Tip No. 4: Avoiding Grad School Syndrome

This got to be such a problem at our university that one of the professors would take an entire class at the beginning of each term just to discuss what he called “grad school syndrome.” I’ve always found what he said about recognizing and avoiding the syndrome helpful and I’ll pass it along to you in the hope you’ll benefit as well.

Recognizing Grad School Syndrome
Grad school syndrome is a condition that causes its victims to be convinced that:

• However much research they may have done, it is not enough;
• They lack the one fact or insight that will enable them to create a valid thesis, and the next piece of research will provide it; and/or
• However carefully they may have written (when they finally get around to this step), they can endlessly re-write better.

The syndrome is like an intellectual virus of sorts, capable of affecting even the brightest and best. Its most obvious effect is a student’s inability to finish the thesis within the required time frame, which leads, at the least, to the need to request formal delays and, at worst, to the loss of thesis advisers or even credit for work already done. In extreme cases, a student may even be put in a position of having to fight to be allowed to complete degree requirements.

Significance of the Above for Many Writers
You may be wondering what the above has to do with you, especially if you escaped grad school just fine (or didn’t bother to go). The answer is that more than a few writers at some point in their careers find themselves trapped in the same kind of obsessiveness as that described above.

I have known several very smart people who toiled away for years, continually reworking the same book. Their reasons for the endless reworking were much the same as those our hapless grad student would give:

• They don’t feel they yet know enough about their topic to be convincing because they haven’t read every piece of material available and more is coming out every day.
• They fear someone else may have written something that supersedes what they’re working on.
• They don’t think they’ve done justice to the topic.
• The result of their efforts discourages them because it’s not what they envisioned at the outset.
• They know they can always do it better – and they want to, whatever it takes, however long it takes.

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would concede that we’ve felt at least a little apprehension on some of these points, and it can be a real downer, especially when we’ve already put in a lot of time and effort on a book or other long piece.

The grad school syndrome is enough of a downer, in fact, to justifying whatever is necessary to avoid it.

Avoiding Grad School Syndrome
Some of what our professor told us about avoiding the syndrome isn’t applicable elsewhere. Many of the principles, however, hold true:

• Recognize that there will always be another piece of information available on almost any topic, no matter how long you keep researching.
• Accept that you may, or may not, be able to find it and access it and that – if you do – it will usually not have any material effect upon your work.
• Have enough confidence in your process to accept that what is required to produce a valid piece of work is not total comprehensiveness, which is in any event impossible, but rather an intelligent approach that – in a work of nonfiction – employs enough information to show the building blocks that you used in reaching your conclusions and – in a work of fiction – creates enough atmosphere to suck readers into the world you want them to inhabit (and that usually takes less information than we think).
• When you have enough research to enable you to execute this “intelligent approach,” sit down and start writing. Write without second-guessing yourself.
• Before you even think about revising, let what you’ve done rest for at least a couple of weeks (deadline permitting).
• When you return to the work to read it, accept that it will not strike you as perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any writer say that what they ended up with was what they expected at the outset.
• Revise minimally, only to whatever degree you feel is required to have the work make sense to the reader you envision.
• If you’ve got an agent or editor whom you trust, send them the work at this point. Do nothing else until you get their reaction.
• Negotiate any further revisions with your agent or editor (and your own minimal requirement for not gagging each time you think about what you’ve done), and stop.
• Admit to yourself that, even if you claw back the manuscript and completely rework it, it may or may not be improved (and the odds are that any precision it gains will be counterbalanced by the danger of it becoming stale).
• Know that you can – and undoubtedly will – execute the process better next time.

I fully understand that, to perfectionists (which many writers are), this sounds like an unacceptable series of compromises fouling your intellectual baby, but it gets your book out there and – just as importantly – it frees you to go on to the next thing. From my perspective, I fully agree with what our professor told us: Perfection is not possible. Just make it as good as you can within a reasonable time and let it go forth into the world.

© 2009, Gail Hewitt. All rights reserved.

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