When I saw that PhD2Published had announced AcWriMo 2015, my first thought was that they were announcing it early this year. Then I looked at my calendar and noticed that it was already October 29! I’m not sure where October went, but I’m excited that AcWriMo is starting. Given that my October seems to have vanished without a trace, I obviously need something to inspire me to get back to writing.
For those of you who are new to Academic Writing Month, you will find all the information you need on the beautiful new PhD2Published site. For my thoughts and reflections on previous iterations of AcWriMo, see here, here, here, and here. As I say in all those posts, I love the idea of a month dedicated to academic writing. By inspiring us to articulate specific goals (rather than just hoping to write more) and by nudging us to share those goals publicly (rather than keeping them quiet in case they don’t pan out), AcWriMo can change our experience of academic writing. There are no magical strategies, of course, but giving academic writing more priority and more publicity makes a lot of sense to me. If you are interested, go to PhD2Published to declare your writing goals and plans for the month. I signed up this morning; I’ve never been all that productive during AcWriMo in years past—all the great conversations about academic writing and productivity inevitably distract me from actual writing—but I’m hopeful enough to try again.
I am hosting the next #acwri Twitter chat (November 12 at 3:00 pm EST/8:00 pm GMT), and we’ll be chatting about AcWriMo and productivity more generally. Whether or not you decide to participate in AcWriMo, I hope you’ll join me on the 12th to talk about the many ways in which we all struggle to be productive in our academic writing. And all month you’ll find a great conversation about academic writing by following the hashtag #AcWriMo. I looking forward to seeing you there!
Explorations of Style 