So, for November 2023 I decided to kick start my academic writing again by committing to #AcWriMo2023.  For the first time in a long while life felt a little less hectic and so I planned to get into a writing habit, using the London Writers Salon Writers Hour. I felt at the time that I could grab an hour a day to do something constructive of the academic kind – dusting off this blog and reviewing the papers in progress (PIPs).

Reflecting on the last time I engaged with  #AcWriMo, it was in the pre-PhD submission days.  My aim then was writing chapters not paragraphs over 6 hours a day rather than 1 hour per day.  How times, and goals, change!  What I would give now to have even one day a week that I could dedicate to writing let alone the luxury of writing as my main and only task. Back then I was more or less in a state of flow with my writing.  Now, writing is something I’m a bit rusty with unless it is free-flow reflective journaling, so the plan was to take a leaf out of the Oxford University Centre for Teaching and Learning‘s book, aiming to write a Paragraph a Day. As I’ve papers at varying stages of completion, the hope was that in taking stock and chipping away, a paragraph at a time, I would have accumulated a decent number of paragraphs by the end of the month that might have amounted to a completed paper.

Alas, just the hint of a tiny nod in the writing direction angered the time gods. No sooner had November started than overdrive hit the rest of my workload and 50+ hour weeks became the norm, right up to and including Christmas week. A week off last week and a New Year’s Resolution to get some writing done this year now sees me sitting in the Writers Hour (Pacific) with some blog words down and a new writing plan.

Three hours a week – not a lot by many academic standards – with the aim of a paragraph or two per session by working during the 4pm Writers Hour three times a week, with the hope that by Easter, I have one paper under peer review and some blog posts up here.  I have gone so far as to book out the 4pm Writers Hour as meetings in my electronic diary as I can foresee that being the only way that the time will be preserved.

Fingers crossed the time Gods had a merry New Year and have the mother of all hangovers so they don’t come looking for me anytime soon!