[Writing Practice Series] Making A Date With Your Writing [RE-RELEASE EP 65]

As a scholar, you juggle many responsibilities, and it can be challenging to say no when things come up that interfere with your writing date. We allow these “urgent” requests to overshadow the importance of your writing. There will always be something or someone pulling at our time, and we need to learn how to say “no” and prioritize our writing practice.

I share strategies to help you build a consistent writing practice by scheduling writing dates in small time blocks during your most productive time of the week. I also emphasize the importance of self-accountability and strengthening your time and project management skills. Finally, I explain how professional development can help establish boundaries around your time and give your writing the importance it deserves.

If you struggle to make and keep writing dates, this episode is for you. Tune in for key insights about building a sustainable relationship-based writing practice. 

The Challenge of Keeping a Writing Date

Putting time on your calendar to write seems like a simple task, but the reality is that it can be very difficult to stick to that writing date. That time slot may have seemed available when you scheduled it, but colleague requests, teaching commitments, and students demand time with you, and your writing is pushed aside.

The key to keeping your writing date is consistency and starting small. This advice does not mean you should write daily or schedule a massive cram session right before a due date. Those practices are not sustainable. Instead, I suggest blocking out 1-2 hours once per week. This smaller commitment will seem more manageable than scheduling writing dates twice weekly or in four-hour chunks. Don’t think about a good writing practice as the amount of time you dedicate to it. It’s about the quality of the time and getting into a consistent rhythm.

Building Accountability and Valuing Your Time 

You do not need a writing partner or an impending due date to hold yourself accountable. Holding on to this mindset really devalues your writing and your ability to set boundaries around your time. Developing those schools becomes increasingly critical as you progress in your academic career. Relying on external factors is an excuse not to build those time and project management muscles.

I encourage you to invest in your professional development and implement project and time management tools into your writing practice. Keeping writing dates isn’t so you can track a certain number of minutes or words you wrote. The purpose of this strategy is to help you put the proper amount of importance on your writing, yourself, and the boundaries around your time so you can get your big message out into the world. 

For help with scheduling and keeping to writing dates, check out our Navigate Program! 

“Find a planner or even just use a to-do list, where you can plan out your week and reserve one hour, once a week for writing. It’s going to be easier to keep a date if you go for consistency than if you try to write every day or binge.”

“The idea that we need some kind of outsider telling us to write or that we need a deadline to hold us accountable is an idea that devalues your writing because writing is so very important for your career. But it also devalues your perception of what is important. You’re devaluing your writing and your devaluing your ability to stand up for yourself, to hold boundaries. Those are things that you need to strengthen, especially as you go through your career.” 

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. Want to train with us for free on your campus? Now you can when you recommend our Scholar’s Voice™ Faculty Retreats to a decision-maker on your campus! Download the brochure with the retreat curriculum and both in-person and online retreat options here.
4. 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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