Sometimes you sit down and try to write and you just can’t. Resistance may show up as procrastination, or writer’s block, or gremlins shouting louder than usual about how you are not qualified to do this, or something else. The root of your resistance may be emotional, or you may just be really unsure how […]
Read More »Developing a Practice
Your academic life is more than a string of articles published, classes taught, and meetings attended. You write because this is how you articulate and develop your ideas. You publish to communicate those ideas to others. Posts in this category help you develop the practices you need to do the work you love well without burning out or compromising your values.
You Need a Writing Practice is a good place to start to investigate the Writing subcategory.
Juggling 101: Elements of a good plan is a good place to start investigating the Planning subcategory.
When you stop writing…
No matter how good you get at scheduling regular writing, sometimes you just stop. Maybe you just miss a week. Maybe you miss several weeks. It happens. There are lots of different specific reasons but it happens to everyone sometimes. Do not make things worse by berating yourself for having stopped. I can guarantee that […]
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Coming back to a neglected project
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Coming back to a neglected project In any given session of A Meeting With Your Writing it is not uncommon for someone to be coming back to a project they haven’t looked at in a while. Summer and sabbatical are also times when you might revisit abandoned projects with […]
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Early morning writing
The benefits of early morning writing can often seem like preachy, unattainable, eye-roll inducing positivity. But I have brought together some real examples of this life-changing process for your writing, just to give that eye-roll some evidence first… Rachael Herron has written eloquently about how crazy the idea of early morning writing sounds and how […]
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Being an academic in dystopian times: Making time for activism
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Being an academic in dystopian times: making time for activism Since the election and inauguration of the 45th President of the United States there has been a surge of political activity. Many of my clients and the academics I follow on social media are posting more about the political […]
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And you keep writing …
This is another excerpt from the first book in my Short Guide Series: The Scholarly Writing Process (A Short Guide). This post includes the conclusion. I have argued that scholarly writing is more than merely the production of specific publications. The term “writing” refers to both the process of translating ideas in our heads into […]
Read More »Writing an abstract to get unstuck
I’ve written before about how to write an abstract for something you haven’t written yet and how to write an abstract for a finished piece. Both of these situations are usually responding to some external need: a call for papers, or a requirement of the journal or book publisher. In those other two posts I used […]
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Writing as process and product
This is an excerpt from my book: The Scholarly Writing Process (A Short Guide). Designed to refer to whenever you get stuck, it breaks down the scholarly writing process into stages and provides both a description of that stage and writing prompts to help you get unstuck. Here’s the introduction and table of contents. Introduction […]
Read More »A peek at my writing process, and a new book
Today is the publication date of the first in a series of Short Guides: The Scholarly Writing Process. It seems appropriate to tell you a bit about my own writing process and how this particular guide came to be. Beginnings Last spring I read a review of Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic in Open Letters Monthly […]
Read More »Balancing writing and student demands
Recently someone in the Academic Writing Studio asked me for advice about the conflict she is feeling between working on her own writing and writing student reference letters, reviewing thesis proposals, and whatnot. This is something everyone struggles with. Your writing isn’t more important than your students. But nor are your students more important than your […]
Read More »You get a lot done
Your to-do list is long. It never seems to get any shorter does it? And many of the things on your list are long term projects with lots of sub-projects and tasks and whatnot. It seems like some of those things have been on your to do list forever. Some people will tell you to […]
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Experienced writers vs novice writers
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Experienced writers vs novice writers Inspired by a conversation on Twitter: I’m sure @ProfessMoravec is not alone. In fact on the same day another friend shared something similar on Facebook, about that stage of the writing process where you go back to the abstract you submitted to see how […]
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