Finding Time for your Scholarly Writing

Short Guides #2

by Jo VanEvery

Finding Time for your Scholarly Writing addresses the problem of juggling writing alongside your other responsibilities. I identify three kinds of time: full days, longish sessions, and short snatches. In this Short Guide, I explain what kinds of writing you can do in each, and suggest ways of combining the three to ensure that you make the best use of the time available at different points in the academic year.
Volume 2 of the Short Guides Series. See Volume 1, The Scholarly Writing Process for further details of the different kinds of writing tasks you might do in each kind of writing time.

68 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2018

About the author

I provide support to academics as an Academic Career Guide through the Academic Writing Studio with a focus writing, publishing, juggling myriad responsibilities, and career planning to prioritise effectively. My Short Guides series is intended to complement this work, providing the general principles and practical advice to help you get unstuck and make decisions that will help you achieve your goals.

Save the Guides for later here on Goodreads, or head over to Bookshop.org to purchase.

Before starting my own business and publishing, I earned a PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex and worked as both a Lecturer in Sociology, then later a programme officer and policy analyst for a research funding agency.

As a reader, I mainly enjoy romance fiction for the escapism (but not typically Regency).

I'm not a fan of rankings. I default to 5 stars knowing that it helps search algorithms. I figure anything worth only 1 or 2 stars is not worth finishing. Whether or not I've written a review is mostly about time and inclination. So don't rely on my stars, but feel free to read anyway.>

Reviews

[Silvia Tavares · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[Day] is my research day. I will address your email during normal working hours on [next working day]. Thank you for your patience.” (Kindle Locations 247-248)

This short guide is extremely helpful for someone who, like me, struggles to commit to writing and keeps putting other 'urgent' commitments in front of it. But then, don't all of us do that during some busy academic periods?

It also helps us to be strategic to enable the formation of a habit, to find ways of prioritising research and structuring our research days in effective ways while still accomplishing all other tasks our academic life requires us to do.

[Liz Busby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book on a whim. I'm considering going back to grad school and am taking a graduate class as a trial balloon right now. I wondered about how academic writing works differently than fiction or creative nonfiction writing, and this book was short, so I gave it a whirl in spite of the fact that I was supposed to be reading two other novels for class. I loved that in her list of who this book is for, she specifically listed those who are "out of the labor market, perhaps caring for children or elderly relatives, but want to keep up your scholarly writing for various reasons." That kind of acknowledgement feels so rare.

In short, reader, I loved it. The principles in this book apply really well to any type of writing, especially writing that you view as a calling that you want to complete regardless of whether someone will pay you for it. She embraced so many of the planning principles I already use (A, B, and C goals is one I've written on before: https://lizbusby.com/the-story-a-day-...). And the ones I hadn't heard of made perfect sense to me and were applicable right away.

I've already revolutionized my writing practice based around her "full days/long sessions/short sessions" method. I can't tell you if it works yet, but I can tell you that it's made writing feel doable during the last week of my kids' school year and into the summer, which is saying something.