Academia works in regular patterns of intensive study and classwork followed by scheduled breaks between or in the middle of academic terms. Whether your institution works on a traditional semester system with breaks between the spring, summer, and fall semesters or on a year-round or quarterly system with breaks strategically scheduled throughout the year, it is important to use these breaks in a way that they can improve your productivity and move you forward.
In this article, I offer two suggestions for using breaks, like the winter break beginning now for most of our readers as we close out 2020, to improve your writing productivity either during or following the break. The advice depends on your regular practice during the academic year.