Pre AcWriMo 1: September is for Assessing
And some cool things from the internet, and early AcWriMo sign up!
Friends!
I’ve been encountering cool stuff in the universe lately—the photography of Margaret Bourke-White (thanks Uncle John)!
The fact that Earth used to have a ring (thanks astronomers)!
The fact that Sherbert finally reached fame and notoriety by becoming a #stetpet editing mascot! (Bluesky is fun these days! You should join)!
Pretty leaves just starting to change on our trees...
I like transition seasons because they remind me that nothing is permanent, and we can keep tweaking things to help our lives look more and more like we want them to. It takes some backward planning, though.
Start in December, work backward.
So darlings, I have about 11 working weeks left in 2024. That’s bananas! Like last year, I am planning to pause things in December and early January so I can take a break and come back ready for 2025 to be awesome. This means I need to stop gleescrolling all of the scandals get my life together to make the work count.
For me, here’s what that looks like:
December: take a break
November: write all the things (write with us during AcWriMo!)
October: clear the decks (more to come!)
September: it’s audit season! Which answers the question…
What do I even have to write about?
Enter the September audit. My advice to you, over the next 10 days, is to do a complete, honest accounting of every piece of writing you have at every stage of the writing process, and update your pipeline accordingly.
Here’s how that happened for me.
I had a friend suggest that I give Scrivener a try. I was reluctant—I’d tried it back in grad school and found it clunky but the hosts of #amwriting use it, and my friend uses it, and a few clients I know use it, so I figured I’d give it another shot.
And it’s great. I haven’t explored its full functionality yet, but it’s intuitive, and doesn’t involve a lot of clicking, and—the best part—it forced me to do an audit of my writing.
As it turns out, I have writing in…a lot of places. My hard drive. Google docs. Folders from writing classes I’ve taken. Notes on my phone. And spending a few hours integrating all of these into one ecosystem forced me to realize that I have…just a lot of stuff going on. Some of it will go nowhere. But a bunch of things I’ve thought of as separate are actually my attempt to get at the same questions in different ways, so I can organize those together. So I’m not starting at zero with any of these projects.
Three things came out of this auditing exercise:
Everything’s in one place;
I have some definitive ideas for what my next big project could be;
I reacquainted myself with some writing that is a few years old, and it’s pretty good! I’m a pretty good writer! I can do stuff with some of it!
I remembered that clearly I like writing, or I wouldn’t do so much of it.
10-day challenge
So friends, here is your 10-day challenge. Dust off that dissertation, those interesting papers you wrote in a grad seminar, those emails to co-authors with project ideas, the notes on your phone about the dark academia mystery you always wanted to write (PLEASE let me be the beta reader for this!) and make a map of your writing. Update a pipeline, put it in Excel, start a Trello board, try Scrivener, whatever helps you take an honest accounting of the entire universe of writing that you have.
Then, go through your newly built-out pipeline and identify anything that’s low-hanging fruit. Is there anything that can get sent out with less than 10 hours of work (by this I mean either to a journal, but also to a conference, to a colleague or editor for feedback, to a co-author so they can do their part, etc). Schedule that for October clearing the decks.
Finally, see what’s left. What do you want to end the year saying you’ve accomplished? Are you going to work on one project or several? What do you need to do in October that will lay the groundwork to intensively work on that project in November?
This last question is where I’ll put my focus over the next few weeks. I’m going to spend some time thinking about each project and what I want to put my attention to come November. That’ll involve some free writing, some research, and some thinking walks. Then come October, I’m going to do whatever I can to only write one thing (including getting an article I’m working on off my desk and into the world!)
Alright friends, you know what to do. Dust off all the old writing, try it on for size, submit some of those zombie projects, and figure out what you want to work on come November.
Write good things,
Kelly
What’s going on around here
Hi friends, old and new!
I’m Kelly, a political-scientist-professor-turned-academic-editor. I live in Brooklyn, have three kids and a new book. I post here once a week or so about all manner of things related to writing and making space for writing.
I own Epilogue Editing, and here are some of the things we do:
Editing and publicity work: We have fall availability! But the calendar is filling up fast. If you have a piece of writing you’d like to get out into the world, now is a great time to reach out.
Coaching: I’ve accepted my final coaching clients for the fall! If we haven’t talked yet and you need some writing support, I’d love to have you join a writers’ circle—or reach out and we can talk about working together in the winter/spring.
New! We do have a few coaching slots available for international scholars, so feel free to reach out about those.
AcWriMo: It’s here! Click this link to sign up for AcWriMo, where we write every day in November (and then take a break). Get excited!
Coming soon: More information about signing up for spring writers’ circles and the spring sessions of our book writing workshop—stay tuned!