Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Writing Rewards: My Journey Towards Writing a Section a Day

It is almost April. I need to get out of my rut. One of my articles was published in February and I was very happy with my first publication in 2009. However, I need to get BACK on the publishing bandwagon to race towards article number two. I admit, I've been procrastinating and I have not put publishing on my priority list for this year.

As a result, I plan to try the "Write a Section a Day" and "Writing Rewards" (as suggested by Jeffrey L. Sallaz) methods. A Vice President for Student Services/Associate Professor of Higher Education for one of the institutions in Texas told me, "Jennifer, there are two types of writers. The first type is a continuous writer and the other type is a binge writer." Personnally, I will exclaim that I am a binge writer! I teach four classes every fall and spring (plus one to two classes in the summertime). I love to spend hours completely engrossed in an interesting subject matter. However, I do not get that luxury during the school year. As a result, I complete most of my writing on the weekends and in the summer. This works for me, but I want to try another strategy.

Here are the goals for my writing journey:
a) Write at least one paragraph a day.
b) Log-on to the library's databases (Ebscohost) at least once a day.

c) Write a blog update on the writing journal at least once per week.

d) Complete an article Thursday, April 30th.

e) Remain in contact with Lora (a fellow Ed.D. in Speech Comm.) about our joint writing endeavors.


My Writing Rewards:
a) After each successful writing day, I will eat a snack (Quaker Quakes Rice Cakes - Apple Cinnamon). <- My fav.

b) After each successful writing week, I will embark on a shopping endeavor.

c) After each successful writing month, I will take a one to two day mini vacation for writing. (I wrote many parts of my dissertation in various hotels/resorts (conferences, etc.) in Texas. They are quiet places to work with minimal distractions.


I think these rewards are reasonable.

Please keep me motivated. I hope this will work.

Millennial Professor

1 comment:

  1. Let me know how this is going---I'm trying a similar structure, but to be honest with 4 classes (sometimes 5!) and 3 in the summer I'm starting to feel burned out mentally. Love your reward structure and hope to overcome my own binge writing habits. How is your progress?

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