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Jo VanEvery

You are here: Home / Archives for Writing

Developing a Practice

Image of person at a desk writingYour 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.

Planning when you have no goals

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 5 Comments

As so often happens, reading someone’s blog inspired me to write about something. Keri is on sabbatical. And on her first day, she writes I am already in a bit of a panic about not get everything done that I want to get done over the next 6 months. And, yet, as I sit here this […]

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I hate goals

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

I don’t find them motivating at all. If setting goals works for you, go ahead. You are in good company at this time of year. But if goals just make you panic about not achieving them and being a failure, I give you permission not to set any. I don’t care if you write an […]

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Other sources of teaching-related stress

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

In my last post I suggested that teaching might be taking up more time than it needs because you are using more preparation to deal with anxiety. In that post, I talked about the anxiety caused by insufficient or inappropriate training for this aspect of the job and ways to get the support you need […]

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Don’t let obligation get you down

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

You got into academia because you were excited by ideas. Particular ideas. Stuff you read made you think “But what about …” Or “I wonder if …” You do research to answer those questions and contribute to the conversations that inspired them. Have you lost that excitement? All research goes in phases. Sometimes you do have to […]

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A colourful series of overlapping post-it notes and images pinned to a cork pinboard.

Embrace the research process

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

“The usual result of worrying about excellence or perfection before you start creating is that you’ll never start creating. Let go of how good the end product will be and embrace the act of creating. Excellence comes as a byproduct of continual creation and learning.” — Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing, July 30, 2009 When you […]

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A photo of an overgrown garden via Unsplash. Jo's garden is pictured in an old photo within the text but it's not great quality.

What should you do next?

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

Look at your desk. Really look at it. I’m thinking of both your physical desk, with physical papers strewn about, and your virtual desk, with folders and documents. I bet you have a stack of conference papers that need to be turned into journal articles. And some notes on other things you want to write. […]

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If you had one more week…

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

A while ago on Twitter, one of the people I followed said: “Just realized Fall term lectures start a week later than I thought they did. A week more of prep time, here we come!” You might be able to guess what I replied: “Or a week free for writing!” What would you do with […]

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Finishing the Dissertation

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

If you are still working on your PhD dissertation, or if you supervise doctoral students, this post is for you. As you may be aware completion times in the humanities and social sciences are long. Much longer than for other disciplines. And humanities disciplines tend to be longer than social sciences. This seems to be have […]

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A photo of a sand timer with purple sand, displaying a black number 15 on the side in a dark room.

15 minutes a day

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

Where do you start in your quest to keep your research active during the fall and winter? Start small. Could you find 15-30 minutes every weekday to devote to research? I bet you could. That’s not a lot of time. Research has shown that even that small amount of time, used well, can make a […]

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