Productivity | PhD2Published

Academic Practice, Book Writing, Books, Conference Paper Writing, Conference Papers, Grant Writing, Grants, Journal Article Writing, Journal Articles, Productivity, Uncategorized

Charlotte Frost

August 18, 2010

This is a guest blog post from Cat Bennett author of The Confident Creative: Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind.

The Road to Yes

I’m a veteran writer of sorts. I’ve been writing all my life—journal entries, essays, stories. But I’ve always made my living as an artist, primarily as an illustrator. Now I’m a newly published writer, the author of The Confident Creative / Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind. Findhorn Press is my publisher and the day I received a yes from them was indeed a happy one. I remember reading once that getting a book published doesn’t really change your life, so writers shouldn’t hope for that. Published writers still get out of bed in the morning and do the things they do. Their bank accounts rarely burst at the seams from newly minted millions. It’s true my life is much as it was a year ago before my book was published. But it’s also radically changed—I feel a new freedom. Read more

Tools of the Writing Trade

Academic Practice, Book Writing, Books, Conference Paper Writing, Conference Papers, Grant Writing, Grants, Journal Article Writing, Journal Articles, Productivity

Charlotte Frost

July 7, 2010

As I’d decided this site was long over-due for a post on the actual nuts and bolts process of writing, I was grateful to find a post on Fuel Your Writing on Making Writing Easy: Practical Tools. It’s basically a list of tools to support your writing by helping you manage the process more effectively.

The interesting thing about doing a PhD, but which seldom gets discussed, is the natural way you tend to evolve your own techniques for writing and researching. I still like to hand-write notes when I do an initial trawl through a book, so when I started my PhD, I printed out a batch of note cover-pages. The cover-page allowed me to quickly and clearly record a complete reference for the book and summarise both its content and what areas were of particular relevance to my own research. It was a bit clunky (I didn’t get all the boxes the right size and never got round to changing it) but at times it was such a life saver when I knew I’d read something, somewhere, at some point that was sort of related…

Post PhD = More of the Same!

Academic Practice, Networking, Productivity

Charlotte Frost

April 21, 2010

he first thing I realised as 2010 arrived was that nothing was going to change. I’d completed my PhD in 2009 and somewhere in my mind I’d hatched the idea that in 2010 great things were to be thrust upon me. For example, I had a full-blown fantasy about being in full-time employment.

I thought an age was about to dawn where I’d be able to afford to live and I’d have this free-time stuff I’d heard people talk about which they seemed to use to eat in nice restaurants and go on something known as a ‘holiday’. I had deluded myself that these riches would soon be mine and that the glittery world of a Dr was what now awaited me.

What I had forgotten was that way back in 2001, when I’d got my first real taste for academia, I’d actually signed up for a life without these things.