How does your writing make you feel?
When you think about writing, do you feel excited, happy, and encouraged?
Or do you feel guilty, sad, and overwhelmed?
You are never going to write and publish as much as you want to if you feel yucky about your writing. But feeling good about your writing doesn’t just happen randomly or by accident.
You have to create that positive relationship with your writing.
I call this creating “positive feedback loops.” It means that when you write, you feel positive feelings, which make you want to write again, in a super-happy loop of unicorns and rainbows.
I exaggerate, but you get what I mean.
These positive feelings are created by you by implementing certain writing behaviors.
You are never going to write and publish as much as you want to if you feel yucky about your writing. But feeling good about your writing doesn’t just happen randomly or by accident.Click To TweetBehavior #1: Start with small wins
If you are currently not getting the amount of writing done that you want to, do not try to suddenly write for eight hours a day.
I previously talked about the importance of writing with focus. Getting in one hour of focused writing per week consistently is the first small step. Then you can expand to two or three hours consistently.
The idea is to set yourself up to win at writing. Small goals. Easy consistency. Writing with focus so that the writing feels good.
Be purposeful and gentle on yourself.
Behavior #2: Reward yourself
Set up an easy-to-maintain reward system so that you are giving yourself positive feedback for small and large writing successes. This can be as simple as a literal gold star stuck to your calendar on each day that you have a focused writing session.
One of our community members puts a pebble in a glass vase in her office for each day that she meets a small writing goal.
You can also have bigger rewards for reaching bigger goals, particularly for when you submit work for publication. You could go out to dinner, open a nice bottle of wine, or even just plan an at-home dance party in your living room.
Get into the habit of acknowledging your work by creating a positive experience for yourself.
Behavior #3: Adjust your mindset
So much of writing is about mindset. We all struggle with impostor syndrome, guilt, and overwhelm around writing at one time or another.
We all struggle with impostor syndrome, guilt, and overwhelm around writing at one time or another.Click To TweetThere is so much pressure around writing and publishing in academia. The stakes are very high: getting the job, keeping the job, getting the promotion, getting the grant. Much of it is dependent on your publication record.
But at the same time, academia sets us up for failure at writing in different ways. Most of us aren’t trained in writing as a practice, so we are making up systems and behaviors as we go along. When these systems and behaviors come from a place of pressure and fear, they often don’t feel very good and end up creating negative cycles of feedback between us and our writing.
Instead, we must realize that writing is about caring for ourselves and our career. It is about getting your voice out into the world, where it can change your field and help people.
Writing is worth your time, reflection, and energy, perhaps more than any other academic undertaking. Your teaching is better when you feel good about your writing. Your research is better. You are happier.
But these positive interactions with and feeling about are writing must be actively created and fostered by you. Take time today to implement just one of the behaviors here, then comment on this article and tell me which one you tried!
To create positive feelings about your writing, set goals, and learn more about creating a sustained and supported writing practice in a community of like-minded womxn and nonbinary academics from around the world, join us inside Navigate! In our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program, we teach you how to get your backlog of papers out into the world through strategies like writing an academic mission statement, creating (and managing) a publication pipeline, mapping out the next academic year, and more. And to make this program even more impactful, we’re offering high-touch coaching and community to help you get a paper out in 12 short weeks.
Sounds interesting? Check out the Navigate program details and get on the waitlist here to get that backlog of papers where it belongs–out there in the world!
