On Writing "Small"

Yesterday I posted about the SEALS panel I participated in on advancing your scholarly career.  (Of course I claim no special qualifications in this regard.)  I'd like to continue discussing these issues, and the other panel I participated in, on promoting your scholarship, over the next few posts.  Although most of these posts are aimed at beginning or junior professors, some of the advice will apply also to folks going on the market, and some may apply to mid-career or later profs as well.

The conventional wisdom, it seems to me, for profs who are just starting out is that they should write "small."  By "small," I mean that they should focus on a narrow problem and deal with it in a relatively narrow doctrinal way.  This advice has both strategic and epistemic roots.  Epistemically, the idea is that you don't know everything and thus should start modestly.  I approve of this advice.  Strategically, the idea is that you don't want to embarrass yourself starting off by biting more than you can chew, and that "writing for tenure" counsels in favor of writing carefully and narrowly at first as well.  

I have some problems with the strategic aspects of this advice.  To be sure, you always want to write the piece as it deserves to be written, and your early work does immediately start making or breaking your reputation, so there's much to be said for curbing your desire to do everything at once.  But there are two problems with the strategic advice.  First, I think it can be a mistake to "write for tenure."  Different institutions have different traditions and people, of course, so the first rule should be, know your institution.  But having said that, I continue to believe that tenure is nowhere near as high a hurdle as getting a job in the first place, and I think "writing for tenure" -- in the sense of not doing what you actually want to do, but instead doing what you think your senior colleagues want you to do -- can encourage bad habits, including a certain timidity about your own work and your own colleagues.  Those who argue that you can "write for tenure" in your first few years and then write what you really want to write later on give too little credit, I think, to the long-term effects of being inculcated in these habits.  A little bit of "toujours l'audace" should be part of your makeup from the beginning.

Second, I think there is such a thing as writing too "small."  Some problems are "small" problems because they deserve to be; they're not necessarily worth a full-dress article.  Moreover, just as you can hurt your reputation by writing too big at the outset, so I think you can limit your reputation at the outset by writing too narrowly.  You may write so small that you are ignored; or dismissed as a "mere" doctrinalist; or thought of as someone who is still writing student notes.  You may be thought of as writing only to practitioners; that's just fine if that's the audience you primarily want to reach, but if you want a broader name in your field you may be consigning yourself to a more obscure status.  You may reach a quick dead end by taking on discrete problems that don't lead to future articles; and these articles also won't help you develop a lasting name or set of ideas.  Finally, although it is possible to change course, I think some people start off by writing small and stay in the habit of doing so.  They say they will write their "big" piece when they have a bunch of smaller pieces under their belts, but that day seems to never come.  

So there is, I think, a certain golden mean to be sought here.  Humility is always important, and you shouldn't start off with a grand theory of everything unless you can really deliver the goods.  But writing too small has dangers of its own.  Insofar as it helps you get tenure, that's fine; but if, as they should be, your goals are larger and longer-term than that, then you should begin working toward these goals at an early stage.  In practical terms, I would advise this.  Pick topics you can handle, of course.  But don't neglect the "big" aspects of your "small" piece.  You might write on a big topic, but in a way that is admittedly exploratory and speculative; that raises and illustrates questions or offers a theory, but doesn't purport to do everything just yet.  Or you might write on a smaller topic, but in a way that helps to develop your larger theory or approach, and thus that both signals to others what your larger project will be and helps point you toward the next series of articles developing that theory.  In either case, don't write toward an immediate dead end and don't be so narrow as to be picayune.  Keep in mind the larger theory or approach that you want to develop, find connections and implications in everything you do, and begin developing and foreshadowing your larger project from the start (keeping in mind that the contours of that project may change as you write more and learn more; it should be a framework, not a straitjacket).  Your work should always be modest, but it should also always have a quality of ambition.

Much of this advice is targeted to new professors, not folks who are now going on the market.  But some of that advice applies to them too.  I think this is less of an issue than it used to be, because many candidates have already done some of their earlier work and are ready to expand.  Still, it is worth saying that successful job-talk papers, although they definitely shouldn't be grand-theory-of-everything papers, should signal that you have a long-term scholarly agenda, into which your job-talk paper fits and of which it is both an early piece and a preview of work to come.  It shouldn't be a dead end, such that when you are asked what the next article in the series will be you are forced to concede that the project ends here.  It shouldn't be so narrow that some of your readers conclude that you're "just" a practitioner who has developed some issue you faced in practice into a one-off paper; it's fine to build on a problem you faced in practice, but less fine to not have some sense of how this work links up to bigger themes.  And keep in mind that the narrower you write, the less of an audience you are likely to have at your job-talk; you want a piece whose implications are potentially accessible and interesting to everyone in the room.  In short, writing "small," although it is the conventional wisdom and has much to recommend it, can be a hazard too.  If you want to develop into the kind of scholar you want to be, with the kind of name you want to have, then this too should be a part of your early writing and thinking about your scholarship.

I wonder whether our readers have any thoughts on this.  In particular, I wonder whether anyone can share their own experiences on these questions -- on the dangers of writing either too "small" or too "big."  And I wonder whether others have examples of junior scholars who quickly developed a good reputation and whose early work, albeit in a modest fashion, foreshadowed some of their bigger themes in a favorable and skillful way.