How to Revise an Article, a personal journey, part 6
When I was an assistant professor, I would get to the office around 8:45 am, before my 9:30 class, and set a thirty-minute timer before I did some work on a paragraph or a page. Slowly, but surely, that’s how the revisions for my books got done. That is the whole truth. No BS. Square Biz. On my mama. No cap. For real. For real.
There are several tricks to it. First, the timer. On good days, I understood that as a challenge and a provocation. What can you do in thirty minutes? In those moments, the timer let me focus on the task at hand and prodded me to think about this time as a specially set meeting with myself to do what I needed to do. On bad days, days where I barely wanted to go into the office at all, the timer thwarted my resistance: You can do this for thirty minutes. Then, I just put my head down and worked, often begrudgingly. Either way, thirty minutes was always 1800 seconds, always just enough time to do what I had purposed to do. Sometimes the messages got mixed up. On difficult days, I might find myself asking derisively What can you do in thirty minutes? where the emphasis was on “can” or “you” such that I felt demoralized. On those days, I set the timer for only five minutes and then, if I felt like I could go on, I did. Often, I got a little energy from the task.
The second trick is a SMART goal. Many of you have heard this before. SMART goals is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Attractive, Realistic, and Time-framed. In short, your SMART goal is a tiny task that contributes to the larger goal. This differs from process goals where you do the same thing each time (e.g., practice scales on the violin, drill equations, read 50 pages a day). SMART goals and process goals have one characteristic in common: you know when you’re done.
In the case of revisions for this article, my SMART goals included: print out document, re-read with attention toward structure and development of argument, divide (using scissors) the document into workable sections, go through each section and give your paragraphs a task, enter changes on electronic document, recycle pages, re-read for clarity and word-smithing, draft cover letter for journal, check submission criteria, ready document for submission, double check submission criteria, and submit. Some of these I could get done in thirty-minute increments. Some took a little longer. Regardless, I could use the momentum of the previous day to help me keep working. As I worked, I learned how long some tasks take. (Spoiler alert: printing does not take five minutes. It takes about ten, fifteen if you have a temperamental shared printer.)
Emotionally, this process has also become predictable for me. I get excited to see my words on paper. Somehow, they become more real when I take them off the screen. When I divide my work into sections, I usually get a little irritated that I am literally taking a pair of scissors to my pages, but I know that it serves a purpose. I cut the paper, so I understand what the sections really look like or feel like. I need to know whether the analysis is as robust as I imagine in terms of page length. It seems crude, but if my introductory material is longer than my analysis, that suggests that the former needs to be more concise and the latter requires more depth. The anxiety I feel is sufficient and useful for the task.
When I get close to finishing the pen-on-paper revisions, I usually feel a little concerned. I sometimes worry that the revision is not enough or that maybe the argument still isn’t any good. I do not have any tips or tricks or hacks for this one. Sometimes the thought is fleeting. Sometimes the thought lingers. Sometimes I send the revision to a friend. Sometimes I talk it over with someone. Sometimes I journal about it. Sometimes I turn on hype music. Sometimes I fix myself a good meal and create some intellectual distance by working on something else for a day or two. These methods usually clarify that the work still needs to be submitted for my own sake. And, if it doesn’t make a splash, I remember the wise words of Audre Lorde in “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”: Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. Th head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves – along with the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply, and so many of our old ideas disparage.
As for this article, I sliced it up into five sections: introduction, literature review, analysis 1, analysis 2, and conclusion. I used a green pen to symbolize the revitalization in which I participated. I took each section paragraph by paragraph, ensuring that each paragraph had a role to play in forwarding the argument, ensuring that the argument was the final destination and my essay the finely tuned GPS route to lead someone to that destination.
When I submitted, I celebrated by listening to Colonel Abrams, “I’m Not Gonna Let You” and Nicki Minaj’s “Did It On ‘Em.” Trust me. They go together.