It’s been a while since I read Bourdieu’s critique of Mauss’s theory of gift giving. As I recall, Mauss reduced gift-giving to an economic transaction–receiving a gift obligates you to return one. Bourdieu pointed out that this forgets the role of time. If you give someone their gift back later the same day, you aren’t really giving them a gift. Rather, you are misunderstanding the institution. The whole point is to give them something else and at some other time. But both the difference and the deferral are not specified in some set of explicit rules. You work it out by feel. I’m probably butchering Bourdieu’s subtle notion here, but this “feel” for the institution of gift-giving is shaped by experience, what he calls “habitus”.

I was talking about this recently and realized that the notion of time plays a significant role in my understanding of “giving” feedback, or what might be called “the gift of feedback”. If someone spends weeks and weeks on a paper and asks you for feedback, and you look at the first page and grunt your disapproval, we can all agree that you haven’t really given them anything. (Even though you arguably gave them that tiny bit of your attention entirely for free.) But the same is true if you overdo it. If I spend a few hours on the weekend throwing together a draft introduction and you hold on to it for two weeks, finally identifying every error, tracking down every source, and completely destroying my argument, you also haven’t really understood what I was asking for. There has to be some proportion between my effort as a writer and your effort as a critic. Otherwise the feedback just doesn’t feel right.

This is why I always propose carefully measuring your effort and that of your reader. You spend 27 minutes writing a paragraph and you imagine your reader taking about 1 minute to read it. When you ask someone for feedback, you’re of course asking them to be a bit more than an ordinary reader, so let’s say 9 minutes per paragraph. You’re asking them to spend 1/3 of the time you spend writing something, perhaps reading it out loud, trying to identity the key sentence, and making some judgments about how well it all works. You can imagine this being done with a single paragraph, or a series of paragraphs, but the important thing is to imagine your reader/critic devoting a reasonable amount of time to the task, an amount that stands in some measurable proportion to the time you spent writing it…

…and to the time you will spend re-writing it. To receive the gift of feedback is to spend another three times as long as your reader writing the text again, one paragraph at a time. In any case, feedback is a gift. It takes time.

It’s natural to expect to become a better writer over time. Students, especially, should expect to be better writers at the time of their graduation than when they started in their program. Specifically, they should become better at writing about a particular range of subjects, defined by their curriculum. But they should also, more generally, become better at writing about anything they happen to be knowledgeable about. This ability is a valuable one.

What does it mean to be good at writing about things you know? Let me emphasize, first of all, that not all people have this ability. They may be very knowledgeable about something but have never found a way of writing effectively about it. This is very often the case with “know-how”, i.e., the knowledge needed to do certain things, like cooking or playing the piano. Now, in a certain sense, you can’t be knowledgeable about “academic” matters without knowing how to write about them because the ability to write about them is part of the competence of knowing. But, in another sense, there are many knowledgeable scholars who either don’t write very good prose or write well only with great difficulty. These people want to become better writers separate from their desire to know more.

One of the reasons I promote the “writing moment” is that it lets you experience your competence as a writer in a particular way. One question you can ask is whether it is easy for you to write at least six sentences and at most two-hundred words about something you know in 27 minutes. Another, perhaps more important, question is whether you enjoy those minutes. Does it give you pleasure to write about things you know? It is my view that being good at something means, in part, being able to enjoy it. (This also goes for cooking and music.) Enjoyment is a trainable skill, we might say; knowing how to do something pleasurably is simply an advance on being able to do it painlessly. And if it pains you to do something you are doing it wrong. You’re not good at it.

By focusing your efforts on a single, well-defined claim (stated in the key sentence), and limiting yourself to a specific time in a specific place, you are giving yourself an occasion to have, and therefore potentially to enjoy, an experience. Too many people, too often, try to write without actually experiencing the pleasure it affords them. It is of course because, in their experience, it’s either tiresome or painful to write. But I suspect that, in an important sense, they’ve never really had the relevant experience. They’ve put words together on a page but they’ve never really tried writing. They haven’t given themselves the opportunity to enjoy it. That’s tragic because it costs so little — indeed, it only takes a moment — and brings such great rewards.

I suspect that pleasure is often just the feeling that we’re getting better at something. Maybe that’s always what it is.

I’ve just uploaded a short paper, “How to Write”, to accompany my lecture video of the same name. It’s a bit old and I’m going to revise it. Comments are therefore more than welcome. I’m happy hear what you think of both my style and my ideas. And what you think your students might think. Have at it!

I think both scholars and students do well to consider the time their readers spend with what they have written. Consider a 5-paragraph or 5-page or 8000-word essay. Think of them as consisting of 5, 10 and 40 paragraphs respectively. Now, consider this: each paragraph takes about one minute to read and should support, elaborate or defend an easily identified statement (articulated in the “key sentence”). That is, every minute or so, the reader should “get” something–namely, one of the things you’re trying to say. This goes on for however many minutes there are paragraphs.

Think about this when you are writing each individual paragraph. Have you constructed a minute of reading experience for the reader that effectively delivers your message. Do you even know what the message in a given paragraph is? Have decided whether the reader will find it difficult to believe, understand or agree with? Have you made specific rhetorical choices in an effort to help the reader overcome this difficulty? Do you care how this minute feels in the mind of the reader? Have you taken into account the minutes leading up and following after this minute? In many cases, these minutes will have passed according to your instructions, i.e., reading the words you have selected in the order you have arranged them.

Instead of thinking of your text as a structure that simply abides by the rules of style and grammar and therefore “stands up” to a certain kind of judgement, think of it as a texture. Imagine that the reader feels something as their attention passes over the surface of your writing.

If you are reading this blog you are probably a student or scholar working in a particular academic discipline. Take a moment and think of something within this discipline that you know well, something you have reason to believe is true. (At some level, after all, knowledge is justified, true belief.) It may be a simple, practical fact or complex theoretical insight. Think of something, in any case, that you might confidently assert among your peers. I’m not suggesting that holding such beliefs is the only thing you do, nor even the most important thing. I’m just reminding you that you do hold some beliefs in this way, and I want you to call one of these beliefs to mind.

Now subject this belief to doubt. Draw the belief into question. Ask yourself how you know that this thing is true. Ask yourself how good your reasons are, how likely your reasons to believe it are to be wrong. Keep in mind that it’s possible to be wrong for the right reasons or right for the wrong reasons. When was the last time you checked the sources that support your belief on this matter? Could new evidence have come to light? Might you simply be remembering the story in a convenient but ultimately inaccurate way? Pull the belief out of the space in which you are quite certain about it, and imagine it in a tougher room. Put it in a state of crisis. Think critically about it, just for a moment.

Now make up your mind. Is it true or false? What sort of investigation, if any, will you have to carry out to decide? What sorts of reasons will you bring to bear on this question? Are they the same as the ones you started with? (Your belief may remain firm during this process, though your reasons to hold it change.) Take about 10 minutes to consider the matter.

Okay, now find a peer to discuss it with. Ask them for 20 minutes of their time to talk through your doubts about something that you had previously been quite certain about. Your peer might immediately share your doubts, or even be quite sure you were wrong all along. Or this conversation itself might raise doubts in the mind of your peer. In any case, try to explain the conclusion you reached. Seek their input and advice. But don’t let the conversation go on and on. After twenty minutes, thank them and be on your way.

Finally, take a moment to write a single paragraph that supports, elaborates or defends your current belief on the matter. If your peer ended up disagreeing with you, you might consider writing the paragraph with them in mind, defending your belief against their objections. If your peer had a hard time understanding you, you might elaborate your meaning. If your peer found your assertion difficult to believe, try writing a paragraph that supports it with evidence. Don’t spend more than half an hour on this.

Hopefully the value of this exercise is obvious. It will let you experience your mind, your voice and your prose style directly. It will give immediate information about the quality of your thinking, your speaking and your writing. Pay attention to how you went about deciding what to think, what to say, and what to write. And notice that this is giving you important insight into how you think, speak and write. It’s also showing you how you can improve your ability to do these things.

Finally, please notice that they support each other. Or, at least, they support each other when you are doing them well; when you are not concentrating, they may undermine each other. In any case, the clarity of your mind and your voice will be apparent in the clarity of your style. Your style and your voice represent your mind, we might say; your writing and speaking represent your thinking. You do well to train these abilities and strengthen the connections between them.