November is Academic Writing Month! Known as AcWriMo, this movement was set up in 2011 to increase motivation, productivity, accountability, and community in the mid-term writing slump. The aim of AcWriMo is to dedicate a month (November) to focus on academic writing, improving productivity, and set a writing rhythm/way of working that’s right for you.
There are 6 rules to follow to increase writing productivity during AcWriMo:
- Set yourself a goal. This could be a specific word count to reach in your thesis, a specific number of hours on a project, or to complete a writing project such as an article.
- Share your goal with others, who can support you and hold you accountable, and check in with your community throughout the month.
- Make a plan. How will you break the task down into manageable pieces? How will you measure progress towards your writing goal? What is the structure of the writing you’re going to do?
- Reflect on your progress. Share your milestones and challenges with your community and think about what works/what needs to change to continue productively.
- Keep going, push yourself (within healthy limits). AcWriMo is about seeing what you can do when you give yourself time, space, a plan, and a support system to get the writing done. It’s not about writing all out, 24/7, at the expense of all else. Try to push yourself to reach your goals, but if the plan doesn’t work use this as a learning experience going forwards.
- Share your achievements. Did you reach your goal by the end of the month? What did you learn from the experience?
We’ll be following AcWriMo on the Researcher Development Teams Channel, so if you’d like to participate please drop me an email (Vicky.Pennrhul.ac.uk) and I’ll add you to the channel. We’ll be checking in each Monday in November (other than 4th November, as The Writing Collective will be meeting that day) online to see how the writing is going and whether we met our weekly goals/what we can do to keep the productivity sustained throughout the week. Please add your goals to the shared spreadsheet so we can encourage each other throughout the month.