ACWRIMO Starts in 4 Weeks! Let's Play BINGO
Your obligatory reminder to use October to make November writing awesome
Hi friends,
I’m delighted to invite you to invite with us every day in November during AcWriMo. Daily writing prompts. A dedicated Slack group of awesome people. Co-writing sessions. A team of people rooting for you and helping you get all of the things done, so we can rest in December. Last year over 100 people participated, and almost everyone met or surpassed their goals. We’ll do it again this year. You can sign up here. I’d be grateful if you’d also share this into your post-Twitter/X social mediascapes too - all of the Threads and Blueskies and LinkedIns of the world that might have some writers that need support to do brilliant things.
What is AcWriMo?
Styled after NatNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), AcWriMo is what we academics do to get all the writing done in November to accomplish end-of-year goals. The idea of AcWriMo is to spend the month of November generating as many new words as possible. Some people try to write every day for 30 days, some people set a word or page goal - but the idea is to spend a month committed to, focused on, making space for writing.
It’s a great way to put sustained attention and effort into a project—and there are a few things that you can do this month in order to make AcWriMo amazing. I even made a BINGO card so you can play along at home.
Do These 6 Things Now to Make AcWriMo Awesome
Pick A Project You’re Excited About: This could be on a new project, it could be chapters of your book you haven’t written yet, it could be taking an existing project and rewriting it for a new audience. But the goal is to generate a lot of words, and to focus on silencing the internal editor as you go for quantity, not quality.
___Make it work: Look at your writing goals, listen to what your intuition is telling you, and then make a commitment to that writing project. The past two years, I’ve spent AcWriMo writing (and rewriting) my book. This year, I’m hoping to start on a new project, so I’m doing a lot of free writing and outlining to see what sticks.
BYORA (Be Your Own Research Assistant): Prepping for AcWriMo might take some advanced work. Do you need to do some research? Do it in October. Do you need an outline? The time to write it is now. Being helpful to yourself as possible now will park you on a downhill slope. Your goal should be to create a universe in which you can have a frictionless writing experience. Ideally, this means that all of the outlining, reading, researching, rabbit-holing is done before-hand and you can just sit there and write.
____Make it work: Look at the project you’re working on now. Make a list of everything that needs to get done, as detailed as you can. Find time to do anything that contributes to pre-writing now. Write chapter outlines. Do a literature scan. Run those regressions. Do it now, so that everything is ready for when you’re ready to start writing. Things will inevitably come up during the writing process that need fact-checking or re-reading or re-analyzing; if possible, save those for later.
Clear the Deck Now: It also means clearing your deck (to whatever extent possible) before November. This might mean submitting those APSA conference papers to journals, turning around a few R and Rs, whatever you can do to now to make November an easy lift. It also means starting to block out your November calendar for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Push coffee dates til January, have students present their work instead of writing an extra lecture, see what your budget allows in terms of ordering in groceries or getting some help with house cleaning. A clear deck and a clear mind lets writing happen.
___Make it work: This one’s on you! Find five things that you can do before the November, five things you can delegate, and five things that can wait til mid-December, and make that happen. It’ll feel great, I swear. (Even if you’re not writing with us this time, do it anyway. Give yourself the gift of a calm month. It’ll change your life).
Block Your Calendar: If I don’t block my calendar and make a public commitment to writing, life gets in the way. Since I’m going to write every week day between Nov 1 and Nov 30, I sat down today and found 1.5 hours for writing every day, and I blocked them on my calendar. As November gets closer and I know the schedules of the people who are writing with us, I’ll be making Zoom meetings and inviting people who are also in the workshop to write along with me. The fact that folks might be waiting to write with me on Zoom is enough psychological pressure not to schedule over those times, and to make sure that I write the whole time.
___Make it work: Decide how much time you want to write, how many days, and block it out. Consider inviting someone to write with you, so that there’s a sense of social obligation. Then, don’t do other stuff during that time.
Hold the Space for this Work: I have never been able to successfully write every day without having a group of people I was reporting my progress to. Maybe it’s co-dependence, maybe it’s the need for external validation, but if I want to write for a prolonged period of time, I make sure that I’m taking people along with me.
This is one of the big reasons I created our lovely Slack workspace, because I wanted people to be able to check in every day, say what their goals were, and then report back when they finished.
___Make it work: Find people who also want to write, and hold each other accountable. Maybe you text each other at morning and at night. Maybe you have a google spreadsheet where you report your progress. Maybe you have a friendly competition for who can write the most words. Whatever it is, find your people who will support you and hold you accountable.
Rewards/Celebrations/Acknowledgements:
We writer types tend to think in terms of product goals and rewards (if I write 1000 words a day, I’ll reward myself with chocolate each day, and then if I do that for 10 days I’ll earn the big reward of the new super fancy coffee pot I don’t need).
For some people, that works, is validating, and is incentivizing. Great!
If not, think about process goals and celebrations. Writing every day is hard. If you do it for two weeks, whether you write 1000 words a day or 250 words a day, much more of your work will exist in the world than if you didn’t do that. Committing to writing for a certain amount of time means that you don’t penalize yourself for the writing that is harder or takes more thinking. Process goals allow you to give yourself credit for working towards an outcome, for however long it takes to get there.
___Make it work: How can you encourage yourself to get work done and recognize your accomplishments without triggering your anxiety? Know thy self, and use it to scaffold your writing challenge.
Housekeeping
Referrals: Because writing is better with friends—especially AcWriMo-writing—I’d love for you to refer people to write with us. Substack has a fun new recruiting plan where you can get stuff (writing prompts! A Zoom call with me!) just for referring people to the newsletter - if that’s your jam, you can use this button:
And, here’s what’s on the calendar around here:
November: AcWriMo! Register here.
December: A little editing pause. I’m going to be taking December 17-January 10 off from editing to decompress, spend family time, and focus on the writing retreat. If you have something in the pipeline and we haven’t talked about it yet, let’s touch base to figure out how to schedule it around that that time. If we’ve already talked, you’re on my schedule!
January: Writing retreat. The delightful Mirya Holman of MHAWS and I are hosting another MEE Centered Writing Retreat, and it’s filling up quickly—we have ONE seat left! Don’t wait to apply—You can come write with us January 2-6, 2024 in the Texas Hill Country, one of my favorite places in all the world. All the goal setting. All the writing sessions. All the snacks. All the firepits and stargazing. It’ll be warm enough to take walks outside. The details are all here and the application is here, and I’m happy to answer any questions. Hopefully this newsletter helps you brainstorm ways your university will pay for this. You can also use the application to indicate interest in our May retreat in Atlantic City.
Spring semester: Writing circles… Our fall writers’ circles are even fantastic than I imagined they would be. People are turning around R and Rs and grant proposals and book chapters and it’s just so fun to be apart of. I’ll be officially announcing the spring sessions soon, but you can find more information here, and you can use the application form here to apply. The price is discounted if you register before Nov 1.
…And Spring editing! This is a great time to set up a time for us to work together in the spring—let me know if you’d like to get on my editing calendar for mid-January and beyond. Bring me great stuff to read! Let’s get it published!