Your work doesn't have to be ground-breaking to be published

A simple metaphor for easing the pressure to write profoundly

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Academic writers frequently place enormous pressure on themselves to produce ground-breaking work in eloquent prose. This self-imposed pressure can make it difficult to get any words on the page or make consistent progress. We expect to be the artist who created the artwork adoring the wall in the above image, rather than the painter who dipped a roller in beige paint to coat the walls.

My dear readers, this is an unfair amount of pressure to put on the vast majority of academic publications. Plenty of work gets published that isn’t discipline-altering; rather, it just moves the needle ever so slightly. This does not, however, prevent many academic writers from putting too much pressure on their work to be profound.