30 December, 2013

Three years ago, I helped a client through her dissertation. She was so pressed for time that I had to hire three assistants at once to review the footnotes and 120 pages of references so I could be free to concentrate on content and writing. I wouldn’t take on a project like that, except that she had called me a year and a half earlier to inquire about my services (before leaving for France to complete her research) and I had such a warm communication with a very bright woman writing about a worthwhile topic (which has not been my experience with most dissertations) – the impact of the Haitian Revolution on race and gender issues in France (Haiti being the first successful non-European rebellion against a European colonial empire).

A week after it was submitted, one of her committee members emailed that she was two-thirds through it and was enjoying the reading. I’d never read a dissertation before this one that I could say was enjoyable to read. It was a combination of excellent research, passion about the content, capacity to analyze and synthesize through her personal understanding, and my organizational, coaching, and language skill (English as well as French).

She landed an assistant professorship at a good school. Then she faced the reality of publish or perish – and some of her colleagues have been perished, so she’s feeling that pressure. Presenting papers seemed to come easily, but for tenure she needs a book from an academic publisher. She now has a deadline with U Georgia Press to turn the dissertation into an academic book – and she has more research to include and has switched perspective on the content.

So she’s back in fulltime panic mode, and I’m back in coaching mode of which phase I is to act calm, spacious, and personable. Phase II is breaking the steps between here and submissions into small increments. Repeat Phase I often. Come back to Phase II to outline.

Since the idea of outlining was intimidating to her, I suggested mindmapping, which is easier to grasp for disorganized or visual people. She thought that would be less intimidating. There are two (of two dozen) mindmapping programs that work well for writers because they have a side bar in which every entry you make in the visual mapping appears in outline format (and vice versa). These two programs do it for you: Xmind.net is free, NovaMind is $29.

Time wasted included trying to collaborate in the cloud with each of these – wasted because neither of them have this function, which was very disappointing because Mind42.com, a very simple (not visually overwhelming as most of the other 24 products are) tool, includes it for free. But Mind42 lacks the outlining function, which is easier to write from than the visual map.

To collaborate I needed to buy LogMeIn.com ($54/year), which allows us to work on each other’s computers. It’s a bit clunky and slow for the person on the remote computer – working collaboratively in the cloud would be ideal. (Both Xmind and NovaMind have taken my complaint about lack of this service seriously, so maybe in time … )

We worked with Xmind and she found it fairly intuitive. We began by naming the chapters in a ring around the title. Then we started filling in the details of the introduction. (We really do work collaboratively because she is so close to the material that she cannot reconceptualize the big picture. But as she tells me what she’s learned, I can see a different way of structuring the material overall and within each chapter. She’s got me very excited it’s anthropological/socialogical view of history. (She managed a small grant for me, which amounts to minimum wage for my time, so excitement is my compensation. And the satisfaction of keeping her from drowning in the story of her incapacity.)

Once she had the hang of mindmapping, I turned it over to her to fill in so much detail “that you’ve named how every paragraph will begin. Call me when you’re done.” The next day (this is Christmas vacation) we were reviewing what she a sketch of the entire book. She had not gotten down to that level of detail, but I assured (promised and cajoled) her that she would find the writing much easier if she did. To counter her skepticism about her capacity, I suggested she tackle detailing the chapter she had the most passion about – which I already knew is the longest and most complex. Once she accomplishes that, I know she’ll feel much more confident.

However the phrases she had put in the map were were neither succinct nor specific. Using a lot of words for each point in the outline makes it cumbersome – and it takes up a lot of space on the computer screen, which requires a lot of time scrolling left and right and up and down to find what you’re looking for. Instead of saying (and I quote without her permission) “Highlight the specifics so her time in Paris is understood,” simply say, “Paris episodes,” then create sub-topic boxes in which you fill the specifics. Succinctly.

Being specific means instead of saying “Lots on science,” write “Science” and again create the sub-topic boxes to be filled in now or later.

Which mindmapping software is better for writers? After watching a newbie work with Xmind, I choose NovaMind for two reasons. All the functions a writer needs are included in both, but they are more intuitive in NovaMind (and we’re here as writers of content, not as creator of visual maps). And NovaMind has more flexibility and grace in moving objects around on the screen.

The downside of NovaMind is that all the visual options can be distracting. If you’re visual (or bored or intimidated about your content), it’s very easy to lose hours dressing up your mindmap in pretty colors, sensuous lines, boxes of different shapes, etc.

Now, go forth and generate . . .

Until next time, delight in the process.

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