Kicking off the New Year & New Semester With a Field Goal: Or At Least a Reflection On Your Goals!

January 19, 2026

January is not only the start of a new semester, but it’s the start of a New Year.   While in academia we tend to think of the year as starting in the fall, as the new academic year rolls out, the rest of the secular world follows the seasons, and with the Winter Solstice behind us, we are now coming back into the light, a New Year as the days get longer. 

The beginning of the New Year is a good time for grad students, post-docs, and faculty to take a deep breath and to reassess our goals. The beginning of the academic year is too hectic for such thoughtful introspection, but now, as we gear up for the new semester, it’s the right time.  Once a year, we all need to take a pause and reflect on our goals. 

As a writing coach, my goal is to encourage you to take a time-out from your writing to assess your writing goals, as they fit into your larger career or personal strategy. Researchers are far better writers when they have a plan.  And while I totally endorse having a plan for each paper, my hope is that you will think much better than that.  Once a year, give yourself a few hours to think deeply about why you write, and write. I don’t mean the obvious career required reason of publish or perish, I am suggesting you push back the question to a depth long before the externally mandated present. Why did you choose a degree or a career that required writing? Why did you want to take up your time and other people’s attention with your ideas? How would you like your writing to matter?   

Try this thought experiment: Pretend it is 2026 and your career has been widely successful. What effect would your published writing have had, on your life, on your students, on the world around us?  Who would be reading you?  And what effect might your words make on your readers, the world around you?  Is your writing a major part of your career success?  Are there any drawbacks to choosing a path that involves writing?

Now, use that imagined scenario to make a plan. You can never get to a destination that you do not imagine. Now, of course, imagining a destination is not going to easily translate into arriving there, but the opposite is also true.  If you don’t know where you want to go, you will never get there.  And, the journey is the destination. Make a goal, go for it. But be flexible, many times our paths become clearer when we face a fork in the road and realize the path less trodden is really our byway. But we would never have found it if we weren’t on a journey that led to the fork in the road.

So before you jump back into your writing schedule (and I’ll have more to say on that next month), take an afternoon to reassess. Imagine your success, and then what place your writing should play in your strategy. 

One thing is for sure. If you know why you want to publish your words, you will enjoy the writing journey so much more. Now put a few hours of reflection time in your calendar, right now.  And when the time comes, get a cup of coffee or tea, find a comfortable place to sit, and spend some time in reflection. And feel free to count it as part of your writing time! 

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Winding Down Writing (and Everything Else) for 2025

December 2, 2025

It’s that time of year again.  Thanksgiving break is behind us, and a marathon of grading is just beginning. And for many of us, those writing deadlines feel oppressive, as if they are breathing down our necks as unattainable goals.    It can sometimes feel like just too much.

This year, especially, it is too much.  Most of us are doing what always needs to be done this time of year in a new and different context. Our neighborhoods are being disrupted by ICE, our neighbors are afraid to go out of their homes, and our universities are being attacked by the federal government, upon whom we depend for funding. Our lives have been turned upside down and inside out.  Of course, it feels like it’s just too much.  It is too much.

And yet here we are.  Our students need us to grade their exams and submit grades on time. They need their recommendations submitted so they can continue their education. Maybe you also have committee reports or tenure files due before the holiday break. Getting anything done in this political climate, under the current stressors all around us, is a miracle.

Give yourself a break. A real one. Choose a date in December when you will be done. Stop. Full stop. Put away the grading book.  What is not done, will wait until January.  But most importantly, put away the guilt.  You do not have to study for your prelims during the holiday break. If you have a pressing deadline, like a preliminary examination in January, you should study until the moment your break begins, and maybe you will need to start again on the 2^nd day of January. But if you don’t have any real, not imaginary, pressing deadlines, take a longer break.  As long as you can justify.  From the day you submit those grades until a week before your classes begin again.

You need a plan for the next semester, and I have lots of advice on how to make it.  But this year has been extraordinarily difficult.  Take the longest break you can manage. Enjoy your family and friends.  Self-care is resistance.   Rest and rejuvenate so you can jump back in during the spring and be there for your students, and your writing.

Adios until the New Year.  Look again in early January for tips on how to plan for the coming year.  May it be better for us all.   

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Writing as Resistance

November 3, 2025

We live in unprecedented times.  A good friend and colleague once strongly advised me to keep my writing blogs entirely apolitical.  After all, there could be departments and colleges that do not share my politics.  There are surely college presidents and provosts who do not.  Even if many faculty members share my political predilections, one cannot afford to alienate potential paying clients, namely the administrators who run our universities. And I agreed with the advice.  It made good sense.  Before now.

But we live in unprecedented times.  As Franklin Foer wrote in The Atlantic , Trump has found his class enemy, and those of us who study or work in the academy are it. The federal government is at war with knowledge workers.  If you are a teacher, scholar, writer, or scientist (or studying to be one), you are now an enemy of the MAGA government.   Foer writes that the right-wing politicians in America have attacked knowledge workers because they believe we have propagated a progressive worldview on university campuses and hope to move from running our colleges to taking over the world.  Graduate students and faculty are iconic symbolic analysts who, by definition, are knowledge workers. We think, we study, we analyze, and we write.  If that work is now considered suspect, we are all suspect.

This is not idle speculation.   Consider the attacks on science in the last nine months.   Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy removed a panel of more than a dozen vaccine advisors, signaling the dismantling of science-based policymaking at HHS.  The federal government shut down a landmark project studying women’s health, the Women’s Health Initiative.  Nearly all funding for research on inequality, including women’s rights and racism, has ended. When you try to find the longstanding webpage for the Advance Grants to help bring women into scientific fields, you get a “page not found.”

Of course, the class warfare against knowledge workers goes far beyond defunding our research.  It also includes defunding our international students, defunding graduate training across the board,  taxing endowments, and forcing us to end all programs that help underrepresented students and faculty  take their rightful places in the academy.  Teaching, research, and writing are all under attack.

We must resist.  One way to do so is to refuse to be cowed.  Continue to think critically, teach thoughtfully, and write.  You may not have the data you’d like to have.  Your funding might be gone.  You may not be able to do as ambitious science as you would like.  But keep doing what you can. 

Keep writing.  There will be no new knowledge to teach our students without continuing our work, our research and writing.  Most of my clients, and all of my students, current and former, are social scientists.  We ask the hard questions about our world. We collect data and test hypotheses about our organizations, families, politics, and global dilemmas. We provide evidence for how everyday lives and social systems might be improved.  We write the articles and books that will be assigned in the future.

Writing is resistance.  Do not be cowed.  Do not be so depressed by the attacks against us that your work is halted.   The chaos around us may slow you down.  Do the self-care you need to stay strong and healthy. But do not let these attacks  stop you.   Science matters.  Social science matters.  Your writing matters.  Stay with it!

Writing is resistance.

Academic Writers: Remember why you care about your topic!  

October 13, 2025

But some of us sincerely want to jump start our writing: to kick out that article, op-ed or finish that dissertation.  For some of us, the passion of research and writing is a respite from the political swirling around us, a way to replenish the soul, to do something that feels normal in these perilous times.

If you want to jump start your writing this semester, it’s now time to create a writing practice, with accountability, to  meet your long-term goals.  My goalis to remind you that there is pleasure in  making progress, and to help you recover that feeling.  So how can we make writing fun?  Or fun again? In the midst of a long project, sometimes we forget that writing can and should be fun.  In this column, I want to focus on helping you rediscover the joy in process of writing.    

To re-create a sense of joy from the writing itself, I suggest you remember why  you are writing. The underlying big reason.   If your first answer is  “because I have to” finish my course, thesis, dissertation, article, or book”  well  that’s a great start but not a deeply reflective answer. You have just pushed the question back to a deeper level: why did you choose the topic about which you are now writing?   Taking the time to remind yourself just why you are writing about this may seem like yet another procrastination tool. But give it a try.   At some point you thought your topic was fascinating, or at least important.  You wanted to think, research and write about it.  Take the time to excavate that feeling.  Why did you start the project?  Why is it important beyond your obligation to finish it?    I tell all my graduate students and emphasize in my  Writing Retreats community that you must be passionate about your topic when you begin because you will be married to it for years to come.  Passion may fade, as in marriage, but the memory of it should last and bolster your resolve especially if you  write about what you deeply care about.  If you don’t care about your topic,  your writing will not convince anyone else to do so.  So take the time, when you are having trouble writing, to remind yourself why you started this project. What makes it worth your precious time, or the precious time of your imagined reader? Perhaps you care about your topic because the world will explode unless this problem is solved.  Maybe you have experienced micro-aggressions throughout your life, and you want to study the effects of a policy designed to decrease racism.  Perhaps you have been reading scientific articles about a disease for nearly a decade and have identified something fundamentally wrong with the current analysis and you hope to prove one missing piece of the puzzle.  I can’t imagine your reason for writing, but you must remember why to do it well.  

Here are a few steps that might help you rekindle the intrinsic joy of  writing.

1. Write yourself a series of positive affirmations about the project. Remind yourself why you are doing this. Why is it important? Who cares? What are you contributing to?  Read those affirmations every day before you begin to write.
2. Imagine your audience reading your contribution
3. Envision  how  satisfied you will be when the project is finished
4. Envision what might change because of your writing
5. Remember, also, that life is a journey, not a destination.  A life well lived involves both producing a product and finding satisfaction in doing so.

These  prompts  should help you find something to look forward to for the hours you spend writing.   We only live once, and my philosophy as a writing coach is to help you bring joy to your writing.  The best way to be a successful writer is to have a good time as you do what needs to be done.   Remember, also, that life is a journey, not a destination.  A life well lived involves both producing a product and finding satisfaction in doing so.

I will be sharing strategies every month on this blog.  Watch for new posts, or sign up below to receive them in your inbox.  

Perhaps you want more personal coaching.  The Writing Guides is now expanding our coaching services.  Next month  I will begin  offering  personal consultations about writing.   Would you like to understand the difference between structural and line editing, and develop a strategy for successful revisions?  Do you need help envisioning your audience and choosing the right medium for your writing products?  Are you struggling to structure an academic journal article? Do you need help getting rid of all those extra words that take up space you do not have?  You can schedule personal zoom consultations on these or other topics of interest.

Perhaps your draft is done and what you need now is help with structural editing>  Perhaps English isn’t your first language, and you’d like serious line editing that doesn’t erase your voice as AI will.   You can register for our editorial services.   But first let me introduce myself to those who do not know me.  

Meet your new writing coach!  I am a  recently retired  Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  I retired from the University of Illinois at Chicago but not from my work as a sociologist and writing consultant.  I am   currently living in Delmenhorst Germany as a Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study.  I am the most recent past Editor of the journal Gender & Society, which became the top-ranked journal in both sociology and gender studies during my term.  I write  both her academic audiences,  including my  latest book, Where the Millennials Will Take Us and  for a public audience  including editorials  in the Seattle Times, CNN.com and Raleigh News & Observer.  I have  taught writing classes to graduate students at UIC and to graduate students and faculty at universities throughout Europe, including the University of Valencia, University of Trento, the VU in Amsterdam, and the University of Genoa.

The Writing Guides hosts face-to-face and online  writing workshops for departments at colleges at universities across the world and  soon will be hosting in person writing retreats.  Reach out  to us at  thewritingguides@gmail.com.   And read more about The Writing Guides at  http://www.thewritingguides.org

Is It Summer Yet?

May 23, 2025

And then, wham, our grades are in, the summer is here, and somehow, our fantasy remains just that, a fantasy.

There are all those household projects that have also been waiting for us to have a breather from grading.  And perhaps the kids are between school and camp, and without much to do.   Or the marathon grading sessions have sapped our energy.  Life happens, and it doesn’t stop because it is summer.  

We are here, and it is summer break, and our intensely productive writing time has yet to materialize.  

Don’t just wait, take actionable steps.  Now is the time to create your own writing retreat.  Get out of your usual setting, whether it is your kitchen table, your home office, the local coffee shop, or your university library.  A change in scenery is necessary to kick start the summer!

Happy summer writing!

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Escape into your Writing!

April 26, 2025

We all experience trying times in our lives. Sometimes the personal becomes the painful. Perhaps elderly parents begin having trouble living independently.  Or a child is being bullied at school.  Sometimes the political becomes personal, and painful.   We worry about the immigration status of loved ones, or we fear the consequences of federal interference and budget cuts into our universities’ autonomy, and on our own free speech.

Whatever the reason, there are times in all our lives that are simply hard.  Very hard.  If we think of writing as one more obligation, our writing becomes a burden.   If writing becomes a burden, we avoid it.  While that might be a reasonable choice, this often ends up hurting ourselves even more.  For many of us, writing is part of how we are evaluated, and if we avoid it, we hurt our chances of promotion, raises or even keeping our jobs.  But for others, even when we are secure from negative evaluations, we care about having a voice and making a contribution.  And while avoiding writing in the short term may feel liberating, in the long run, we feel badly about having our ideas out in the world. 

We have another idea, another option.

Think about your writing as an escape from the rest of your life.  A quiet time to think, to focus and to blank out the noise, the pain, the conflict.   In our own lives, we have learned to escape to our writing, rather than  avoid our writing.  When one of us was going thru a painful divorce, writing became the shelter from the storm, and productivity actually increased.  Writing was the time of the day that the mind was totally absorbed elsewhere, and the thoughts of custody issues and family trauma were banished.  

 Think about it this way, people often play bridge, or other board games, to relax.  And yet, to play bridge, one can has concentrate tremendously during the game. How can such mental work be so relaxing?  It is because the game itself is so all encompassing that there is no room in one’s mind for everyday worries.   Whether it is bridge, or writing, a laser focus on what you are doing is a great way to take a break from the feeling of pressure that stress  brings to us all.

So here are some tricks to learn to escape to your writing.

1)Take 10 deep breaths.  This is really a meditation practice.  A way to clear your mind and re-center your soul.  Remind yourself with each breath that your writing time won’t change anything in your life, or the world around you.  Remind yourself as you exhale each breathe, your stress is not helping change the world, just decreasing the quality of this moment of your life.  And that  the time you give yourself without the focus on problems  is good for your mental health.  You will be better able to deal with whatever is causing your stress after a break from it.

2)Decide how long you have to escape. You do not have to find a full day, or even a half a day to clear your schedule to write.  If what you have is an hour, go for it.  Set a timer so you do not have to watch the clock.  If the time you have cleared from your schedule  seems intimidating, set a timer for a third of the full time.  If you have set aside 3 hours, set the timer for an hour.   When that’s over, and you realize that you are doing it, set the timer again.

3)Start with what we call a “vomit” draft of your thoughts and feelings.   Just start writing about how you feel about writing, about yourself, your world, whatever.  Think of this initial writing, which no one but you will ever see, as a kind of writing diary.  What’s going on in your own mind?  How do you feel about the project?  About yourself as a writer?   Be reflective.  And then put it in a file of such reflections.  Six months or a year from now, reading your own history will teach you about yourself as a writer, maybe even as a person. But right now, you are already writing and so have started without any writer’s block.

4) Now start writing about your project!   Ignore the world around you, and focus on your writing

5) When the last timer rings, reward yourself. While this isn’t a finished paper, or a publication, or a major success, it is an accomplishment.  You are killing two birds with one stone- escaping from the stress around you into your work, and getting writing done too!  Congratulations!  Go take a walk, or reward yourself with a ridiculously expensive latte, or some extra time with a friend. 

6) Hopefully you can better face the challenges you are facing, whether they are personal, or political,  after a break from them. 

7) And do it all over again tomorrow, or the next day….

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How to Spring into Writing: Reading for Progress and Not Procrastination

April 9, 2025

Here at The Writing Guides, we’re captivated by the promise of the new season of Spring that is upon us and all that we see blooming in vivid color. It’s also what we wish for in our writing practice and process—new growth and blossoms. And we know all of this relies on cultivating rich, fertile soil with which to nurture such vibrancy. 

Writing Through The Chaos

February 17, 2025

Academic work, in all its iterations, remains incredibly important. Effective
social policy relies on good science and smart analysis.
But how to concentrate at this moment in history? If you’re anything like us,
it is not easy. Here are some tips that may help.

1) Self-care remains important. If you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you
can’t get your work done. If you don’t stay healthy, you aren’t helpful to
anyone else. Take care of yourself!

2) Remind yourself WHY what you write about matters, even now. Perhaps
now more than ever. If it doesn’t, spend your time doing something that
does.

3) Create a schedule. It doesn’t need to be complicated or even detailed.
It can be what days per week you do your research and writing, and what
hours during those days. And do it. Turn off the internet, stop doom
scrolling, and move your project forward.

4) Find two or three other writers who are trying to stay the course during
these troubled times, and have coffee together weekly, in person if
possible, on line if not. Hold each other accountable. Tell each other what
you will accomplish before the next meeting. The goal here is to not be
beaten down. Support one another. Remind one another why your writing
matters!

5) Remember that moving your own life forward is good for your mental
health, not just your career.

6) Don’t only work. If you have strong values as a citizen, make time to do
what you need to do to be involved and help your community. The world needs research, writing, and good science! These make a difference for
inhabiting a robust democratic society.

7) Stay strong, and hug your loved ones.

New Year’s Resolutions for the Productive Scholar

January 5, 2025

The first resolution must be to own the title that you are indeed a productive scholar. Productivity is not about how many words you write a day, a week, or a month. It is not about the number of lines on your vita.  Scholarship is bigger and more meaningful than that. A scholar both creates and disseminates knowledge.  If your students are learning, you are a productive scholar.  If you are engaging in work that will create knowledge, you are being productive.

Writing Tips For Bidding The Semester Adieu: MAKE A PLAN!

November 27, 2024

We have heard from so many students and academics recently that they are exhausted. We are all citizens as well and the election season has been an emotional roller coaster. So if you are overwhelmed just now, please know you’re in good company. 

Our hypothesis is that many of us are still recovering from what has been a very rough few years. The pandemic lockdowns are now a fading memory, but the disruption to our lives was, and still is, real. And yet, in this overly competitive individualist world we live in, it is easy to forget that trauma can linger, rob us of the ability to unwind, rest and rejuvenate. And the political season was just icing on this cake. Self-care is critical, as corny as that sounds. Remember that your moral worth is not measured by your productivity! So start planning something for the break. Maybe it is a the time for a staycation, or an unplanned camping trip, or if you are unbelievably lucky, a visit to a friend who lives in a beautiful place.

At this point in the semester, there are two kinds of academics, including both graduate students and faculty. There are those who are racing eagerly to finish all the writing they intended to do over the fall, and those that are shocked to see the semester nearly behind them, feeling drained and disappointed in themselves for not getting enough accomplished during the semester.

Our advice for the break: choose self-care. For some that means writing intensively because you enjoy doing so, or at least will enjoy having done so, once the winter semester begins. For others, that means
a real vacation without email or working on revisions, or guilt for not doing so. Just enjoying your family for the holidays. Take the at least two weeks before the semester begins to do whatever gives you joy. Every class is better with a joyful professor at the helm. Every paper is better written with a rested
author choosing the words.

But everyone needs a plan. There is no sense going into the next semester, just hoping you will find time to write. Without a plan, we can guarantee you that there will be no time that appears magically waiting to be filled with your writing. Without a plan and a writing practice, you won’t get much at all done.

So how to make a plan? The first thing to do is honor yourself. Make a conscious choice about how to use your time. Would you prefer to take a somewhat slower path in your career and spend more time with your children while they are young? Do it! No guilt or explanation required. There is nothing particularly moral to prioritizing career growth over your relationships. Still, for many tenure track academics, writing is a requirement to keep the job and is non-negotiable. But exactly how much you should write, and where you should publish is entirely context specific. In many teaching intensive
colleges, two articles before tenure and a few book reviews might be sufficient. In other settings, a book and a few articles are required for promotion and tenure. At other institutions, you need to write
a dozen articles.

Step 1: Figure out what you need to do in your setting. Only then can you write a plan. What is your goal for your next promotion, and what would it take to get there? Talk to your mentors. And if you don’t have any, find some (another blog will focus on how to do that!). Map out your goals for your next
promotion (to associate with tenure, or to full) and then you will know what you need to do this academic year.

Step 2: Reflect on what you want to write. It may be the same as what you identified you need to do for your job. If so, you’re all set. But for many of us, there is other writing we want to do, even if it isn’t what we are required to do. For example, for both of us, writing for the public is also a priority. It isn’t
required for either of our academic positions but we are committed to making a difference beyond the academy, so we do it still. For some academics, writing a memoir might be a goal. One of us has written an award-winning memoir, although not at all as part of her academic responsibilities.

Step 3: Prioritize whatever is on your list from Steps 1 and 2, and make an ordered list of what you want to accomplish for the fall semester.

Step 4: Carve out some time and block off your calendar. But how? There is no trick here, you just have to pay yourself first. Treat those blocked out hours as sacred. You are not available for meetings, and you will not let teaching preparations spill over into them. Of course, this is much easier said than
done. Figure out what other demands on your time are non-negotiable. In some colleges, you must be available for several committees every semester; at others, that’s more negotiable. Some of us meet weekly with students, and some rarely have students visit their office hours. Norms vary tremendously. Some writing coaches insist you must write every day. But we think that is unrealistic. Who has energy to write once you have taught three courses or even prepped two new ones? What you need to do is figure out how many hours per week it will take you to meet your goals, and plan accordingly. Be realistic. No one writes a chapter for an edited volume in four hours!

Step 5: Re-assess your pedagogy. Teaching matters! We think it is our moral responsibility to provide the best education possible for our students, and we know you believe that as well. But the most time intensive is not necessarily the best. Do you write comments on papers that are never picked up or comment extensively on papers submitted online where it is clear that many students are not attending to these remarks? Do you really need to change the readings every semester? Can you assign homework and tests that are quickly graded? We find that many academics, especially relatively new ones, over-prepare for their classes, and that can make protecting writing time very difficult.

Step 6: Adopt a wide, deep, and broad definition of what counts as writing. Do you have to finish reading another article to be able to write that literature review? That kind of targeted reading counts as part of the writing process. Does a reviewer want you to re-run some analyses with a new control variable for R&R? That counts as writing. Have you put placeholders in your article, because you don’t remember the exact citation? Searching for it counts as writing. Sometimes we are emotionally or psychologically worn out, but if we define writing so broadly, there is always a task we can conquer in our blocked off time, even if only using Google Scholar.

Step 7: Celebrate every victory! Did you finally submit that paper? Go out to dinner to celebrate. Did you begin that new chapter that has been intimidating you? Why not celebrate by taking a walk when
your writing time is over?

So here’s to hoping you enjoy your break and while doing so, take the time to make a plan!