“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt In a coaching session, a client mentioned how she’d missed a bunch of deadlines for a co-authored paper and needed to set new ones. I sensed that the whooshing noise was not comforting for her so […]
Read More »Developing a Practice: Writing
Writing is central to your scholarly work and identity. And yet, you struggle to find time and motivation to do it. Posts in this category focus on the process of writing as a whole. They will help you establish an effective writing practice that enables you to pursue your curiosity, create knowledge, and communicate that knowledge through publications.
You Need a Writing Practice is a good place to start.
Using all 3 types of writing time will help you imagine how you can fit writing in even when you are also juggling teaching, meetings, and so on. It also helps you understand how your writing practice may shift with the seasons of the academic year.
Why finding time for writing is hard
Recognize this little fella? Research day? Is that what you call it? You’re just staying home in your pyjamas taking a day off. You’ve got more important things to do like plan classes, and prepare for that committee meeting, meet with students … I certainly do. In fact, back when I was still an academic […]
Read More »Is writing even on your to do list?
Do you get to the end of the day and wonder if spending that last 30 minutes writing will be worth it? Would that happen even if you had a deadline next week and a big chunk of writing to do to meet it? How come you aren’t getting to that writing until the last […]
Read More »From Conference Presentation to Journal Article
In my earlier post, I suggested that conference presentations make great first drafts of journal articles. The hard part is actually sitting down to turn that excellent first draft into something good enough to submit to a journal. Dealing with criticism. Maybe someone in your conference session asked some awkward questions. Or made some suggestions […]
Read More »Maybe sitting at your desk to work is the problem
Do you struggle with research because you think you need to be sitting at your desk to do it? I know that schools are really big on sitting still and being quiet as the necessary precursor to doing academic work. You did well in school. But just because that’s how school trained you, doesn’t mean […]
Read More »“Cutting” words
A participant in A Meeting With Your Writing admitted that she was discouraged. She needs to cut 2000 words from a paper. She thought it would be easy but it turned out to be really hard. This is one place where counting words works against you. You wrote all those words for a reason, dammit. […]
Read More »Break time
One of the principles about focus that I really like is the value of breaks. Whether you take them every 25 minutes, every 90 minutes or something in between, taking breaks actually improves your focus. Breaks create containers for your focus. Breaks also shift how you view the inability to focus for long stretches of […]
Read More »Be careful how you use the term “binge writing”
Short writing periods regularly don’t work for everybody. @jovanevery thank god. Every time I see someone tweet that I think why doesn’t it work for me. I write 6 hours straight. Can’t do short. — M.M. (@ProfessMoravec) March 7, 2013 Or Tony’s comment on my Pomodoro technique post in which he indicated he liked 2 […]
Read More »Why I don’t recommend the Pomodoro technique
This little Italian tomato has been popping up in my tweet-stream, blog comments, blog posts I read, and other places around the Internet. It looks like a really cool technique. (There is a video on that site that explains the basics.) Lots of people are using it and getting good results. So why do I […]
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Changing your relationship to planning
Did my post on planning make you think about changing how much planning you do? Did a gremlin (or six) turn up to tell you what a big risk that would be? This is not surprising. After all writing is an important part of your work. A lot is riding on it. Maybe no one […]
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Getting stuck in the planning stage
#writing thought of the day: less planning, more writing. I do love planning. But I need to do more writing. That’s the feeling as of late. — Liana Silva (@literarychica) January 24, 2013 The allure of plans Plans offer us the illusion of control. You consider what is possible. You consider the resources available. You […]
Read More »Principles vs rules: Write every day?
Recently I came across this article on Study Hacks: Why “Write Every Day” is Bad Advice Here’s what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up. If you’re not a full-time writer, this is essentially unavoidable. An early meeting at work, a back-up on the subway, an afternoon meeting that runs long — […]
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