Name: Keisha N. Blain

Claim to fame: Dr. Keisha N. Blain is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her new book, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, examines how black nationalist women engaged in national and global politics from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. Blain is the current president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), a scholarly organization founded in 2014 to foster dialogue about researching, writing, and teaching black thought and culture. Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education,  NPR, Slate, the LA Times, and the New York Times.

Where to find her: On Twitter, Amazon, and her website.

Let’s start with the basics: What time of day do you start writing? And how do you know when it’s time to stop? And how often do those two go according to plan?

I generally start writing sometime between 5:30am and 6am. I have found that I am most productive if I start early. Doing this allows me to stay consistent—even if I have a 9AM meeting or a class to teach later in the day, I always manage to get some writing done. And I know it’s time to stop when I start thinking about everything else but the piece I am working on. For the most part, I am able to maintain this routine. If I don’t write early in the morning, I feel unsettled throughout the day, so I try not to veer off schedule even when I don’t feel like writing.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits?

I generally spend some time reflecting on what I accomplished the previous day and then I look over my list of writing goals and decide what I will try to tackle in a given day. I find it hard to write without music or coffee, so the first thing I will do is start brewing a pot of coffee and then I’ll select a playlist.  

Finding a great idea for a book can be one of the most challenging aspects of an author’s life. How did you come up with the idea for Set the World on Fire?

Set the World on Fire began as a series of questions that I started asking as an undergraduate student while taking a class on global black social movements. I was immediately captivated by the readings and the lectures, which opened a new world to me. It was the first time I had heard about important historical figures such as C.L.R. James, Paul Robeson, and Patrice Lumumba. But as I listened to lectures and immersed myself in the readings, I was struck by how male-dominated the narratives were. What started as a simple yet significant question—“what about the women?”—evolved into more nuanced questions that I started to ask in graduate school. I wanted to better understand how black women shaped nationalist and internationalist movements and discourses. I also wanted to know more about these women’s activism and ideas in a period that many scholars had dismissed. The questions guided my research and with time, the story unfolded before more.

You’re the author of Set the World on Fire, but you’re also a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and president of the African American Intellectual History Society (and senior editor of its blog, Black Perspectives). You sit on various editorial boards and have edited books in your own right. You co-developed the #Charlestonsyllabus Twitter movement. How do you find time to prioritize your own writing with so much else going on?

I manage to do so many things because I plan out my schedule carefully. I decided very early in the process how much time I would devote to one commitment or another. For example, I recently finished an edited collection that I had been working on for several years. When I started the project, I decided that I would only work on it once a week and never more than 2 hours a week. As much as I valued the project, I also recognized that I needed to prioritize my own book and once a week for 2 hours was all that I could devote to it. By setting this boundary, I was able to advance other projects while still making good progress on the edited volume. I try to set these kinds of boundaries for everything that I do—it keeps me on track and it helps me prioritize my writing.

How do you split the balance of writing and research? Do you collect all the material you need and then set out to turn it into a narrative? Or are you researching and writing simultaneously?

I have found it most effective to write and do research simultaneously. This approach allows me to quickly identify the gaps of information that I need to fill. As a result, my research trips are more efficient because I walk into the archives with a clear sense of what I need even if I am not sure I will actually find it. By writing constantly—even before I have completed all the research—I ultimately end up spending a lot of time revising and rewriting. As I make progress with the research, new revelations emerge, and, in some cases, I am forced to toss what I have written and start again. As frustrating as that exercise may seem, I like the process because I think it has helped me become a better writer and researcher.

You’ve cut across writing mediums—you’ve written a Ph.D. thesis, academic articles, more traditional newspaper features, and now, your book. How does your writing routine change (if at all) for academic vs. nonacademic pieces, from for short form vs. long form pieces? Do you have a particular audience in your mind when you’re writing? Do you find that you write differently for your academic research work versus your articles and book?

When I am writing a piece, I generally start with an outline. Regardless of the piece I am writing, I find it effective to first organize my preliminary thoughts in the form of an outline that generally includes a working argument and the evidence that I intend to use to support the argument. Then I write the first draft, which is always messy—the goal is simply to get some ideas down on paper. The revising process is similar for all the pieces I write—I try to assess the piece as I would assess the pieces I review as an editor. This is a difficult task, but I try to read with an editor’s eye and then make preliminary revisions before I share the draft with others. When I write, I have a general audience in mind. To be sure, it’s a work in progress but I try to produce scholarship that reaches both academic and non-academic audiences. That means working very hard to eliminate jargon in my writing and using simple and concise language. I think this approach is effective for all kinds of writing projects.