In my time working as an academic editor, I’ve noticed a pattern. Clients repeatedly submit their work to me well after our mutually agreed upon deadline. Or, they contact me for an initial consultation with only days to spare before they have to submit their writing for publication. As a result, they incur rush fees, stress, and a feeling that they aren’t giving their writing the attention it deserves.

Once I realized that many of my clients were experiencing the same set of problems, I began to think about how I could work with them to solve them. I wanted to help them overcome the barriers that were preventing them from writing. With that, I created my coaching service called The Productivity Pipeline, to help academic writers achieve success in their writing.

When I say “successful” I don’t merely mean that your work is accepted for publication. Instead, I mean that you will:

• Write with confidence that you won’t miss deadlines.
• Conquer the overwhelm that comes with juggling multiple responsibilities and multiple writing projects.
• Develop a long-term plan that includes small, actionable, and realistic goals to keep you on track day by day, week by week, and month by month.
• Identify the obstacles that prevent you from writing, and create solutions.
• Create a writing schedule that eliminates the stress of agonizing over finding time to write.
• Devote your time to the hard work of writing, rather than the work of managing your anxiety about being unproductive.

You’ve probably tried a lot of different tactics to write more. Perhaps you’ve used the Pomodoro technique to monitor your writing time. Or you joined a writing group to encourage yourself to complete drafts regularly. You might have even paid for a virtual writing group. These approaches probably brought you varying levels of success but at the end of the day, these are piecemeal. None of them will help you to develop a writing plan, implement it, then stick to it.

That’s where one-on-one coaching comes in. By working with a coach, you have someone who is able to give you advice and guidance based on your own unique circumstances. While there are certainly challenges that many academic writers share, there are also important differences in personal circumstances, research projects, professional obligations, and so forth. A professor teaching four courses a semester at a community college, for instance, will not face the same writing obstacles — or writing support — as a professor at a research university who has frequent sabbaticals. Similarly, a writer who is committed to ending the workday at 6pm will structure their entire day differently than an academic writer who relishes evening writing sessions.

You may have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish. For instance, your institution might be explicit that you are expected to have a book in press in order to get tenure. What might be less clear is how to write that book – where to find the time to complete it, how to pace your writing so you don’t feel as if you’re scrambling at the end, and how to maintain a healthy balance between writing your book and focusing on your other projects and obligations.  The Productivity Pipeline will provide support for establishing big picture long term goals while operationalizing those goals into discrete activities. Essentially, we’ll set deadlines and plan backward from them, so that there is never any confusion about the progress you are making and the work that remains.

Once you sign up, you’ll receive a questionnaire that will cover topics including your planned publications, current writing schedule, and barriers you are facing to completing your writing (or even starting it!). We will then schedule a seventy-five minute one on one session via Skype. We’ll first review the questionnaire and after discussing your most significant obstacles, we will strategize to create a publication plan. Once we decide on your publication plan, we’ll develop an itemized list of the writing and research tasks you must complete in order to develop those projects. With that list, we will create a writing schedule where we place these tasks on your calendar. That schedule will include weekly milestones to keep you motivated and help you to maintain your momentum.  You will also have a “master sheet” (created by me) where you can track and compare the progress you are making on each project. We will discuss your progress during bi-weekly 30-minute coaching calls where we identify what might be supporting or hindering your writing process, and fine tune the writing schedule.

Remember, the first step in getting your writing on track is seeking the support you need. If you’d like to participate in coaching or learn more, click here.