Today is day 1 of AWP2024WritingZoo: this year’s Academic Writing Programme writing experiment… and it’s time to start planning.
Yesterday, I picked what I was going to write – a journal article, and a rough topic… with a few questions in mind. I did this by journaling… just free-writing around what I wanted to do, and why, and how much time I had, and what interested me. I’ve stored that, so that I can go back to it as I refine my thinking.
I also realised, as it’s sat with me overnight, that I’m mainly writing this for an informed audience… so it’s likely to be aimed at a field-specific journal rather than a general one. That’ll make it a bit easier, since the competition is less (!), but also there’s less expectation about writing to a specific format, which gives me more freedom to just start, and see where the data takes me.
Today, the main task is to start building the background, by reading. That will not only get me into the topic, but it’ll highlight whether there are any questions that I’ve not noticed before, that I can address. But before I do that, I want to pull together some kind of plan.
I write a plan because it helps me manage any project that’s longer than a few days without feeling like it’s unmanageable. A plan reassures me that I’ll actually get the whole thing written eventually, and provides me with a rough date of when it’ll be finished. It also, weirdly, stops me procrastinating, as I realise that I don’t have to take on the whole project today… I can just do the little bit that I’ve planned to do… and then let tomorrow worry about itself.
My plan for this article goes something like this:
- 2 (and a bit) weeks reading and structuring: now, to 28th March. That takes me to Easter, when I then have a week off with the kids.
- 1 week reading and final structuring: 8th to 12th April. This is good after the week off, as I’ll have a clear head, but I’ll have been thinking about it.
- 4 weeks writing – at 500 words a day: 15th April to 10th May. That should give me 10,000 words rough draft.
- At that point, I can see what I have, and decide whether to stick with just the article, or whether to expand this with a secondary plan to be taken up after the article is finished.
- 1 week for additional reading, to fill in gaps: 13th to 17th May. I should also, by this point, have a good idea of what journal it’s going to, and I’ll have started to gather information about the formatting that they’ll require.
- 2 weeks for editing and polishing: 20th May to 7th June. That’s actually three weeks, but I have a few days off for half-term, and at least 2 days elsewhere when I’m fully-committed.
- Submit, 10th June.
- Celebrate with AWP2024, on the final review day, 11th June.
That’s the plan, anyway!
OK, got my elephant… and I’m ready to go.
The Garage of Books 