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The September 2020 #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge

I need to stay on top of several literatures and finish several papers, yet I have caved to the “I am too overwhelmed with teaching” reality. So in order to force myself to spend some time every morning catching up with the literature, I decided to launch yet another #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge. #AICCSED, admittedly an awkward acronym, stands for a combination of the AIC Content Extraction Method that I champion to skim articles (Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion) and my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) Method to Systematize the Literature. Both systems combined allow us to stay on top of the vast volume scholarship that is being published at absurdly rapid rates.

Carving time to read is hard enough, so I decided to promote processing articles using a combination of AIC+CSED methods on an regular basis. This strategy is useful if you have a pile of articles and book chapters that you want to read but you keep putting off the time to do it. It also works if you want to stay on top of the literature on a regular (daily, fortnightly, weekly).

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

Yet the problem for me is that unless I am being forced to do it, I sometimes forget that I need to read in order to write (yes, I know I champion this approach all the time, yet I also fall prey to the multiple demands on our time!). Therefore, I decided to give myself a nudge and engage in an #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge.

I am going to read one article every single morning (NEW ARTICLE, NOT SOMETHING I HAVE ASSIGNED FOR MY CLASSES, LET ME JUST MENTION THIS), annotate it and highlight it, and then I’m going to drop my notes in an Excel Dump row. I’m then going to post it on Twitter.

Reading

I’ve done this challenge several times over the past few years, and it’s always turned out well. A few people end up jumping on the bandwagon and it becomes quite useful to them because by the end of the challenge they’ve got notes on 30 articles, and they have read and absorbed at least the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion of 30 articles.

This time around, I decided to showcase the amount of work involved in doing a daily #AICCSED. I wrote a Twitter thread from where I extract to showcase the method here. I do this process following these steps:

  1. I download the paper and upload the PDF to Mendeley.
  2. I clean the reference in Mendeley.
  3. I print the paper (double-sided, always).
  4. I read the Abstract, and highlight it.
  5. I annotate the Abstract, write some notes on the margins.
  6. I read the Introduction, highlight passages and sentences that I find useful and important.
  7. I annotate the Introduction.
  8. I read the Conclusion, highlight and annotate.
  9. I drop my notes in a Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) associated with the topic I am reading. And voila!

In the Twitter thread that follows, I summarized my process for one article, so that people could see what they’re getting into when signing on . #AICCSED doesn’t require that you read the full article, but solely Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion (AIC). What you may find, however, is that you may in fact NEED to read the entire article or WANT to do so because it’s filled with important concepts and ideas.

I am considering if I want to do a Google Forms for this, as my good friend Luxana suggested.

For me, my simple system of #2ThingsADay often means that the only two things I get done in a day is reading a paper (and annotating) using the AIC method, and dropping it into a CSED spreadsheet. What we do in the #AICCSED challenge:

We drop a tweet reporting which article we read and we (often, not required) post a screenshot of the CSED (Excel Dump) row associated with said article.

What’s the purpose? To keep us reading, synthesizing and summarizing EVERY SINGLE DAY.

What an #AICCSED challenge is NOT – it’s not intended to stress you out – we’re in the midst of a pandemic, we’re short on time, we’re all stressed out. But if you can participate in the #AICCSED challenge, by the end of the month you will have 30 articles summarized in an Excel spreadsheet.

It requires some time investment and re-prioritization. For example, I MUST finish a book chapter on climate politics, literally TODAY. BUT… if I engage in the #AICCSED challenge, I want to read stuff on informal water, on waste and discards.

I normally do round months instead of saying “let’s do an #AICCSED fall semester challenge”. This semester, though, to help my student keep reading, I’m going to ask them to do the challenge themselves. It’s only ONE article a day on their actual thesis research.

Not a lot.

Again, I know we’re in a pandemic, and this is in no way meant to stress anybody out. It IS on the other hand intended to provide structure for people so they can keep reading and systematizing their materials.

Q – I can only do 1 a week.
A – GREAT, you’ll have 4 more articles!

Q – I can join #AICCSED but only infrequently
A – Fantastic! Whatever progress you make on staying on top of the metric tonne of readings we have to do is great

Q – I would like to do this once the beginning of the term is over
A – Fabulous. Join whenever you can!

Hopefully the #AICCSED Challenge will be of interest and helpful to you!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 1, 2020

The “two sentences’ elevator pitch”: A pedagogical exercise to help students think about their research questions and empirical/theoretical contributions

ElevatorWe’ve probably all heard about the idea of an “elevator pitch” to summarize an idea or a project. One of the challenges I face on a regular basis, with my own thesis students and with those I teach (particularly because I teach research methods, research design, and the mechanics of conducting research) is helping them describe their studies clearly for an audience that will probably have a very short attention span or limited time. The other day, I woke up with an idea for a didactic exercise we all can use to help students think about their research questions and projects and what these contribue to the literature, particularly broader debates and empirical state of the art. It’s based off of the 5 sentences model of an abstract which Dr. Jessica Calarco has talked about before.

Photo credit: Ross Howard-Jones on Flickr. CC-Licensed BY-NC-ND

The model I’ve been thinking about could be defined as a “two-sentences elevator pitch”. It’s based on the same model of the first two sentences in Jess’s model:

1) say what we know (the state of the art), 2) state what we don’t (what your research contributes to the literature).

I am planning to do a quick exercise with my students, in class, in order to help them contextualize their research.

A few quick examples of this approach from my own work:

  • “Institutions are built through repeated interactions between actors. What happens when those repeated interactions are interrupted?”
  • “Waste is often best governed in collaboration between the informal sector and local governments. What happens when this collaboration breaks down?”
  • “Water is established as a constitutional human right in many countries. Which factors hinder its implementation at the local level?”
  • “Good resource governance is often the result of collaboration across networks of actors. How can these collaborations be fostered?”
  • “NGOs often influence domestic politics in contexts where national governments are receptive to engagements with civil society. What happens in less participatory countries?”
  • “Customers will drink tap water if they perceive it is safe. What happens when there’s no guarantee by the local government that this will be the case?”

I am curious to hear from you (you all y’all) if this “2 sentences elevator pitch” model of presenting a research question that animates your own work is helpful to quickly summarize what you study. Can you comment on this blog post some of your work in this 2 sentences’ model?

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 14, 2020

A few structured strategies that we can use to craft paragraphs

Reviewing my students’ theses, and talking with them about their writing processes, they always tell me that they find crafting and constructing paragraphs very challenging. This is not unusual. Sentences and paragraphs form the core of our writing and each of them is, for many of us, beautiful and unique. Therefore, it is important that we develop strategies and heuristics to write those sentences and craft those paragraphs.

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

I wrote a Twitter thread that forms the basis for this post, showcasing several frameworks to build paragraphs.

Articles and book chapters that are rich with theoretical constructs and powerful ideas are usually too important for me to skim or to just do a quick AIC content extraction, so I really engage with them in depth.

The more I read and write about academic writing, the more I realize that for me, the paragraph is the key unit of analysis in academic writing.

As I discuss below, I use the process of constructing paragraphs as a framework to think about how I plan my writing and research time, and how I set my work-related goals.

As I always do, I look for other scholars’ strategies to help guide my readers. This approach allows them to decide if using MY techniques suits them or if another academic’s strategy works better for them. Below are a few links to some members of my community of scholars who write about academic writing, people I respect a lot.

CONSIDERING STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF A PARAGRAPH

Now, which other models do we have to help us craft paragraphs? I think this is where the whole “rhetorical moves” elements of academic writing is useful.

We need to consider two components:

1) the STRUCTURE of the paragraph

and

2) the CONTENT of the paragraph.

You can use any of the models I have mentioned before (Cayley, Thomson, Pacheco-Vega, Hayot, Dunleavy) to structure your paragraph. And THEN to fill up the paragraph you need to provide content organized in a sequence that provides evidence, argument, etc. That is, make it “argumentative”.

You may want to test the above mentioned strategies to STRUCTURE and then provide CONTENT for your paragraph. As for my work-planning strategy, in the end, my writing target goal is always A PARAGRAPH. Nothing more because otherwise I get stressed.

In this post, I’ve provided a few different strategies to STRUCTURE and develop the argument that will form the CONTENT of your paragraph. Hopefully my readers will find this approach will be useful.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 12, 2020

A step-by-step process to write a book review for a journal

I already had written a blog post on writing a book review, but I have published a few that I am quite proud of, thus I thought I’d expand that blog post with a sequential, step-by-step description of my process.

Books on water

A few years ago (I was young, naive, and ill-informed), I mentioned that I didn’t think book reviews ought to be included in curricula vitae as publications (even though I had published quite a few by then in various journals).

That’s not my opinion anymore.

I’ll explain.

I KNOW the hierarchy of publications in traditional academia STILLS eschews towards journal articles, *then* book chapters.

As book reviews were shorter pieces of writing, I didn’t see a lot of value in them (did I mention already I was young, naive and inexperienced?)

HOWEVER…

Organizing books by theme-topic

There are now a number of reasons why I value book reviews.

1) They help shine light on up-and-coming scholars and innovative, interesting, exciting new work. They DO have a place in scholarly communications.

2) They help students assess if a book is worth buying beforehand.

3) They offer graduate students, early career scholars who may be less experienced in publishing in scholarly journals an opportunity to experience the publication process in a less threatening, more collegial and cordial manner.

Are there a$$h0l3s who write awful reviews? YES.

Nevertheless, generally speaking, book reviews are intended to evaluate the book in the most positive way possible. Can you say negative things about a book? Of course, some journal book review editors will encourage you to find one or two areas for improvement. But in my experience n a book review, you can say the good things and the bad things that you see in a book, but you’re not supposed to trash it(*).

(*) I still haven’t found a book I’ve wanted to trash in a book review yet. Don’t send me one to review, though.

I DO encourage scholars now to write reviews of books.

Book review essays (where you review 2-3 or more books and develop a coherent, cohesive argument about them, perhaps bringing into conversation additional literature) are ALSO great opportunities to get a publication into a journal and include your voice and analytical prowess.

Bookshelves

To be quite frank, my most recent book reviews have been some of my best writing. I do remember thinking “damn, these paragraphs are so good I ought to save them for a journal article”.

HOWEVER…

I decided to keep them in the review…

b) highlights Sarah’s contributions to the literature, not only those from her book, but also from other publications she has, and

(c) brings Sarah’s book in conversation with other scholars (including, OF COURSE, myself, because well, I, too, have contributed to these :)).

In this blog post, I am detailing my own process to write book reviews. You can do as you please, but I do not accept books to review that I know I am not going to be positive about. I write book reviews that make the author and their contributions shine. I review books with the aim of ensuring that the world knows how amazing these authors are.

That’s also the approach I take to writing Twitter threads and reading notes of books. Why would I write about something I don’t like? (I have done it, but mostly for work that took me – negatively – by surprise). I hope that outlining my full process here can help prospective book reviewers take a positive approach to writing their reviews, with the intent to help the author(s) research shine and build on broader debates.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 8, 2020

Writing a Response-To-Reviewers-And-Editors letter

I’ve admitted this clearly from day 1: I ALWAYS HAVE A TERRIBLE TIME DEALING WITH REVISE-AND-RESUBMIT MANUSCRIPTS. Yes, I know that Dr. Sara Mitchell would say “R&R is the goal”, but still, it’s SO HARD for me to cope with reading reviewers’ comments and making the revisions.

Advice on writing

I have published quite a bit and yet I still dread reading reviews. I always have this inner fear that I’m not going to be able to properly respond to reviewers and editor’s comments so as to get my work published.

Nevertheless, I have some experience writing letters responding to reviewers and editors. This is how I deal with the process. Hopefully my strategy will help others facing the same challenge. I just published 3 journal articles this summer, and all of these have gone multiple review rounds, so I have plenty of experience to share.

First things first: being a journal editor IS A THANKLESS JOB. It’s an unpaid volunteer activity that is necessary to advance a field. So, my first suggestion when writing Response-To-Reviewers-And-Editors (RTRAE) documents is:

DO NOT BE AN 4$$H0L3.

A polite RTRAE is much more likely to be well received than any document where you basically call reviewers (another thankless unpaid job) absolute 4$$H4TS. Anyhow…

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

This is the process I follow when I receive reviews:

1) Wallow in self-pity (this is standard procedure) for about 48 hours (sometimes more time is needed).

2) Cool-off and remember that people aren’t out to get me and that any negative reviews do not reflect on my own worth.

.. a Letter of Response to Reviewers and Editors.

This is my process, you can adapt as you see fit.

1) I say something to the effect of “thank you for taking the time to read and review my work”, because really, we ought to acknowledge that this is a thankless job.

2) Using my DRM, I respond point-by-point to suggestions made by reviewers and editors.

It is important to comment that most journal editors will tell you how they prefer this response. Some may accept a DRM, others may want a letter, others may want a letter AND A REDLINED redlined = marked up with track changes) version, etc.

If the suggestions are a tad generic, I respond with comments that are similarly generic. If the reviewer is very detailed, I respond with the same degree of engagement.

3) It’s not a requirement that you accept every suggestion. If you are not going to change something, make sure to explain why you’re not making these edits, and the supporting rationale. IF you disagree with a reviewer, politely state why and respond so that they can engage with the substance of your comments.

Rough reviewers are going to exist anywhere, so it’s important to take the criticism as a critique of the work, not an assessment on the value of a person. I have heard (and personally experienced) of very nasty editorial and reviewer comments.

Nobody is exempt from these. (at least in my experience!)

AcWri highlighting and scribbling while on airplanes

To the extent that reviewers do their job (suggest ways in which the article may be improved for publication) and editors do theirs (make a judgment call on the reviews and the actual contribution an article may make to their journal and the field) we can expect a relatively straightforward process. Obviously having an R&R never means that there is a guaranteed publication coming out of the process.

Revise-And-Resubmits DO get rejected after one, two, three or even four rounds of revisions.

We all have read #HereOnTwitter about nasty reviews, mean editors, etc. These things may happen, but I think all we can do is take those in stride and push back where/when necessary in a polite yet firm way.

I follow the same process for every round of revision. And yes, I often have had four or five rounds of R&R. Yes, I’ve had experiences of doing multiple revisions and yet get rejected in the end. Such is life, whatever.

Anyway, in short, I use the DRM and the Backcasting an R&R techniques to help me write the RTEARs. I hope this depiction of my process will be helpful to some of you.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 7, 2020

An expansive framework to go from idea to abstract to introduction to table of contents to full paper/dissertation/thesis/book

Because I’ve been thinking about research all the time over the past few years (the mechanics and strategies of doing research, different methods to frame, design and answer a research question, how to effectively design a research project, etc.) I’ve also been wondering how can I craft a single, unified framework that can help writers develop their papers, book chapters, dissertations, theses, books. After a lot of thinking, I think the model I’m presenting here should be helpful.

Writing while in Berlin

I have the firm belief that every larger document you write can emerge from an abstract. That’s the sequence I use to write my own documents:

  1. Develop an idea
  2. Write an abstract (4-7 sentences’ model)
  3. Based on the abstract, develop an introduction.
  4. From the introduction, craft a table of contents
  5. Using the table of contents, write individual chapters/components of the paper

This sequence is expansive because with each step, you expand each component of the previous element. For example, an introduction can come from expanding an abstract. The introduction can serve as a template for outlining a table of contents as well, expanding each component of the introductory section, which may often take the format of a 5-7 sentences’ paragraph. In this Twitter thread, I explain my process in more detail.

I call this an expansive framework because I think about the process of writing a paper, a book chapter, or a book manuscript, or a journal article, or a thesis, as an expansive process.

1) Have an idea
2) Write first the abstract based on this idea (hence the Tiny Text)
3) Based on what you wrote in the Abstract, EXPAND it into a full-fledged Introduction (to a paper, or a chapter)
4) Based on what you wrote in the introduction, develop a Table of Contents.
5) Expand the Table of Contents into separate documents (chapters)
6) Repeat expansions.

Even the empirical or theoretical chapters can follow the same model (with adaptations). IMRAD-type journal articles can also follow a similarly expansive strategy. For the dissertation chapters, you can follow a similar strategy – each chapter has introduction, content (theoretical/empirical chapters, literature review), conclusion.

Hopefully, this blog post and my expansive framework will help folks develop their papers, book chapters, books and theses/dissertations more easily.

Posted in academia, research, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 7, 2020

Creating tables and diagrams to describe theoretical, conceptual, and analytical frameworks

Doctoral supervisors (and often, editors!) will ask you to create a conceptual, theoretical and/or analytical framework for your book, dissertation, chapter, or journal article. This is a good idea. I used to get confused by all the “framework”-associated terms, so I wrote

Like I have done in other blog posts of mine, I am going to show you several graphic and table-based depictions of frameworks that may help you think through how you can visually explain the concepts you are using to analyze what you are analyzing.

Here is the 411:

I find it incredibly useful to draw diagrams (often times, mind maps or conceptual diagrams, or even fish-bone diagrams) to show how variables are linked with each other and how these factors help explain a phenomenon. You can (and I often do) use tables for this purpose. Like with the frameworks, we often link the words “theoretical”, “conceptual” and “analytical” with the word “diagram”.

Around 2015-ish, I published a framework that helps scholars and analysts think about environmental non-governmental organizations…

To be perfectly honest, I always looked up to Lin and Vincent Ostrom for how to write good tables and diagrams that depicted theoretical, conceptual and analytical frameworks. There are many other frameworks developed by the Ostroms, and pretty much all of them have tables/diagrams.

In sum, your development of theoretical, conceptual and analytical frameworks is well served by depicting these in table form or in graphic, diagrammatic form. What I usually do is – I read A METRIC TONNE of books and articles to see how other authors develop theirs.

And then, I think through how I want to write my own.

I do hope this blog post is useful to anyone who is trying to develop “a theoretical figure” or a “conceptual table”.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 6, 2020

Preparing a research statement for an academic job application

This is not my first blog post on research statements (this one on research statements and research trajectories and this other on research pipelines, research trajectories and research programmes are quite related), but this is perhaps the first time I write about and address the Research Statement as a key component of job applications for tenure-track or post-doctoral positions. We all know how angry and upset I feel about the dismal state of the academic job market(s). However, let us assume that you still want to apply for tenure-track (TT) jobs. I do have some experience applying for (and landing) TT jobs, as well as chairing search committees for these positions. I have also sat on search committees, and have read hundreds of applications. These are thus a few pointers that I think might help potential applicants write their statements.

My desk at work right now. Note the 3 computers :)

We all know the huge role that luck, connections, institutional “pedigree” and other factors play, but for purposes of helping those who want to apply, some ideas that you all may want to consider in crafting your Research Statements. This blog post started as a Twitter thread so I’ve pulled from there too.

Personally, I think that when departments and universities hire you, they want to see how you develop your work through time. In that sense, the Research Statement that you arrive with (at the time of application) is STATIC. You present a SNAPSHOT of what you’ve done so far.

In my personal view (please don’t take my suggestions as dogma or guidelines!), I think that there is value in developing both a Research Statement and a Research Trajectory (this one is worth considering in both ex-ante and ex-post modes)

A Research Trajectory can one (or both) of two things:

1) it can present a narrative in timeline form of how your thinking has evolved.

2) it can present your Research Plan for the next 5-6 years (pandemics and life will obviously derail that plan!)

So what I have done with my own Research Statements is to present how my research interests have evolved through time. In that sense, my Research Statement is a STATIC snapshot at a certain point in time (at the time of writing, of course!) of how my different research strands have evolved through time (that is, of my Research Trajectory). Below is an example of how I have done self-reflection about my own Research Statement.

Last year I was invited to participate in a global workshop of a few selected scholars on the future of environmental policy, which surprised a couple of people. Well, here’s the thing: at the beginning of my career, I *was* a specialist in environmental policy instruments.

Paul also explains very well how his work contributes to theoretical debates and the empirical literature. Paul is an excellent writer and you may consider reading through his website and published work to see how he crafts his narratives.

If people want to learn more about how to craft a Research Statement, I think one strategy would be to poke around and read the “Research” pages of various scholars’ websites to find patterns. That is how I have learned much of what I now write about, by looking at many scholars’ strategies, distilling them and adapting them into something that works FOR ME.

I said I had two pieces of advice. But in reality, I think it’s just that one: for me, a Research Statement of a candidate tells me what they’ve done, if/where it is published or under review, and how those pieces of work fit a coherent, cohesive narrative of their research.

As someone with interdisciplinary training who continues to do interdisciplinary work, I often struggle when people want to categorize me (am I a geographer, a political scientist, a public administration scholar, a sociologist?). Truth be told, the way I have made peace with this challenge of being interdisciplinary when being in disciplinary departments (who say they want interdisciplinarity but judge you by their disciplinary norms) is to show how my work speaks to the debates of their discipline.

Also, my work (though it cuts through different disciplines and methods), is centred around ONE key question that has puzzled me my entire life: what drives agents to cooperate and collaborate??

Studying collaborative behaviour has led me to write on environmental activism and transnational coalitions.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 31, 2020

Organizing work/school-related digital files

A professor from the Global South emailed me to ask if I would consider writing a blog post on best practices to maintain an organized set of folders for students. To be perfectly honest with you, I was never taught how to do this. These practices, whether best or not, are the ones I have developed over the course of the years. Hopefully my process and strategies may be of use to scholars and students all over the world.

Diplomado ProDialogoCIDE IMTA MAPP 40 aniversario 203

I store PDFs in Mendeley, too!

Like anybody, I, too, get disorganized every so often. This is something that happens to me when I am overwhelmed and I just say “oh, I’ll dump my files in my main Dropbox folder” and then I have to take an entire day to re-organize my life. I use various cloud-based services. My Twitter thread explains with details and screenshots how I work.

You will notice I have a folder with the title “Vancouver Studies”. I’ve always wanted to write and publish a paper using my hometown as a case study. Sadly, a reviewer asked me to cut it from one of my papers so it’ll have to wait yet another year. I do have a few projects that use Vancouver as a case study and I am working on getting them out.

As anyone who reads my blog and follows me on Twitter will know, I’m a Virgo, an “Upholder”, a Type A and someone who thrives when having a clean and organized environment, both physically and mentally.

This means that I need to spend some time creating a folder called “Grant Writing Books” and moving it to OneDrive. But I seriously haven’t even had the time to do that (though I may just do that right after writing this blog post).

And, like anybody else, I also have a “To Organize” folder where I dump stuff. I set time aside every weekend to reorganize my files, but because I already have a system, it takes me SUBSTANTIALLY less time to do it nowadays. Some articles I’ve downloaded I want to read are there too.

Personally, I find it easier to work when my work has structure, order and organization. So I hope these suggestions will be useful to those who follow me and read my blog.

Posted in academia, organization, productivity, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 5, 2020

On the importance of routine in academic writing

Because of the pandemic, I am now shuttling between Aguascalientes (where I live) and Leon (where my parents live). Any kind of inter-city movement should be stressful enough. What keeps me more or less grounded is that wherever I am (and have been – including Paris, last year), I always have more or less the same routine. For life and for work.

Routines work for me.

They may not work for everyone, but they do work, for me.

Desk at my home office in Aguascalientes

Routines provide regularity and stability.

The idea I quote above is not something I invented or devised – it’s the very foundational concept of institutionalism and institutional theory. It’s also the very basic unit of analysis of evolutionary economic theory (Becker 2004, as per Nelson and Winter 1982)

During this pandemic, having stable routines has kept me relatively sane. Every morning, I wake up, make my coffee, make my bed, wash my face, brush my teeth, and organize my desk to start my day. I also set up my (or my Mom’s) dining table for whenever she wakes up, I can have breakfast set up already for her. My morning routine includes making coffee for my Mom and bringing it to her room when she wakes up, along with a copy of the day’s newspaper.

Routines have a stabilizing role, in the same way that institutions provide stability around human interaction.

I have been writing a lot lately. Out of excitement, on the one hand: I am healthy now, after 2.5 years of struggles with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, eczema/psoriasis/dermatitis. Out of fear, on the other hand: I am 9 months behind on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, and because I had agreed-upon writing commitments, I’m now cranking up the writing as much as I can.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced me to stay at home (either at my house in Aguascalientes or my Mom’s in Leon). I have fully functional home offices in both homes, so I can write at leisure. I’ve got decent internet access, and can log on to my remote university library connection to download articles and books quite easily, for the most part.

Working in the dining table

The COVID-19 has reshaped my personal and collective dynamics

During the pandemic, I’ve joined two online writing groups: Dr Amanda Bittner‘s (Monday through Friday, 9-11 am Eastern Standard Time) and Dr. Mirya Holman‘s (Fridays, 2-5 pm Central Standard Time). What I have noticed by participating in both of these online writing groups is that routinely writing as part of a collective REALLY WORKS FOR ME.

As most of you who follow me on Twitter or read my blog know, my writing practice starts at 4:30am – from 4:30 am to 6:30 am – I know, it’s ridiculously early and well, what can I tell you, that’s how I am used to work – I am a morning person and I am not really functional past 3pm.

calendar

Since joining these two wonderful writing groups, I now have 23 hours worth of writing on my calendar and in my schedule.

This does not mean that I can actually write that much (I would love if I could do it all the time, and when I am not teaching, nor travelling, I can often achieve this goal). But at least I have the time slots (and I can use that time to write, or it can also be runway time or grunt work time).

I have always had a writing routine. But what I have noticed by participating in Amanda’s and Mirya’s writing groups is that repeatedly joining writing groups (on a regular basis, trying not to miss any meetings) actually is very helpful in strenghtening my writing practice.

I wrote a Twitter thread on this very issue a few days ago. Having a structured routine and routinely writing and responding to Revise-And-Resubmits (R&R) or edits from book editors does help me because now I write responses-to-reviewers-and-editors much, much, much faster than before.

I always tell my students and research assistants that it might be helpful for them to develop and maintain a structured daily routine. I know this is hard to do even more so during these pandemic times, but I find that structure makes my life much easier.

Hopefully you’ll find value in routines too.

Posted in academia, organization, productivity, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – June 7, 2020