Support the RU Strike, Get Discounted Editing!
Plus: Giving credit for great ideas and next week's writing challenge
Hi friends,
Pop-Up Writing Challenge! 4/17-4/21
A quick reminder that we’ll have a week long pop-up writing challenge next week! You can sign up here, and I’ll send out times for Zoom meetings and create a Slack group tomorrow.
Supporting the Rutgers strike with mini-consults or edits
Rutgers, where I got my PhD, is on strike for better wages for its graduate students and adjunct faculty. It’s the first strike in the 250-year history of the university, and I’m really proud of the union for standing up for the rights of contingent faculty.
To support my friends in their strike, I am offering discounted coaching or consultation mini-sessions, with proceeds donated to supporting people who are on strike.
Here’s how it’ll work:
Option A: 30-minute meetings for $50 (normally $65).
Thirty-minute coaching sessions are great for brainstorming and planning—talk through your job application or promotion materials, hash out reviewer comments, decide if something is a better book or article, get a pep talk to resurrect a zombie paper, strategize how to pace writing a book this summer, or anything else on your mind. I do these sessions at writing retreats all of the time, and people are astonished at how much ground we cover in 30 minutes.
Option B: 2000-word mini-edit for $50 (normally these start at $100, so this is a great deal).
The possibilities for these mini-edits are endless: grant applications, job materials, website copy, articles for popular press, query letters, book proposals, breakup letters, etc
Option C: Why not both? Coaching + mini-edit for $100!
Whatever you choose, I’ll donate 25% of all proceeds from this to the Rutgers general strike fund. Or, if you’ve already donated, just email me the receipt and I’ll give you the discount.
Boring fine print: Each person is limited to one coaching session and one mini-edit. I can’t become a vendor of a new university for this service because that can take up for four hours of time just to fill out paperwork and go back and forth with HR folks, so if we’ve never worked before I’d appreciate direct payment. But I’ll happily give you an invoice so they can reimburse you! This offer is good from now until Tuesday April 17 or when the strike is canceled, whichever comes later. If the strike ends before next Tuesday, I’ll donate subsequent money to another academic fair-labor cause.
On kismet and the actual origins of great ideas…
Many of you told me how much you loved the “yet” post from a few weeks ago. I went to visit my parents this weekend, and walked into the studio where my dad gives guitar lessons, and saw this:
“I just wrote about the word ‘yet’ for my newsletter!” I told my dad.
“I’ve been telling my students this for twenty years!” He reminded me. “I always have them say ‘I can’t play that chord…yet.’”
So, evidently that post wasn’t entirely original, but at least I stole the idea from someone pretty great.
It’s spring, it’s beautiful in New York City, and I’m excited to get a ton of writing done next week! Have friends that could use a quick consultation session or an accountability group next week? Please share this post!
xoxo Kelly