Consciously deciding you are going to create a new relationship with your writing takes guts.

An enormous amount of guts.

You need a healthy dose of self-awareness, and a desire to do things differently.

Your writing practice will be your own. What works for others cannot be seamlessly transplanted onto you. You need to create something that works for you. There is no one-size fits all, but there are some common messages given in research on academic writing.

Protect and dedicate specific time. Don’t engage with things/people who derail you. Write with others. Understand how to use feedback. Understand your inner demons.

Academic writing is something that can get pushed to the margins of your day job if you let it. It is also a part of the academic job that exposes us to intense criticism, and intellectual challenge. Naturally, sometimes we want to shy away from that. But this behaviour creates a cycle of dread and unhappiness, guilt and loathing.

It should be (and is) a privilege to write for a living. It should be something that we enjoy, look forward to, even escape into from other demands of the job.

To create a writing practice that works for you, you need to spend some time consciously thinking about your own mindset, habits and challenges. There is no quick fix. It is a holistic challenge. For some, this will mean changing their thought processes about the task of writing, yet for others, it means challenging their own behaviours around writing and how they respond to the demands of others.

Creating a healthy academic writing practice is easier when you do it with others. Setting up departmental writing groups, or using social writing online, or engaging with writing retreats (or even a Writing Coaching Course!) will provide a forum that offers the structures you need to bring the joy back into your writing practice.

It can be joyful. Let’s all try to be happier writers.