Do you use conferences as a way to start new writing projects?
In my experience it’s a pretty common practice. You are working on some research. You need to transition into the writing phase. A conference offers an impetus to make a decision about what you might write and get some kind of reasonable draft in order. After the conference, you can revise it into an article or book chapter.
There is lots to like about this strategy:
- External deadlines to motivate action (decision, writing, etc)
- A process for accepting abstracts means you get some positive encouragement before you write
- The conference paper is lower stakes than a journal article
- The proposal process only requires an abstract, which is short and seems easy to write
I’ve written about this issue before. I was prompted to return to it by a discussion I had on Bluesky in February 2024.
This conversation started with someone talking about why they love writing abstracts. One of their colleagues responded:
Whereas I have a really hard time articulating what I’m trying to do with enough specificity until I have actually written the paper. Until then all I hear is the hollowness of my own words ringing in my ears.
— JP Nudell on Bluesky, February 2024
If that response resonates, let me reassure you that there is nothing wrong with you.
A lot of people have to write to clarify what they want to say, and what they can say. If that’s your process, then it’s not surprising you struggle to write an article before you’ve done that preliminary writing, and that whatever you do produce at this point sounds hollow.
Embrace your own process
While the strategy I described to open this post is attractive, it’s not the only way to do things. Despite the attractions listed, if you struggle to start by writing an abstract it also has significant downsides:
- Wastes time procrastinating about a task you find emotionally and intellectually difficult
- Wastes time writing multiple drafts of an abstract
- Distracts you from doing the things you know help you work out the argument
- Creates self-doubt about your ability to write something worthwhile
You don’t have to abandon the entire strategy.
A conference may provide a really useful milestone in the process of producing an article or book chapter.
You just need to be at a different stage in your process when you write an abstract to submit a proposal to a conference.
If you’ve done enough writing to be more confident about what you want to say, and what you can say, based on the research evidence, writing the abstract will be a lot easier. Your abstract will also sound less hollow.
You don’t have to have “written the paper”
As JP pointed out in our Bluesky discussion “Unfortunately I can’t always write the paper before I have to submit the abstract.”
There are a lot of drafts between starting with a blank page and having a finished conference paper.
The larger strategy of using conferences to help motivate your writing is based on the fact that it’s useful to get feedback on one of those drafts before making further revisions to submit it for publication in a journal, edited collection, or as part of a larger book project.
So how much do you need to do?
Reflecting on your own writing process
If abstracts don’t work as a way to begin, what usually does?
- Do you create mind-maps or other diagrams?
- Do you freewrite?
- Do you start with figures and tables?
- Do you write outlines & bullet points?
- Do you write chunks of text about specific things?
- Scribble a bunch of semi-coherent notes in a notebook?
It may not look like a draft of an article or conference paper. You might call it “pre-writing” or “zero-draft” or something else.
The key issue is, what kind of work helps you make the transition from doing research and analysis, to writing something with a specific focus?
How do you typically figure out what you want to say?
This is the work you need to do before you can think about proposing a paper to a conference, much less write an abstract.
It’s messy. That’s okay.
The goal of this work is to feel more confident that you can say the thing you want to say based on the evidence you have.
Writing a conference abstract as a transition
What if using conferences to motivate writing creates an external deadline that you find helpful to motivate action?
The action you need to take to move from the messy writing-to-think part of your process, to the writing-to-communicate part of the process is making decisions.
- What is this paper about?
- Who do you want to communicate with?
- Why do those potential readers care about this?
Abstracts are a process of distillation. They force you to make these decisions.
The abstract then helps you make further decisions about how to revise the mess you have, into a coherent conference paper or article. (See “Writing an abstract to get unstuck”)
Submitting the abstract as part of a conference proposal, gives you a time frame for doing the major structural revisions, situating your argument in a wider context that makes sense to this audience. You will probably also have time for at least one revision pass to turn this next draft into something presentable.
Being prepared for conference announcements
Conferences are organized all the time.
Some of them happen on a very predictable cycle. You can use your knowledge of the conference cycle for the scholarly associations most important to you to modify the strategy of using conferences to motivate work on a paper.
- When does the call for proposals typically come out?
- What do you need to do before then to be ready to write a proposal when it does?
More specialized workshops and smaller conferences sometimes take you by surprise. You want to take advantage of these opportunities, but you also want to make sure you are not being distracted by interesting things that are not advancing your main program of research. (See “Saying no, FOMO, and being strategic about research”)
As you transition from researching to writing, make a list of the types of audiences you think might be interested in the work you are doing, and the specific topics each of those might be interested in.
You could then do your early messy writing about a few of those topics as a way to be prepared for opportunities, and to make decisions about what you might like to start working on in more depth. You will need to set your own limits on how much time to devote to this messy phase before moving on.
This work will not be wasted. You do not have to turn every one of these messy beginnings into a finished publication. (See “Letting go of unfinished projects”)
Having a few of these on the backburner will help you decide whether to respond to Calls for Papers/Proposals when they come up. Having a specific workshop, conference, edited volume, or special issue to submit a proposal to will prompt you to make some decisions about your messy draft, and strategic decisions about whether or not to submit something.
If you decide a particular opportunity is appropriate, the process of writing an abstract and submitting a proposal will be much less fraught. The abstract also serves as a way to restart this particular writing project, and make a plan for producing a specific output.
Finding strategies that work for you
Everyone struggles with motivation, getting started, keeping projects moving, and finishing. Your struggles are particular to you. And the strategies that help you are also specific.
It’s okay to experiment. Even if you aren’t sure what I suggest in this post would work, could you try it?
- What would that look like in practice?
- How long do you need to do this to get over the initial discomfort and really be able to assess how it’s working?
- What support would help? (Human or technology)
- What are you hoping will be different? How will you assess that?
Make a reminder at the appropriate time, with some notes about the questions you want to ask yourself. Then try this experimental process.
When you get to your review, you will be able to reflect on what worked and what wasn’t quite right. You can then modify your experimental process, or try something different, based on what you’ve learned.
And yes, the nature of the scholarly writing process and the conference cycle means you might have to try this experiment for a full year before evaluating it.
The process you are using right now is frustrating you. Isn’t it worth trying something different?
Related Posts:
Writing summaries and abstracts
Why writing an abstract is so hard
Writing an abstract to get unstuck
This post was originally sent to the Newsletter on April 12, 2024. It has been lightly edited for republishing here.
