“I’m Afraid I Won’t Make Time”

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Janet McCabe, who brings honesty and real-world insight into what it looks like to invest in your writing during a busy and emotionally challenging season. We talk about her initial hesitation to join Navigate, the fear of adding one more thing to her plate, and how she ultimately found structure, clarity, and unexpected ease in her academic writing process.

Whether you’re mid-career, managing administrative responsibilities, or simply struggling to reconnect with your research, Janet’s reflections offer perspective and encouragement. Janet’s experience is a powerful reminder that your writing doesn’t need perfect conditions—it needs attention, structure, and a willingness to begin. 

What Happens When You Stop Waiting for the “Right Time”

Janet joined Navigate during a period of personal and professional upheaval, marked by grief, burnout, and the pressures of an administrative role. In this conversation, she shares the tools, mindset shifts, and community support that helped her reconnect with her writing and produce meaningful results.

We cover:

• Initial fears about “making time” and why it nearly kept her from joining
• Writing through grief and transition, and how giving yourself grace creates space for progress.
• The power of the academic mission statement.
• Using the year-at-a-glance tool to plan realistically and soften expectations during demanding times.
• Why progress isn’t linear and why that’s not a problem.
• How her approach to submissions fundamentally changed.
• Advice for early-career and mid-career academics on building a writing life that works with your reality, not against it

Meet Dr. Janet McCabe

Janet McCabe is a registered nurse turned academic, balancing life on her own with two kids, three dogs, and a passion for outdoor adventure. In the academic world, Janet employs qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, rooted in critical theory. 

She works with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities across the lifespan, along with their supporters (e.g., family, caregivers, health professionals, and communities). Focusing on health promotion, disease prevention, and the social determinants of health, she aims to positively impact the experiences and lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their supporters, as well as the education and practice of current and future healthcare providers. 

In addition to engaging in research and teaching, Dr. McCabe serves as the Associate Dean, Undergraduate, in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

“When I joined Navigate, I was preparing for my sabbatical and I wanted to develop some structure around my research and writing. I knew from previously looking at the program that this would probably be something that really aligned with the way that I worked.”

“It [writing] is a creative process and sometimes I think we treat it as though it is a task that should be easy to accomplish. But writing is a creative process and I think you have to acknowledge the emotions that go into a creative process.”

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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