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Writer’s Diary #07: On Starting

Daniel Tubb

How do you start writing each day? Getting started is often the hardest part—whether it is a book, chapter, article, section, paragraph or project. Procrastination can take as much time as the task itself. This is especially true with a writing project.

There is no magic bullet, but I remember learning a lot from reading and rereading Dorothea Brande’s [Becoming a Writer (1934)](https://www.amazon.ca/Becoming-Writer-Dorothea-Brande/dp/9389157196/ref=sr_1_2? crid=1QMUBDD68ZTEB&keywords=dorothea+brandt+becoming+a+writer&qid=1687262706&sprefix=dorothea+brandt+becoming+a+writer%252Caps%252C137&sr=8- 2&_encoding=UTF8&tag=danieltubb-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=70052a0d7f212c7c23ef20d57c7a06d1&camp=15121&creative=330641). Although it was written in the 1930s, its advice is often timeless.

One is to set aside time to write, and make a commitment to write at that time. It’s a method of being able to sit down and work on a schedule. At times, especially getting going, I’ve found this advice useful. But now I am more convinced that the trick is to write when you sit down to write, and then to make sitting down a habit. A routine. It takes commitment to get back on the page, but it’s a commitment to cultivate the habit of sitting and, as Brande suggests, to write when you set out to write.

This advice is less about scheduling—which, frankly, does not work for me unless other people are involved—and more about the commitment to do the work when the time comes to do the work.

That’s it. Write when it’s time to write and don’t write when it’s not.

Writer’s Diary #06: Writing and Routine

Daniel Tubb

Frankly, a challenge many of us face as writers is finding the time to do the work. Over the past ten days, with travel, students and the urgent tasks that have arisen, it has seemed impossible to find the time.

This morning, however, I am back at this Writer’s Diary. Part of the problem is that there are days when the routine changes drastically. Writing a book, I think, is an exercise in doing the work over and over again.

My father is building a house. He works on it almost every day, most of the day, except at weekends when he does other things. That’s his work. He doesn’t check emails during the day; he doesn’t use the phone; he doesn’t attend meetings; nor does he get pulled in a dozen different directions by emergencies that arise. Instead, he works on the house. The works has its own physicality, rhythm and routine.

As a professor with small children and a plethora of activities, the challenge is to find the time. My father’s method is inspiring. Do the thing. That’s it.

Writer’s Diary #05: Write every day, maybe not?

Daniel Tubb

A lot of writing advice for academics emphasizes the importance of writing every day. I am thinking, for example, of Paul J. Silvia’s [How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing] (https://www.amazon.ca/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1433829738). Sometimes, I’ve tried to follow such advice—keep a journal, write daily, keep track of how much I write, forget my excuses, make the time, etc. Such an approach has its place. But a new book I’m working on takes a very different approach. As much as there’s a choice to write a lot, there’s also a choice not to write.

If a lot of advice boils down to “don’t break the chain” and write every day, make it a habit, there are some days that this makes no sense.

I’m about to go on a trip to New York City with some students to share our work. We’ll be driving all day and, frankly, I don’t think I’ll find the time to write. The approach that seems to come out of a lot of self-help literature for academic writers is to find the time, come hell or high water. Get up earlier, stay up later, or squeeze it in somehow. But sometimes this is just not possible.

For next week, I plan the opposite: a conscious decision not to write. Sometimes doing nothing is the right decision, and with moving house, holidays, some weekends, the start of term and other urgent matters, doing nothing is a better approach.

Write every day, unless it’s not wise.

Writer’s Diary #04: Getting Back on the Bus

Daniel Tubb

Yesterday, I fell off the writing bus. I didn’t write anything. After staying up too late writing the night before, I slept in. Instead of journaling and working on the book, as planned, I found myself distracted by one false digital emergency after another.

Today, without childcare, I’m planning to find time to write later in the day. But for now, I want to reflect on the idea that writing a book is an exercise in returning to the work, again and again.

A bad day, or even a terrible week, doesn’t matter. Writing exists in the here and now. If things don’t go as planned, the solution is to return to the writing.

I’ve come to see writing as similar to meditation and breath work. In some forms of meditation, the goal is to focus one’s attention on the breath. As the mind inevitably wanders after a few seconds or minutes, the task is return to the breath.

Writing follows a similar pattern. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it doesn’t. You write, then you drift. Getting upset only exacerbates the situation. The key is to come back to the words, just as one would return to breath.

Every day, I make a concerted effort to write. But, there are days, like yesterday, when it just doesn’t work out.

On those days, the solution is wait and come back the next day. Or next week. Start over, again and again.

Writer’s Diary #03: Linking Habits

Daniel Tubb

This morning, I wrote for 5 minutes while the coffee was brewing, and another 5 minutes while I drank it. I got an early start, and wrote at the typewriter. Inspired by James Clear’s Atomic Habits idea of linking a habit (coffee) with something you want to do (write this Writer’s Diary), I wrote this. The idea, which stuck in my mind when I read Clear’s book years ago, is of making things one wants to do stickier, and more likely to be done, by linking them to established habits.

The first thing I do every morning is drink a cup of coffee. Could coffee be used to create a habit of writing a journal, planning the day, posting an article, going for a run, and working on a book? It seemed ambitious, but this morning, it felt promising.

This approach to writing this diary raised a question: If I want to write more regularly, in this diary, is it better to work by hand, or to type, or to dictate? While there is no one way to write, I’ve found the methods are different. For me, writing by hand is slower, more fluid. Writing on a computer is faster, but I think and edit more as I go. Voice dictation, which I sometimes use while walking, is a good way to get an idea down, but it’s not so good to develop an idea. Each medium of writing is different, but whether I’m typing, handwriting, or dictating, I think linking to a coffee habit is promising.

This morning, I typed.

This evening, I revised.

Writer’s Diary #02: About Nutgrafs

Daniel Tubb

There is a concept in journalism known as the nutgraf, a portmanteau of the words “nutshell” and “paragraph.” It’s a paragraph in a news story, placed near the beginning, that summarizes what’s coming and explains the main point or purpose of the story.

So what does the ‘nutgraf’ of a book look like? It’s a paragraph, placed early on, that summarizes the book’s main purpose, argument, and structure.

My first book had two. The first, in the preface, was 450 words in and 162 words long.

How does a gold rush shape the lives of those who live alongside it? There is no single answer. Dwelling on the hopes and the dreams, the successes and the failures, the strategies and the tactics of those after el oro in the most impoverished region of Latin America’s second-most inequitable country tells unexpected stories of the production, accumulation, and transformation of value. I offer contradictory stories in three parts. In the first, gold is a high-value export commodity, which makes panning the core of a rural livelihood strategy and a complement to subsistence household production. In the second, the metal is embedded in a cash economy, which offers a way for miners from the Chocó and elsewhere to attempt to accumulate a little cash. In the third, gold is part of global legal and extralegal flows of capital, in which value undergoes processes of transformation, rather than creation. Together these three parts, which each consist of two chapters, create a study of gold embedded in informal and precarious shifting livelihood strategies.

The second nutgraph was in the Introduction, 450 words in, and 262 words long.

This book considers the ways Antonio and others experienced the boom times of a gold rush and the ways that this gold rush was embedded in wider legal and extralegal economies. It would be easy to fall into a narrative found in much writing about the commodification of nature and natural resource extraction, but I strive for a different complexity by weaving together stories about the lives of artisanal and small-scale miners and those who live in the communities where these miners work. Gold enables some forms of autonomous livelihood, even as it disables others. Mines create freedom and unfreedom; they are at once destructive and constructive. The conditions of extraction and the environments affected and the miners themselves matter at least as much as the mere presence of mining. This book offers insight on the contradictory ways that gold both liberates and subjugates as mines become sites of exploitation and emancipation. What results  is a twofold investigation: First, stories of lived experience drawing on the lives of a handful of miners on artisanal and small-scale gold mines. Second, stories of money laundering through gold by cocaine traffickers and speculation on mining projects by multinational corporations wherein gold facilitates other economic processes. These accounts, nevertheless, remain stories from the margins, because their setting is the poorest and most discriminated department in Colombia and because the stories focus on those who make a living through “precarious” and “informal” shifting livelihood strategies—strategies which themselves offer a certain freedom, especially when compared to the nonexistent alternatives.

Both are examples of a certain conciseness I was striving for in Shifting Livelihoods: they appeared early, were short, and explained the purpose and outline of the entire book. Each took, I suspect, weeks to write.

I am working on the introduction to my new book about Makeshift, and today I focused on the paragraph, which comes after the opening scene. As I thought about it, I thought it should be at the bottom of page two, about 350 words in, and about 300 words long. This paragraph should flow from the first scene, which I think of as an “ethnographic short,” and connect to the next. For the short, I’m on the floor, lost, trying to work out the purpose for a new writing project.

My task, for an hour this morning, was to revise a paragraph into something under 300 words that makes the point of the book and ends with a transition to the next section. I failed. While I am familiar with the formula, I ended up with 1,000 words.

This means either:

  • Makeshift doesn’t need a 300-word nutgraf;
  • Makeshift needs a 300-word nutgraf, and I need to move the 1,000 word on the purpose of the book to come later.

I’ll tackle this decision, first thing, tomorrow. I suspect the wright answer is the second.

Writer’s Diary #01: Feathering Your Nest

Daniel Tubb

Today was a good day for writing, even though I didn’t write a word for the book.

Writing a book is like running a marathon, after a marathon, I think. Having never run a marathon, I don’t know if that’s true, but I suspect it is. Why? A book is hard work. It takes a long time. In my experience, writing a book cannot be rushed. Finishing requires consistency over the long hall. To write a book is to keep coming back to the words. Not over days or weeks, but months and years. My first book, including my dissertation, took at least four years. My second, including the web project, took two. The one I am working on is in its fourth. Writing takes time, especially if, like most of us, one has to juggle many responsibilities. So, it’s important to celebrate the small victories, as one would a good training run.

Today was a day of such small victories. I feathered my nest to prepare for the hard work to come: I organized the office, arranged papers, threw away old cables, cleaned my desk, tested equipment, emptied drawers, charged batteries, swept the floor, etc. It took the morning, and by two o’clock, I was spent and anxious. Had I done anything? I had. Preparing to work is work. A big project requires physical and mental space. But, I was grumpy—I had written nothing. So, I resolved to write.

I planned the afternoon with Cal Newport’s Time Block Planner—write this diary, run, and post something. I completed the plan, made dinner, baked bread, washed dishes, wrote a letter, and dug out Virginia Woolf’s diary which I read in bed.

I didn’t work on the book project directly, and an outside observer might have thought my day was procrastination. But, it wasn’t. It was a good day of preparation to write with serious intent.

The Challenge of Ultra-Processed Food

Daniel Tubb

Last fall, my students and I enjoyed George Monbiot’s Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet (Penguin Random House, 2023). Monbiot explores agriculture’s widespread and devastating impact on climate change, and advocates for regenerative agriculture, perennial grains, and protein grown in vats. His is book is a compelling critique of large-scale industrial agriculture, and the local and organic food movements. While I found Regenesis provocative at the time, it left me wondering about the rural livelihoods of agrarian peoples around the world. More recently, I’ve stated to wonder about health impacts of Ultra-Processed Food, a category in which vat grown non-farm protein must fall?

I came across the concept of ultra-processed food in Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn’t Food (Penguin Random House, 2023). I read van Tulleken’s book out of interest, after reading Daniel Lieberman’s books on evolutionary anthropology—Exercised (Pantheon, 2021) and The Story of the Human Body (Knopf Doubleday, 2014)—and Herman Pontzer’s Burn (Penguin, 2021). One thing to take these three books is the idea of mismatch disease, that is diseases caused more by our indoor, sedentary, calorie-dense lifestyles than our evolutionary ancestors would have experienced in the long span of human history. Reading them alongside van Tulleken, it seems clear that ultra processed food has its own health impacts, because we’re simply not evolved to eat a lot of the food that our industrial food systems produce.

Thinking about Regenesis and ultra-processed food, I suspect that farm-free and vat-grown food that Regenesis describes is, clearly, ultra-processed food. This gives me pause to optimism about vat-grown food, which might cause its own mismatch diseases. What does this mean for food systems in the context of climate change? One the one hand, large-scale industrial agriculture is unsustainable. On the the other hand, ultra-processed foods bring their own health consequences.

I suspect part of the solution involves more real farming, ingredients. But, the question is, can the planet handle that, and can our bodies handle the alterantive?

In Praise of Trains

Daniel Tubb

I write this on a sleeper train to Montreal from Moncton: the VIA Rail Ocean. Because of my general antipathy to air travel and because of their equivalent price, I splurged for an upper berth. VIA called and upgraded me for a cabin for one. This is the first long-distance train I’ve taken in a long time, certainly since learning to drive, and I have forgotten the way trains facilitate flow.

By flow, I’m thinking of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s, the Hungarian-American psychologist, concept of the mental state of being immersed in an activity, with focus, energy concentration, and enjoyment, so that one loses track of time and feels “in the zone” (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Collins, 2009.) Although Csikszentmihalyi means what occurs when skill is matched to challenge, I am referring to the feeling of being fully immersed in the present.

The train facilitates flow.

The train has been an unexpected time to think, daydream, and write. Neither driving nor flying facilitates flow in the same way. Part of the reason is that the train is slow. I left Moncton yesterday at 5:30 pm, and I won’t get into Montreal until 10 am. After that, I go to Ottawa. It’s a 20-hour train journey.

The same flight takes a couple of hours, and requires rushing, people, stimulation, a terrible schedule, security, and lots of interruptions. While fast, flights don’t create time. The train can.

The semester was busy: four classes, a grant application, and a few writing projects. The train has been an unexpected gift of time.

I’ve graded term papers, entered grades, had dinner, stretched, meditated, sent some messages, had a beer, slept, had a leisurely breakfast, and written this. The steady sound of the train passing over the tracks lends itself to flow.

Prior to the pandemic, I used to travel for academic conferences. At times, they left me exhausted. But, at their best, conferences were space to engage ideas, to think about other people’s work, and to read. The travel to and from the conference were part of the fun, which is why I’ve not been terribly excited about online or hybrid conferences. I never seem to take the time. But, next conference, if I can swing it, I think train travel has air travel beat, precisely because it makes time.

Write in public, or on publishing before you’re ready

Daniel Tubb

Tubb, Daniel. “Write in Public, or on Publishing Before You’re Ready.” Culture, vol. 15, no. 2: Modes et Formats/Modes and Formats. December 20, 2021. https://cas-sca.ca/en/write-in-public-or-on-publishing-before-youre-ready/.

Prolific British Marxist Eric Hobsbawm was a consummate repackager of his own ideas, according to Historians Emile Chabal and Anne Perez (2021). They write his “student lectures became book chapters; newspaper op-eds became long essays; and key arguments found their way into a myriad of different formats.” His expansive body of work emerged, on the one hand, from a willingness to recycle, but also because of a willingness to test ideas in public by building lectures, op-eds, letters, articles, book chapters, and books from each other. Some ideas passed the test; perhaps many did not.

What can an ethnographer learn from his method of writing in public?

Perfectionism has meant I approach writing precisely in the opposite way. For a long time, I have written field notes, ideas, jottings, reactions, drafts. Almost all sit unevaluated, unrevised, and unpublished on my computer. My publications have come slowly and unsteadily. Right now, three articles destined for peer review niggle at me. Each is close, but not quite. Each needs revision. If the past is a guide, it might take me a year to even submit somewhere.

Perfectionism has meant that for me publishing takes time.

Ideas have always spilled from my digital notebooks for large projects. But most ideas never go anywhere.

While I have had some modest success on long projects—a smattering of articles and book chapters, an ethnographic monograph that I’m immensely proud of, and an edited volume of speculative non-fiction about the future—these have taken years and have come slowly.

Might I be getting two things wrong? First, big projects take skill and craft. Enskilment in the writing is best learned in the doing—trying, making mistakes, getting feedback, testing ideas, revising. Second, big projects are exhausting. To write a book is to run a marathon after a marathon after a marathon. And yet, runners might finish hundreds of shorter runs to train for a marathon. Why not write in the same way?

I have often thought of the act of publishing as the last and final step of a project; something done at the end. But publication need not be one’s final intervention. Publication can be an opening intervention into a conversation.

I tell students to write before they are ready. Perhaps we should we publish before we are ready?

While I’ve often struggled to finish and publish academic work, I have also had what is an energizing practice as a writer of short pieces for wider publics. The publics have changed. As an undergraduate student, I wrote for student newspapers. As a graduate student, I helped found a student newspaper. As professor, I write pieces for professional newsletters, national websites, and local media. I dabble in social media. It is energizing, but it has rarely been an outlet for my academic work.

Why not?

A metaphor I have in mind comes from artisanal gold mining. For my first book, I spent eighteen months in northwest Colombia with Afro-descendent gold miners learning how to mine. The work was hard and physical, but for some it had its charms, a little profit, and camaraderie. Central to the mine work was regularly checking in with a wooden pan. Washing is skilled work, and it was women who let the centrifugal force of water eject stones and gravel. If they found a few flecks, they knew they were on the right track. 

The metaphor is a stretch, and writing is not gold mining. But maybe publishing is a way to finish an idea, to check in, to articulate it, and to see if it is useful. After all, to check their progress, an artisanal miner must shift a lot of mud and gravel to get a little gold.

My courses are most exciting, my lectures most gripping, and my writing most productive when it is all intertwined and I am working ideas out. Maybe publication need not be the ultimate, last, and final act of a project, but a way to see what emerges in conversation with students, with peers, and with other publics. Might publishing be a way to check in on an idea, and to test it. After all, not all publication needs to be in scholarly journals or books, and there are newsletters, blogs, magazines, websites, book reviews, social media, and other places.

Maybe we should take a page from Eric Hobsbawn, and learn to write in public.