Creating An Intentional Writing Season With Dr. Anna Clemens

Anna and I explore how to transform writing from a source of anxiety into a manageable, enjoyable part of your scholarly career. Learn practical strategies for building positive writing habits, navigating the challenges of work-life balance, and creating intentional writing seasons that fit the demands of your career and personal life.

Whether you’re an early-career researcher or a tenure-track professor, this conversation will give you fresh perspectives and actionable tools to boost your writing confidence and productivity.

Tune in to learn how to engineer your academic writing practice for success — and reclaim your passion for writing.

Engineering Positive Writing Habits

Discover why writing isn’t about innate talent or pure self-discipline, but about creating repeatable, positive experiences that keep you coming back. Anna and I share practical tips, such as:

• Timing your sessions for peak energy
• Utilizing accountability partners
• Reframing motivation in terms of your academic mission rather than external pressure

Navigating Writing Through Life’s Seasons

We discuss how life changes, such as becoming a parent, impact focus and energy, especially during early career stages. Balancing your career goals and personal life is tricky, and we share why it is so important to normalize writing as a seasonal activity, adjust expectations, and learn strategies to balance professional productivity with personal responsibilities without guilt.

The Power of Community and Intentional Priorities

Joining a writing community can reshape your identity as a writer and motivate you to overcome challenges through shared experiences and mutual support. We also discuss the importance of saying no to competing projects and declaring dedicated writing seasons to protect your focus and progress.

Meet Dr. Anna Clemens, Academic Writing Coach

Dr Anna Clemens is an academic writing coach who runs the Researchers’ Writing Academy, an online program for researchers who want to develop a structured writing process to get published in top-tier journals. It’s her company’s mission to make academia a more diverse and joyful place for researchers from all backgrounds.

Free 1h writing training: Free writing training for researchers

Website: Dr Anna Clemens: Get scientific papers written & published faster

The Researchers’ Writing Podcast on YouTube: The Researchers’ Writing Academy

“Academica, unlike other fields or industries, is always seasonal. In North America, we call it fall, spring, and summer terms. So we have 16 week sessions and a break. There is always seasonality in the year that is built into the academic experience, including sports teams. We are humans, and we are also seasonal. We are not all the time, every day, 365 the same. Academia right now has borrowed this super-factory idea that you should just ignore your humanity. Don’t get sick, don’t cancel class. Produce regardless of what is happening in your life. Embracing seasonality is just a redemption of that.”

“Another thing to think about is when you are reading stuff in the process of researching and you really love a paper in terms of how it’s written, just take a second and think why. If you are in a season of trying to improve your writing, maybe reverse outline it. Emulating things that you like, not emulating what other people told you was good.”

We’re receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process 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. Apply 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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