Week 4: Create a Writing Habit

Hi and welcome to week 4! This week we’ll be talking about writing.

Having a writing habit in place is your most powerful ally in academic life. The idea of sitting down daily and having our work progress, bit by bit, perhaps not quite automatically, but smoothly, consistently, it’s appealing isn’t it? There is a confidence that springs from consistently moving forward. How do we get to that place where our work flows? We’ll be finding out this week.

We start with my absolute favourite tool of the course: ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’, which is a writing process I developed when I was writing my own PhD. If you pick one thing to work on this week (or at all) I would pick this one.

We’ll also be discussing everything that comes between you and your writing flow – writer’s block be gone! Lowering your expectations really helps.

We finish the week by asking how to make writing a habit, something we do (almost) automatically, not something we have to use all our willpower for to muster the courage.

There are times when our writing slows and it may seem impossible it will ever (ever!) pick up speed again. Let’s put those times in the past.

Good luck this week, and let’s write!

Amber