It is one thing to write because a faculty member has set a deadline that cannot be avoided, at least not for long. It is quite another thing to write because it’s part of one's lifestyle. I have always thought that scholarly writing has less to do with research technique or writing skill than it does with organization, motivation, and discipline. However, our conversation reminded me that it also involves managing the competition. Our educational programs place this task in the hands of faculty members. As faculty, we manage the competition in our student's lives by setting project deadlines, by having clear termination of semesters and quarters, and by assigning incomplete and failing grades for lack of compliance. Even during the completion of dissertations, advisors frequently have to set firm deadlines to "motivate" students to control the competition for their time and attention from others.

        In fact, I am intrigued by the number of persons, who continue to use externally imposed deadlines for motivation to write during the first years of their careers . Recently, I have had several experiences in which I, as a co-author or an editor, was required to set deadlines for other writers because they had allowed a writing project to push against an editor's deadline before they were able to manage the competition in their lives and motivate themselves to write. Apparently, the deadline-driven writing that we experienced throughout middle school, high school, college, and graduate school is very firmly ingrained by the time we take our first academic jobs.

        As I have watched my academic colleagues struggle in their efforts to meet externally imposed writing deadlines, I have come to some conclusions. When students leave an academic training program, the motivation to write is no longer controlled by professors or advisors. For those who continue to rely on an externally imposed deadline system, writing deadlines compete with the other deadlines in life. Without mentioning specific names, because that is unimportant, I observe an individual who goes to every class that he is assigned to teach, because those deadlines are imposed by the university and by the students. He rarely misses a committee meeting. He allows his students to set most of his other deadlines in the academic arena. It sounds something like this, "I have to talk with you before class." "We have to plan my thesis proposal before the end of the term." "Would you help me learn how to run this piece of equipment before Friday?" "You’ve got to help me prepare this convention presentation proposal. The deadline is March 23rd." "Do you have a "minute", I need to talk to you about personal problems." All of these requests are appropriate, but they bring this faculty member under the deadline control of his students.

        Family members soon learn that if they are to access the time and attention of such an individual, they, too, must attempt impose deadlines. The requests of family members are also appropriate. They sound something like the following; "We have student-teacher conferences at school this evening. We both should go." "Could you help me with homework? It is due tomorrow." "I need some soccer shoes before Thursday." "We’re having dinner at the Beukelmans on Friday evening." Then, of course, all other groups also set deadlines—religious organizations, service clubs, extended families, etc.

        Now, how does the motivation to write compete with all of these other deadlines? Often, it doesn’t until something happens that sets a deadline which is more insistent and important than those imposed by our employer, students, family, or community. On several occasions this year, I have had to impose deadlines on authors that were more demanding than those given to them by any one else. It sounded something like "Get it to me on Friday, so we can talk about it on Monday morning." "The editor sent another request for our manuscript." "You are a month overdue." "If you can’t get this written, I’m going to call you, interview you over the phone, and write it myself." "No, you won’t get a chance to review it because we don't have the time." "We’re mailing the manuscript on Friday." Now, you may think that that sounds a bit harsh and it is. I dislike myself intensely while I say those things to people who have other pressing commitments in their lives. However, it became completely clear to me that my deadlines had to create greater motivation than the deadlines that were imposed by others.

        Actually, the university community has understood most of this for a long time. Tenure and promotion policies serve to impose external deadlines on young professors. For example, guidelines that recommend two peer reviewed publications a year are a refinement of the external deadline system imposed by tenure policies. While some young faculty struggle to make the transition from graduate student to scholar, others face the transition later in their careers. They use the external deadline strategies learned in graduate school to control the competition for their time, so they can publish a couple of articles a year for 5 or 6 years. However, once tenured, the externally imposed deadlines are removed. Perhaps this explains why faculty, who have worked systematically on scholarly activities until they are tenured, struggle to remain productive in the post-tenure era of their careers.

        How do we deal with this? If we must stay deadline driven, then it becomes imperative to develop within our deadline management systems the motivational constraints that will be sufficiently powerful to make these deadline stick. Some recruit accountability partners to whom they must report on a weekly basis. Some develop a collaborative relationship with another writer to compensate for their difficulty in controlling the competition. Some do not permit other important activities in their lives to occur until deadlines are met (I find this almost always fails). Eventually, deadline driven writers often must "steal" time from other areas of their lives to complete their writing projects when external deadlines can not longer be avoided. Successful deadline writers typically learn to divide the writing task into a series to small deadlines and then discipline themselves to meet these deadlines along the way.

        Another approach to scholarly writing is not to be controlled by deadlines but to control one’s work schedule. Obviously, you know that this is the choice that I have made. By attempting to control my schedule, I know immediately when I have failed. If I miss a scheduled writing time, it is clear that I am in violation of my system and that I must make it up within a couple days. My behavior is controlled more effectively by scheduling regular writing times, than setting deadlines that are a week or a month or six months away. With major projects such as book manuscripts, there is no choice, because often these deadlines are 18 to 24 months into the future. Those, who use a writing schedule strategy, must discipline themselves to stay on task. Writing on a wide assortment of projects and not completing any of them is a problem for some. Personally, I do not like to write under pressing deadlines. By controlling my scholarly writing through scheduling my writing time, I find that I can avoid most deadlines, because the work is completed ahead of time.

        Again and again at the conference I overheard persons talking about their presentations. If the presentation had been well received, with a large audience, or enthusiastic response, I heard people say, ‘I now have the motivation to go home and write it up." I would like to modify this statement to be a little closer to reality. Perhaps what they were really saying is, "I now have enough motivation to set personal deadlines that will be stronger than those imposed by my university, my family, my students, my church or synagogue, the Kiwanis, my hobbies, the television, and whatever else is important to me. Putting our scholarly work into a competition framework with all the other important activities in our lives reveals to me how terribly difficult it is.

        Late in the conference, one of my colleagues became aware that my co-authors and I have revised an augmentative and alternative textbook and a motor speech disorders textbook during the previous 18 months. He asked me about the techniques that we had used to meet deadlines, and I gave him the lecture about early morning writing times that all of you have heard so many times. At the conclusion, he said "It sounds to me that you have made writing the most important part of your professional, and perhaps, even your personal life, in that you give it priority over everything else." I found myself objecting strenuously to his conclusion. That is not the way that it feels to me. Rather, it feels as though I have built a firewall to control the competitive between my writing and my other responsibilities. During my writing times I would rather do anything else. Writing is lonely, solitary work. Crises of confidence are common for me. Positive reinforcement is uncertain and delayed. When I think about being "a writer", I imagine lots of positive feelings; however, when I actually write, it just feels like hard work. The fire wall --I am not allowed to do anything but write for the first hour(s) after arriving at the university--doesn’t allow competition from other activities which are as, or even more, important to me. Surely, if my writing had to complete with my roles as spouse, parent, teacher, etc., I wouldn’t write very much. During my writing time, I may do nothing else, unless of course a true emergency arises. If I do not write, I must just sit and stare at the walls. That is it, stare at the walls--no lecture preparation, no grading of tests, no returning phone calls, no filing, no cleaning, no organizing, no visiting. It does not take long before writing becomes more enjoyable than staring at the walls.

*Written to former students after meeting with a group of them at a national conference.

Beukelman, D. (1993). AAC research: A multi-dimensional learning community. Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal, 9, 63-68.

Boyers, E. & Rice, R. (1990). The New American Scholar. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Foundation.