists can switch from medium to medium by exploring the constraints (beyond just the physical limits of charcoal or clay or stacking stones) and then figuring out how to communicate with them. But you don't really get very far without imposing additional restrictions on the work that help frame the message you're trying to convey. Artists who invent new mediums of expression do this same thing implicitly; the medium at some level is its constraints. So experienced artists usually do make up rules for themselves (or at least positive schemes and negative no-go areas) whether they write them down or not.
- strken 3y ago
  I didn't downvote it, but I also don't agree that a set of rules that amount to "pace yourself to avoid burnout" is a post-hoc rational justification of mysterious otherworldly guidance from the sky. Since the actual rules from the article are about keeping yourself mentally healthy during the process of writing, the comment is obscure: does it refer to some other set of rules about art? (In which case it's off-topic.) Or is it making the claim that you could work in blocks of multiple hours and never socialise with other writers and see the same results? (In which case, why not clearly state a position so it can be discussed?)

gizajob 3y ago

“Watch particularly for thoughts about what you "should," "ought," or "must" be doing as a writer and recognize them as the irrationalities that they are.“ A huge one being what every writer should do based on this list of rules that work for me and now must be applied to everyone else.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

barbariangrunge 3y ago

If writers block is procrastination, that still doesn’t automatically help you get unblocked. Like if you’re stuck coding a feature, just forcing yourself to write code isn’t the answer, you need a set of strategies for getting unstuck, solving problems, and getting restarted afterwards

themadturk 3y ago
Many creative writers I've read say that this kind of issue isn't block, it happens because you're not "ready" to write this bit yet, for any number of values of "ready". It can apply to coding as well, I expect. In writing, it often happens because you've failed to plan. You don't know what to write next because you have no idea where the story is going next, and you'll be able to carry on once you've figured that out. There are exercises to get through this, which include going off and writing something altogether different. Letting your subconscious work on something for a while can work wonders.