Writing a journal article in 12 weeks: Week One

For some time, I have a number of research papers lying around without any movement. I need to start sending them out for publication. I've heard high praise for Wendy Laura Belcher’s book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to AcademicPublishing Success, and decided to engage its help. Belcher argues that it’s possible to prepare an article for publication within 12 weeks if one works on it somewhere from 15 minutes to an hour 5 days per week. The book provides a week by week (and a day by day) plan on what needs to be done. I will try to follow this plan and see where that takes me.

This is Week One. The first day was devoted to reading the workbook. That section talked about the importance of understanding your feelings about writing and keys to positive writing experiences. On the day two, I selected a paper for revision. On the day three I needed to choose my writing site, which was rather straightforward because I like working at home and there are several writing sites that work well for me. Day 4 was about designing my writing schedule, which included (1) establishing a firm deadline for sending my paper to a journal, (2) setting a realistic writing goal, and (3) anticipating writing obstacles. A deadline for sending my paper to a journal is on November 30th. Setting a realistic writing goal was more problematic for me. Belcher suggests to identify in advance the days of the week when I plan to work on my paper, and for each of them schedule specific writing time. I tried this approach in the past but was unable to stick to the preplanned schedule. So, this time I decided to do what I’ve been doing this week: spending as much time as necessary on Sunday to accomplish the tasks of the day one, do the same for the day two on Monday, and so on until all goals for the week are met. Day 5 was supposed to be about documenting how I spent my time. Belcher recommends to keep track not only on how much time one spends on writing but also to list all recreation activities, household tasks, etc. She explains, “This is an excellent exercise for finding out where your time goes and a useful tool for identifying how you to use your time more efficiently.” I’m all for efficiency unless the quest for efficiency overextend the person and hinders progress toward personal goals. To me, continuous progress, even if it happens in tiny increments, is more important than a short-term efficiency. Thus, instead of recording all my daily activities, I chose to write down 3-5 things which I did that day and which bring me closer to my goals in various areas of my life. I’ll keep monitoring how these practices work for me and make some adjustments if necessary.