Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists

A common edict in writing is: “Don’t edit while you write.”

Most people find that they’re more efficient—by leaps and bounds—if they write an essay first, then edit it later. The main reason is that if you write continuously without editing or stopping to research something, you are more likely to enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “flow.” (By the way, if you want to talk about this at happy hour, his name is pronounced ME-high Cheek-SENT-me-high, and just saying it induces a flow state.)

When you’re in flow, you’re completely absorbed in a task, time seems to evaporate, and the work feels rewarding. By contrast, if you’re constantly stopping to critique your paragraphs, Google information, consult your research notes, and check your interview transcriptions, writing can feel like a chore. You also increase the likelihood of getting distracted and diving down internet rabbit holes.

One of our editors spent a week in a Mars habitat simulation with no internet and had to write an essay. She couldn’t fathom how she could write a research-heavy piece without Googling anything. The surprise? She never wrote anything so fast in her life. And it was pretty darn good.

Some writers even write by hand because it can help thoughts flow better. Inside scoop: These training modules were first drafted by hand and then read aloud into an AI transcription service.

Another benefit of writing off the top of your head is that the information that naturally rises to the top of your head is what you find most interesting, moving, and important. Which is great because that’s the information you want in your essays.

You may be wondering, But what if I forget things when I’m writing off the top of my head?

“TK” can come to the rescue. It’s an abbreviation in journalism that means “to come.” You might see your editors use it. And you can use it for everything from a statistic you can’t recall (“participants experienced a TK percent increase in well-being”) to entire sentences (“TK, TK, TK that really cool quote from that woman at that conference”). With TK in hand, you can write more quickly and add the forgotten details later.

If you adopt the “write first, edit later” habit, your experience is more likely to be enjoyable, lower effort, and efficient. But there’s one thing you have to come to terms with: When you’re ready to edit, and you look at this flow-state draft, it may be crap.

And that’s OK.

In her beloved book on writing, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott introduces the idea of shitty first drafts. “All good writers write them,” she notes. “This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”

Have you seen the first draft of the “To be or not to be” speech in Hamlet? Frankly, it’s meh. Shakespearean scholars call it the “Bad Quarto.” But by the third draft (or so), it became one of the most famous and poetic speeches of all time. If William Shakespeare wrote shitty first drafts, so can you.

If you expect your first draft to be brilliant, you may become paralyzed by perfectionism, discouraged by the admonishments of your inner critic, and mired in writer’s block. But if you accept that your first draft will inevitably be a steaming pile of manure, you can get the information down with a reasonable amount of confidence and efficiency.

Remember: Manure is the fertilizer that helps your second and third drafts grow.

The above methods will help prevent you from alternately staring at a blank page and gazing out the window, then repeatedly making cups of tea and even resorting to cleaning the kitchen. But if you’re still stuck, whether you’re at the first draft stage or you’re editing a draft and can’t quite get something right, here are some other things you can do:

Novelist Thomas Mann quipped, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

The writing life can be hard. It’s sometimes challenging to kindle the motivation to work on public writing when you have so many other responsibilities to juggle. And as we mentioned earlier, it’s often difficult to determine which publications to pitch, which editors to contact, and what their emails are. For these and other reasons, joining or starting a writers’ group can be hugely beneficial.

You may be able to find some established anthropologist writers’ groups, such as AFA Writes, an online group for feminist anthropologists. In addition, the literary nonprofit Kundiman lists numerous organizations that support writers of color. It’s also very common for participants in writing workshops to form a writing group or, say, Slack-based support network after the workshop is over. There are also online groups among journalists and other public writers that are secret, so, unfortunately, we can’t tell you about them. But if you’re at a conference or workshop, and you sidle up to other writers, journalists, and editors and ask them, they may be able to tell you about these underground groups.

In addition, various writing organizations offer databases you can join to find editors, collaborators, experts, and more. The Open Notebook recently launched a Science Writers Database that’s open to writers, journalists, and other public communicators.

Despite upheavals and uncertainties on various platforms, social media remains a valuable tool for spreading the word about your public writing and for networking with colleagues. The popular platforms for promoting public writing are still Facebook, Instagram, and (especially) X (formerly Twitter).

The algorithms favor people who post frequently and whose posts are liked and shared often. So even if you find social media as enjoyable as a root canal, it’s beneficial to stay active. Social media can also be a way to build community and find people who care about the stories you do. For example, anthropologist Irma McClaurin uses social media and other public engagement to share her passionate interest in the work of anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston.

If you don’t like talking about yourself, focus on complimenting your colleagues and linking to articles or papers they’ve published, job openings or fellowship opportunities at your institution, and other similarly supportive actions.

When you do post about your public writing, tag the publication you’ve written for (and your editor if they’re active on the platform) and thank and tag the people you interviewed or who helped you in your research. This will make it more likely that they’ll repost and like your post. It also helps boost their prominence on the site and their standing in their field. While experts now recommend reining in the use of hashtags, one hashtag maximum per post is fine. #AnthroTwitter can be useful, as are hashtags for niche fields or topics, such as #MedicalAnthro.

Also, make sure you follow anthropological organizations on social media and, if appropriate, tag them in a post when you have a relevant article published. In addition, cultivate relationships with your institution’s press office; they’re usually great at publicizing public writing from faculty and staff. For more tips, read our Ask SAPIENS article on how to promote your research on social media.