From Plan to Published: 3 Secrets to an Academic Writing Plan that Leads to Publications
Do you LOVE the planning part of your job? Maybe you love planning your course syllabus or the planning process that comes before the actual writing of a publication. Are you passionate about getting the flow right for these things and making sure everything makes sense? If so, you’re in good company and this episode and webinar inside of it were created just for you!
MORE DETAILS
Today, I’m bringing you an audio version of a webinar that I created last year called ‘From Plan to Published: The Three Secrets to an Academic Writing Plan that Leads to Publications’. I crafted this webinar about creating for yourself a publishing plan, so what you’ll hear in this episode is how to make those plans so that you can get those publications out.
If you are on the Navigate Waitlist, TODAY IS THE DAY you can enroll! Today, November 22, 2022, we open our Navigate enrollment to our waitlist! The first 15 people who enroll in the program will get a free ticket to our two-and-a-half-day New Year’s virtual writing retreat in January.
If you did not enroll on the waitlist, no worries! You will be getting the enrollment link to your email on Friday, November 25, 2022.
Enrollment will be open from Black Friday through Tuesday night, November 29th.
Get all the details for Navigate here!
From Plan to Published: 3 Secrets to an Academic Writing Plan that Leads to Publications:
Think: What are the titles of 3 academic works of writing that you want to publish in the next year?
3 Truths About Academic Publishing:
- There’s so much pressure to publish
- Idea generation and data are not your problems: finding time to write is your problem
- Your writing pipeline might be feeling less like a flowing pipeline, and more like a slow drip
Because of these truths, we need plans that work for us as professors and academics. I’m going to share 3 secrets to help you take that plan and put it into action!
Secret 1
Secret #1: A weekly writing plan sets the foundation for publication success
I don’t teach the ‘write everyday’ method, because it isn’t realistic for most of us and sets us up for failure. Instead, I teach a weekly plan.
Set up writing for 1-2 hours, 1-2 times per week as an appointment on your calendar.
It takes developing good time management skills to make honoring your writing as an appointment happen.
My favorite strategy for honoring writing time is co-writing. You can meet either physically or virtually with another writer and write side by side as a way to commit to the time and honor your writing.
Doing positive mindset work around writing is also a key strategy for honoring your writing time. I write extensively about your mindset around writing in my book, Making Time to Write. Check it out for even more tips!
Secret 2
Secret #2: Project-level planning forms the pillars of your publication strategy
You need to develop your project management skills so that you can move multiple projects to completion each year.
One of the hard parts about project management is breaking projects into tasks, and then estimating the time it takes to complete each task. What you really need to do is figure out how long it takes you to complete writing tasks, and then be able to make that repeatable.
Figuring out how to break a project down into tasks and creating a template out of that, helps you to make it a repeatable process.
Once you can do that, you can learn to predict how long it will take you to finish a project. Predictability is the key to building stability in your career.
When you think about the 3 working titles you want to put out next year, you can do this with them:
- Make a task list for each one
- Then, for anything that is generic or repeatable, you can start to build your own task template with
- Collect data on yourself as you work on the task so that you can get to know how long it really takes for you to do things
Secret 3
Secret #3: A publication pipeline plan creates a high-level map for where you’re going
This creates a high-level map for where you’re going in your career. This is supported by both your weekly plan (secret 1) and your project plan (secret 2).
Your academic decision-making process needs to be based on your academic mission statement, your academic values, and where you are in your career right now. This is very unique to you and YOUR career and will look different for each of us.
We teach you how to create and implement all of these things within our Navigate Program, but check out this blog post for a free template on how to create an academic mission statement if you want to try and tackle writing one on your own.
When you learn to be selective about your projects, you have more time and space to create and focus on the correct things to help move your career on the right path. That focus in your career is communicated into the world through the publications that come out and that’s really powerful, and it makes going up for promotion, so much easier.
A specific strategy to implement this publication pipeline is to draft your academic mission statement and use it as a decision-making tool. Then you can map your pipeline by making a list of all your current projects in play, and mapping them onto your individualized, unique to you publication pipeline stages.
2 Strategies for Sticking to the Plan:
The result of doing these 3 levels of project planning is that you are really implementing a career-building strategy. Here are 2 specific strategies for sticking to your plan:
- Garnering community support
- Developing self-trust
Next Steps:
If you’re ready for some 1:1 coaching help to start putting these plans into practice, our Navigate program is perfect for you.
Unlike other professional development programs, we are really looking to provide you with exceptional support. Our biggest desire is to help you turn what you learn into practices that you can sustain on your own or with the support of community.
We take each of the 3 secrets I just shared with you and walk you through each of them in-depth, along with our 10 core systems, all with the support of one of our amazing coaches.
So, if this sounds juicy and good to you, it is your time to enroll, because we are not going to be doing it this way again at this price point.
Right now the price is $2,997 for the year or $297 a month for 12 months.
So, head to https://scholarsvoice.org/navigate to get signed up TODAY!
Key Quotes:
“The irony is that academia idolizes publications, but not writing.”
“It takes the mindset of ‘My writing is important’ to honor those boundaries and keep that appointment with yourself.”
“Projects don’t go on your To Do lists, tasks go on your to do list. You’ve got to be able to break a project into tasks.”
“Predictable is better than fast.”
“To get the career you want, you need to do this kind of strategic thinking, boundaries holding, and getting your skills at project management better.”
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