Summer Writing Check-In

In this episode, I guide you through a midsummer writing check-in. This flexible process will help you reassess your academic writing goals and realign them with your current capacity. Whether you mapped out a detailed summer writing plan back in May or are just now trying to make progress, I will walk you through how to revisit your calendar, evaluate your remaining time, and match it with what’s left on your writing to-do list. Re-planning isn’t a failure; it’s a core skill that every academic writer needs to learn.

Tune in to learn how to move from unrealistic expectations to a sustainable academic writing progress without burnout, shame, or overwhelm.

If you’re ready to improve your academic writing practice and finally clear your publication backlog, enrollment for the next round of my Navigate program opens soon! Get on the waitlist today.

Normalize the Re-Plan

It’s not just okay—it’s necessary—to adjust your writing plans as the summer unfolds. Life is unpredictable, and recalibrating your goals doesn’t mean planning failed. It means your writing practice is adapting. I share how to reframe re-planning as a sign of strength, not weakness, and explain why frequent check-ins help you build the kind of writing system that lasts.

Map Time Left to Work Left

How many weeks do you have left this summer, and how many of them are truly available for writing? I walk you through a three-step calendar check-in process that includes:

1. Counting the weeks left before the semester starts
2. Subtracting out unavailable weeks (vacation, travel, etc.)
3. Creating realistic writing time that accounts for rest

This strategy helps you shift from hopeful guessing to grounded estimating so your time to task and to-do list are aligned.

Take Inventory of What’s Left to Do

Once you’ve clarified how much time is left, the next step is assessing your writing workload. I introduce a simple yet powerful two-tiered framework, separating writing problems (scholarly decisions) from writing tasks (execution). This distinction helps you figure out what’s really left to complete on each project and whether your remaining writing time can get you there. If not? It’s time to cut, pivot, or reschedule.

“Just because you have to readjust your writing plans, doesn’t mean that planning doesn’t work or that it’s not worth it. Instead, what it means is that we are all humans and we are all operating under very complicated circumstances with moving targets and imprecise estimates. You just don’t know what is going to happen, so the ability to both plan and then adjust your plan is an essential ability for all academic writers.”

“The purpose of this is to normalize a little recheck, a little rescheduled reorientation. It is perfectly normal to have had one idea of what you were going to finish this summer in your mind and that as we are now halfway or more than halfway through the summer, it needs some adjusting. That’s perfectly normal and we want to get used to doing the process of readjusting every few weeks.”

We’ve opened the waitlist for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and get on the waitlist here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

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