Writing to think

Toward the end of this past semester I received an email inviting College of Liberal Arts faculty to participate in a writing group. I struggle with writing. This confession is a problem in my line of work: publish or perish, baby. Mercer has recognized my skills in teaching and administration (although I detest the latter), forgiving in some ways my lack of publications. But I have always enjoyed the final product of the writing experience: thinking about a particular subject in depth. I also enjoy the research portion of writing. The problem is that I have to endure a painful process to get to the final product. A good example of this occurred last year when I finally sent off an article to a journal for review. The peer reviewers thought the topic of the essay was important but the framework needed serious revision. Rather than spend a small amount of time each day to work on the article, I hit it in fits and spurts, which means I have done almost nothing with it since that conditional acceptance. The email invitation appeared to be an opportunity to help me be accountable to a group of peers and to myself.

As an extension of the writing group, I came back to this blog to help me think through some things about writing. Like most arduous tasks in my life, gadgets help me deal with getting things done. I cannot keep a calendar unless it is on an electronic device. Is the blog a sufficient enough gadget to help me do a better job of writing every day? As past attempts suggests, the answer is no. But the problem has not been writing or the blog site, I have never been accountable to anyone other than myself (and that accountability partner knows how busy my life is), so perhaps the confluence of the gadget and the group will spur growth and discipline in this area of life. I have after all spent the past thirty minutes writing.