A few conversations I’ve had recently, with clients and on Twitter, have reminded me that we have some interesting ideas about “efficiency“. It’s as if you have a gremlin observing your writing practice like a time and motion consultant. Maybe you feel more comfortable printing out articles and making notes by hand in the margin. […]
Read More »Meeting With Your Writing
Posts originally written to promote A Meeting With Your Writing. These address various issues that help you take the stress out of writing and get more writing done.
A Meeting With Your Writing is a virtual writing group. It runs in 12-week sessions. Registration opens about a month before a session starts and remains open until about 3 weeks into the session.
If you are interested and registration is not currently open, you can subscribe to my advance notice list. You'll get an email when the next session is open for registration.
From the archive: It’s not how much you publish
In this season of setting goals it is worth thinking about how you frame those goals. At the end of a workshop on publishing plans, clarifying objectives, figuring out when to apply for a SSHRC grant, and related issues, one participant made an interesting comment. Thanking me for the workshop she contrasted my approach to the […]
Read More »Writing makes you feel better
Think of a time when you weren’t finding time to write. How did that feel? I’ve heard enough academics complain about how little time they have for writing during term time to know that whatever specific feelings that brought up for you, they weren’t good. Now, think about a time when you were writing regularly. […]
Read More »Writing is the social currency of academic life
In high school things like fashionable clothes, knowing the latest hit from a popular band, and being good at sports were the keys to popularity. Getting good grades might have endeared you to teachers and parents but it wasn’t really the currency of peer approval. The world you are in now is like an upside […]
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 »“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 »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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Letting go of unfinished projects
Every once in a while my knitter friends have a friendly contest for finishing UFOs (UnFinished Objects, a.k.a WIPs or Works in Progress). Sometimes there is a prize for finishing the oldest UFO in one’s possession. Do you have UFOs on your desk or in your files? conference papers you meant to turn into articles […]
Read More »The experiment was successful
Back in August I decided to try an experiment. I would run a virtual writing group. I contacted a couple of people to see what they thought. They were enthusiastic. I figured out a structure, decided on a time, picked a price out of the air, and started promoting it. This experiment was A Meeting […]
Read More »People vary
This post is part of an occasional series about how yoga influences how I work with clients. I don’t expect you to do yoga. Ever. In your whole life. The point of this series is that yoga has taught me some interesting things about how to approach other things. Differences are not necessarily things we […]
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