Reflecting on Q1 Writing Goals and Setting Goals for Q2
Well, I’m a week late. But, as my students and I were reflecting, March tends to drag, and April is gone in a snap. Here we are, already a week into the year’s second quarter.
In the past, I have tended to set goals without taking much time to reflect on them later in the year. In 2022, which is a year of big shifts for me as a writer and professional, I want to be intentional about building in a reflective practice to help me feel out how different kinds and ways of writing fit me as a midcareer academic.
I want to be intentional about building in a reflective practice to help me feel out how different kinds and ways of writing fit me as a midcareer academic.
For Q1 I focused on the first two of my four writing goals for the year. My goals for 2022 as stated in January were:
1. Finish my academic book Hollywood’s Others
2. Write a conference paper about Anita Loos for the big film studies conference
3. Begin researching and outlining an Anita Loos Biography
4. Write a personal essay about parenting in the burning west
I did complete a draft of my book and the conference paper. I also completed a “bonus” piece of writing, a book review of Julia A. Stern’s Bette Davis Black and White (fascinating, by the way).
Reflecting on how I felt about this work, I have a few thoughts:
1. I am able to and need to work differently now than when I was a younger professor. When I was starting out, I swore by writing every day for 30-60 minutes. To be clear, there’s still A LOT I like about this model. However, now that I have two young children and have taken on different kinds of responsibilities, it’s not always possible to work in such a regular way. Most weeks, I do have a couple of good writing chunks I can carve out. However, to finish my book, I needed to chunk out a special writing time.
The draft of my introduction was largely written while bunkered down in a hotel room in Washington D.C. during this year’s MLA convention as an Omicron spike raged outside. Each morning, I would walk to get a coffee and then return to bang out pages. When I was tired of the pages, I’d apply another coffee and a walk to the situation. This method worked for at least two reasons. First, I was ready to write the introduction. I had done the reading, the ideas had been percolating, all that was missing was that hotel room of one’s own. Second, because my life stage contains a large quantity of interruptions (whether from email or from children), working intensely in this way felt delicious.
2. Writing the conference paper was a less successful experience, although I did finish it. There was a lot of stuff that happened in Q1, as we all know. In addition to war and Omicron, my own little life also had various disruptions from both work and family, including several snow days, a chaotic start to the term due to COVID-19, and a need to chair a search committee in short order. Also, finishing the book took a little longer than I had planned. As a result, I had to write the conference paper in a much shorter time frame than I would have preferred.
Two things I learned about this: One, while I don’t mind working intensely (as I did with the book intro), I don’t like doing so in the eleventh hour. This has always been true for me and it remains the case. Two, the good news is that in midcareer there’s a lot of information just kicking around inside my brain, so some of the work of framing up a piece of writing comes much faster than it would have in the past. There’s a confidence I think midcareer academics should have when approaching their writing: they’ve read the literature, they know the historical background, they are familiar with many of the scholarly commonplaces, etc. This body of knowledge really saw me through.
not every writing opportunity is appropriate for me right now, especially if I wish to pursue new opportunities.
3. The bonus book review! I have mixed feelings about this. I wanted to read this book, and it did not disappoint. However, writing the review did make me feel overcommitted. More importantly, however, I am learning (slowly!) that not every writing opportunity is appropriate for me right now, especially if I wish to pursue new opportunities. When I was just starting out, a book review was a good way to get into a journal and to familiarize myself with scholarship. At this point, writing a review is more like service to the profession, which is nice to do, but only when it fits into the other service commitments for the year. Applying this insight is an ongoing and difficult project. Oh well.
What’s up for Q2? Some pretty different stuff. I’m looking to do writing in support of my fledgling business and to start work on public-facing research writing.
The goals:
1. Go on two research trips for the Anita Loos biography
2. Draft an essay about parenting through the forest fires
3. Write regular blog posts for developmental editing and coaching business
That’s me. If you have Q2 goals you would like to share, I’d love to hear them!
