Simple Rituals to Ground You

I first wrote about writing rituals on this blog nearly nine years ago, and find it valuable to touch on them every once in a while. 

A writing ritual should have several key features:

1) It should ground you and put you in the mental space for writing.

2) It should be simple and not more than 5 minutes

3) For many people, it might be wise to include disconnecting from technology. That means, unless you have to be connected for safety or caretaking issues, turning off your cell, browser unless it is needed for a critical task that day, social media, etc.

Many who start writing rituals fail to persist once things are going well for them.  The begin to feel like they never will not write, and begin to neglect the tools that got them there. Hmm, an idea for my next post.

Happy 2021: 10th Calendar Year of Write Publish Thrive

Happy New Year everyone. While nothing magically transforms just because the calendar page turns, I think many of us are just grateful to be done with 2020. I was a tough, tough year.

One of the things for which I am grateful is all of you who read my blog. 2021 marks the 10th calendar year in which I have written in this space.  There have been over a half a million page views of over 800 points. That sounds crazy!

Yet, these numbers really mean little--what I am most grateful for are the relationships I have formed with so many amazing scholars. It is for you I feel most thankful, and you who keep me going writing here.

Happy new year, and thank you for sharing this adventure with me.

Challenge: One Writing Session, Focus on Process

Your one job today for your writing: Focus on your process. What is working in terms of of how you write. If you worry less about your outcomes, and more on optimizing quality processes, you will, paradoxically, have better outcomes.

So today, have one writing session: 15 minutes, a half hour, or 45 minutes, during which you "observe" your habits, processes, way of approaching writing, and your thinking. Observe what facilitates writing, and what gets in the way.

Cutting Before Crisis

This week, I learned of two scholars that I care about that are taking medical leaves for emotional/family care/mental health reasons. I am thrilled that both fo them had the courage to take this step.  I am proud of them. I am sad it came to this

Yet, in both cases, and this is not to blame them, there may have been things that they could have cut/reduced before. This is not to say that they had total choice in the contexts that lead up to them making this wise decision, but both may have internalized demands and expectations that may not have been fully the demands of the institutions. 

Racism, sexism, and the intrusion of corporate capitalism into academic spaces all lead to the internalization of beliefs even when the structural barriers are not acting upon us. The same holds true for childhood experiences that have not been processed.

It is essential that we do the emotional work of teasing apart real expectations and demands verses those that we have internalized that no longer serve us.  

We also have to do the hard work of learning to cut what can be cut, say no to what needs to be said no to, and work on our processes so we can be as efficient as we can. 

Doing the internal work does not absolve oppressive and problematic institutions--there are changes that must be made--but we have to learn to control what can can control.

Writing Challenge: Start Over

Consider a paragraph that you have been tinkering with a great deal. It just does not seem to work, and you keep playing with it. 

Read the paragraph.

Stop. Leave the document, and wait five minutes. Open a new document. Write a simple sentence "the purpose of this paragraph is to..."

Now, write it, without looking again. 

At times, starting over is far more efficient than fixing something that does not work.

Stop "Lying": You Won't Have It Next Week!

We all do it. Tell colleagues and collaborators that we will have something done next week when we know darn well that we won't. We have learned to do this to avoid messy situations (confrontations?), assuage guilt, and hope and hope and hope that somehow we will magically get back to that article that we said we would do three months ago!

And yes, I do understand you are not lying intentionally. However, this defense mechanism leads to a great deal of guilt and anxiety--you know that feeling, hoping an email from the recipient of said "lie" does not pop into your email box! The cumulation of those little lies can lead to a great deal of email dread.

The solution? Getting real with ourselves, and with our colleagues about the actual nature of our writing agenda. It may make for some slightly harder discussions upfront, but decreases a great del of psychic toll.

The Pause Botton or the Gas?

In life, you need to learn when self-care means pressing the pause button, and when it means putting your foot down on the gas. If you do one but not the other all the time, you may be out of balance....