Strategies for Organizing a Large Writing Project

I am two months into a new position, managing the senior thesis process for a university honors college. So, I have been thinking a lot about how to help undergraduate writers manage what, for them (and probably most of us), is a significant writing project that must be completed in about eight months. Much of the advice I might give them is similar to the ideas I would share with anyone approaching a larger scholarly writing project.

1. Schedule time for research, writing, and editing. Most writing projects have a deadline, whether externally defined or internally imposed. What is your deadline? Working backward from that, how much time do you need to set aside each week or each day to meet that deadline? If it is your first big writing project, figuring that out can be tricky. Set an initial goal, say writing a draft of one chapter in 30 days. If your chapter will be 40 pages, you’ll need to write about a page and a half (325-350 words) a day. You can use a writing log to see how long it takes to produce that daily word count.

Part of your writing time will likely be spent reading and annotating the literature connected to your topic. How much do you have to read? What is your typical reading speed? If you are doing data analysis, how much time will you need to clean the data and run your analyses?

Once you know how much time you are likely to need, divide that by the number of weeks or days remaining until your deadline. Then start blocking regular appointments on your calendar.

2. Create an outline. Even if you don’t typically create an outline to help you organize your thoughts for writing, an outline can be beneficial in mapping out the various pieces of a large project. The outline should be more than just a listing of the chapters for a book project. Instead, you want to begin thinking about the shape of the individual chapters, which may look something like this:

Introduction

Section 1

Subsection 1.A

Subsection 1.B

Subsection 1.C

Section 2

Section 3

Subsection 3.A

Subsection 3.B

Conclusion

As you write, the structure of the chapter might change, but creating this detailed outline gives you a series of tasks to complete within the larger frame of that chapter. Because you have an idea of all the tasks for the chapter in advance, you can tackle them in any order. So, for example, if you still need to read and annotate sources for what will be Section 1 but are all ready to write Section 3, you can begin there.

3. Get granular. Sometimes we get stuck because we have a task on our list and aren’t sure how to get started on it. Katie Linder has a great podcast episode on creating granular to-do lists, which I have linked below. You could approach each of the chapter sections listed above as a task, but Linder suggests that you break these down even further, especially if you feel stuck. For example, granular to-do items for my Section 1 above might include things, such as

access and download Smith, Jones, and Davis articles

read and annotate Smith article

read and annotate Jones article

read and annotate Davis article

draft Subsection 1.A

draft Subsection 1.B

draft Subsection 1.C

draft framing language for Section 1

4. Assign tasks to your writing appointments. Blocking your calendar for writing is only half the battle. Having a game plan for how you will spend that time can help you avoid spinning your wheels and wasting valuable time. For example, several years ago, I began working on the second edition of a book I wrote in 2005. I set aside whole days on my calendar to work on the book. The task list for one of those days follows:

Goal: Finalize Chapter 1

• Read Schaller’s About Campus piece on sophomores; update chapter 1 discussion of developing purpose

• Update CIRP data based

• Draft section on Nonlinear Models of Ethnic Identity Development

• Update discussion of Progressive Models of Ethnic Identity Development

• Lit search for more current sources on developing autonomy

If my appointment had only been for an hour, maybe it would have included only one (or two at the most) of these tasks. Whatever I didn’t finish could roll into my next writing session. I kept these lists in a section labeled “Planning” in a OneNote notebook I created for the book revision, but you could just as easily add these as notes to the calendar appointment.

5. Assess your progress. Periodically, it’s essential to look at what you have accomplished and what’s left to get done. The latter is likely to leave you feeling overwhelmed sometimes, so don’t move on too quickly from looking at what you have accomplished. Instead, celebrate the progress you have made. Figure out what helped you gain forward momentum. How can you take what you learned to change your approach to the remaining tasks? The writing log is one assessment tool you can use, or you might create a burn chart (see the link below), which offers a visual representation of your progress toward your goal.

I’d love to hear about your strategies to keep your writing projects on track. Drop me a line at hello@tracylskipper.com.

Resources

• Burn Charts. A “pretty to-do list with a graph” to help you see whether you are on pace to complete a writing project.

• Granular To-Do Lists. Katie Linder discusses how and why to create a granular to-do list.

• Writing a Non-Fiction Book in a Year. This episode of the #amwriting podcast coaches a psychologist on how to approach writing a 60,000-word researched non-fiction book in a year.