Holiday tactics to honor your all-important academic project

The holidays can be wonderful times for reconnecting with family and friends; taking breathers from the daily-weekly-yearly chase of accomplishment; kindling or rekindling feelings of love, warmth, and generosity even to those who’ve published much more than you; and indulging in delectable seasonal goodies. But we academics often feel conflicted about how much time to “take off.”

Maybe we’re feeling the pressure of having to participate in holiday events. Maybe we’re worried about being grilled by well-intentioned family or friends about the progress of our dissertation, article, or book. Maybe we’re very aware of the dangerous loss of momentum from our work. Maybe we just don’t like all those jolly gatherings.

Here, from clients who have suffered through such “maybes,” I suggest three holiday strategies you can apply, depending on the severity of your “maybes” and your fortitude.

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Register for AcWriMo 2022 Webinar: How Academic Writing Coaches Get Unstuck

Ever wonder what a writing coach does when they get stuck in their manuscript? Join Boyd, Mazak and Wang as they describe the biggest challenges they’ve faced when writing books and what they do to move past them. They’ll describe some of the key ways that scholars get tripped up when writing and share examples from their recent experiences with their own books. They’ll also discuss the strategies they recommend to junior and senior faculty members and what happens when they take their own advice.

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9 Tips from TAA Conversation Circle discussions

The past three TAA Conversation Circle discussions were packed with tips and strategies from TAA members! Here are just 9 tips shared during these discussions:

Writing Strategies

“At the end of each day, I print out what I have drafted. And then the next day, whenever it is I ended the previous day, that’s my starting point, rather than trying to scratch my head and figure out where I was when I left off.” – Margaret Reece

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To friends and organizations, you deserve to say no…thanks

Do you feel you can’t refuse the requests or plans of friends or volunteer groups? Do you secretly resent or rage at them? That they’re eroding or wasting your time, the time you want to or need to use for other activities, like your current article, book chapter, or dissertation?

We all have such feelings. To assert ourselves for ourselves takes commitment and practice, especially without making enemies of cherished friends we’ve had for a long time or groups and activities we believe in.

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Tips for anxious writers: Analyze feedback

Dealing with feedback can be difficult. If you’ve had your work rejected, it is particularly difficult to use the feedback you received effectively. Anxiety naturally runs high in such cases, and it’s not that rare for a writer struggling with anxiety to avoid dealing with feedback. But it is crucial to use feedback effectively: the feedback we receive is the best guide to how to improve our work and get it accepted. In this post, I want to suggest a plan for dealing with feedback, along with some perspective that might help reduce some of the related anxiety.

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Tips for anxious writers: You are not an imposter

Many academic writers fear that their work is not good enough and not important enough, and also that they themselves are not good enough. Such doubts are well-known in academia, and recognized by the phrase “imposter syndrome.” Trying to write often triggers such doubts and their subsequent anxiety, which interferes with the focus needed for good writing. If you’re thinking “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t have anything worth saying,” your focus is being drawn away from the things that you do have to say, and how to say them effectively to reach your audience.

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