Greetings, dear readers!
We’re already here at the end of another month, so that means it’s time for the PNP Roundup!
Here are some of my favorite media I’ve consumed over the past month on writing, productivity, and managing all the things. Some of this content is new, some of it is old, but all of it has kernels of wisdom for busy academic writers.
1. These are the Publish Not Perish posts from March, in case you missed any:
2. Thank you to everyone who completed the PNP Reader Survey! I appreciate all of your feedback and suggestions. I have already notified the contest winners.
In case you are interested, here are the responses to a couple of the questions!
Many of you also wrote in “other" responses to both of these questions to discuss how these factors work together. All of this is useful information for me moving forward, and it corresponds to what I was already thinking, so thank you for the confirmation and helpful suggestions.
3. of Culture Study wrote a piece called The Dark Heart of Individualism, where she discusses her forthcoming book about the difficulty of making friends as an adult. She writes,
But a whole lot of this ethos stems from a deep-seated belief in individualism. We think that just because we can “do it ourselves” (and by “it,” I mean raising kids, performing domestic labor, caring for others, finding economic security, living life) that we should do it ourselves….and our ability to do so evinces innate moral fortitude. We’re better people, in other words, because we did it alone.
You can read that and understand it as bullshit and simultaneously internalize and abide by that line of thinking. That’s the bitch of ideology. To start dismantling it, we have to learn to recognize its various shapes. Because this isn’t just about finding deep and meaningful friendship in your 30s and 40s, or even making parenting slightly less miserable, although both of those are noble and worthy causes. The myth of individualism is at the very heart of American inequality — social, racial, and financial.
Anne is not explicitly writing about academic politics, but she is well-versed in them and even begins the piece by discussing a couple who moved for graduate school.
She understands, as we do, that academia is fundamentally individualistic, and this ideology has a significant impact on many aspects of our careers, including the expectation that we should distance ourselves from friends, family, and other professional support networks.
It is a somber piece to think about, but as my dear readers know, I am a big believer in learning how these entrenched ideologies affect us on the ground. Action cannot precede awareness.
4. Are you finding it hard to get your writing done each week? You are not alone, my dear writer! This is a huge challenge for many of us. That is why I formed the PNP Writing Circle a few months ago!
On Mondays, group members check in virtually with writing goals, and on Fridays, they follow up to see how things went. It is a very supportive group, and members report that the group helps them stay on track with their writing each week.
Join us!
5. Please join me in celebrating my dear reader, Leslie Castro-Woodhouse who recently co-edited a book called The Art of Academic Editing: A Guide for Authors and Editors! The publisher graciously sent me a copy to check out, and I’m glad to see more resources like this one becoming available!
The various modes of editing that transform a document from a draft to a polished manuscript are not commonly taught in graduate school. In fact, I believe that many of us compare our first drafts to someone else's polished draft without ever truly understanding the level of editing that the manuscript has received.
For example, my book went through several developmental edits in which the editors focused on argument, evidence, and audience. I hired a professional developmental editor to review my book proposal and a draft of my book. My partner provided developmental edits, copyedited, and proofread NUMEROUS drafts of my dissertation and eventual book. The press also hired a copyeditor, while I hired a book indexer. This is in addition to the many rounds of editing I performed on the manuscript, which included a variety of editing modes.
Experts in various types of academic editing walk you through their process in The Art of Academic Editing, including chapters on copying, proofreading, book coaching, developmental editing, and international authors. I think the book would be a great resource for professional editors, but it also works to raise awareness among academic authors about these various modes of editing one’s own work.
Want more? I talk about my experience working with a developmental editor in this post:
6.
of Write More, Be Less Careful made some great observations and productivity advice. She writes,The big picture here is that so much of the productivity advice that gets handed out online assumes that it’s only a lack of discipline getting in the way of being your most productive self. But I think, for a lot of us, the material realities of our lives—kids, jobs, bosses, a commute, the need to, you know, buy toilet paper and remember your kid’s cello on music days and plan out summer camp, the kind of essential but shallow work that keeps families running—make following that advice really hard.
Nancy mentions Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work: Rules for Focus in a Distracted World. She and I both find the book useful, and I often recommend it, but there’s something a little off-putting about his method as well. It’s clear he doesn’t have caregiving or other responsibilities that prevent him from going into a cave for a long period of time to think and write deeply.
I write about deep work in the post below, but I agree with Nancy that this is not a mode that is always accessible to me for various reasons. Deep work is a privileged state. Check out the comments on Nancy’s thread as well, because folks talk about other reasons why this mode is inaccessible to them most or all of the time.
thanks so much for sharing that post here, Jenn! I've been thinking a lot about my specific beef with Newport, and I think it's that I'm interested in how we *make* the conditions for deep work (which I, like you, really value!) and that it's not equally accessible to everyone! (I also just think that academics should stop giving workplace time management advice--the conditions of our work lives are just so different from really any other kind of job!)
fascinating to see those results from your reader survey!