In another post I asked “How could you experiment with working in a relaxed state?” I proposed that the ways in which my yoga teacher has been encouraging us to work within the comfortable range of movement and not stretch our muscles to their limits, might also apply to your writing and other work. In order to […]
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.
Is working at or just beyond your limits really effective?
We live in a culture in which we are often demanded to do more. How much writing can you do in a year/semester/week/hour? How many students can you teach effectively? This constant striving for more leaves many of us feeling inadequate a lot of the time. It also privileges an approach to work that is […]
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Thoughts on accountability, deadlines & goals
You want to write more. You want to finish and submit more of your writing. You may think that the only way to do that is to do one or more of the following: set concrete (product-oriented) goals give yourself deadlines for achieving those goals make yourself accountable to someone else for those goals and/or […]
Read More »You don’t need accountability
Why do you want an accountability partner/coach/whatever for writing? The things you most dislike about your job, and that you would not do if an external body did not require them, have accountability to that external body built in. You do your grading. You do it by the institutional deadline. You set aside important work […]
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“Write all the things” is not a summer plan
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Write All The Things! is not a summer plan As the semester got busier, chances are you started saying “I’ll get to that in the summer” about a lot of things, especially writing. At this point you’ve probably got a list that is roughly “Write all the things.” Of […]
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How to take the weekend off
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · How to take the weekend off Academic life is demanding. During term time you are juggling teaching, administrative and service work, graduate supervision, and your own research and writing. During the summer and your sabbatical, you feel like you need to devote as much time as possible to your […]
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Distraction: not the usual suspects
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Distraction: not the usual suspects Distraction is the enemy of productivity. There’s all kinds of time management and productivity advice telling you to track what you are doing and get rid of all the meaningless tasks that don’t contribute to moving your project forward. There are apps and strategies […]
Read More »When does Reading count as Writing?
In the intro to A Meeting With Your Writing I ask participants to list everything that comes to mind when they ask this question: “What does this writing project need to move forward?” I give them 30 – 60 seconds to write. Then I ask them to select the thing on that list that they […]
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What it means to make a contribution to knowledge
The primary purpose of academic publishing is to communicate with other scholars. This form of communication is rather formal. The bar for acceptance into the conversation is high. This conversation is asynchronous and takes place over very long time periods. What happens once you’ve published your article? By publishing your article in a scholarly journal […]
Read More »Making Writing Visible
One of the reasons people have trouble getting writing done is because if feels like “not work”. You know it’s real work and even the work that is going to be most valued when it comes to hiring, promotion, and whatnot. But even knowing that it feels like it’s not really work. You do it […]
Read More »How to make it easy for YOU
This post complements others about establishing a writing practice. I’ve been using my yoga practice as an analogy. One of the key questions I asked myself when establishing a home yoga practice was “How do I make this easy?”. Some of the elements of my answer: The smallest possible amount (10 minutes to start) No extra […]
Read More »Developing a new practice: An update on my yoga practice
In my Planning classes I talk about how you learn to juggle by tossing one beanbag from one hand to the other. Your goal is form and consistency. Once you have that, you can add more beanbags, change from beanbags to something else, and do something that looks much more like juggling. You can’t juggle flaming […]
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