Happy New Year! I’m so excited for 2020. In 2019, Up In Consulting had a year of growth and I learned so much. I worked with clients in a multitude of capacities and identified what I’m best at as well as how to be most helpful to my clients. In this post, I’ll share what I have in store for 2020, how you can work with me, and why I’m shifting the focus of my business. 

Moving away from editing to focus on coaching and strategizing. 

I’ve revamped my one-on-one coaching program, Productivity Pipeline. Last year, I worked with quite a few scholars who were writing books. It was so exciting to see these authors complete full drafts, participate in book workshops, and make significant improvements to their writing routines. I also realized that for me, editing and coaching go hand in hand. Writers get stuck on ideas and that slows their writing down. At the same time, if they have poor writing habits, they never build up the momentum to come up with good ideas (because let’s face it, inspiration comes when you’re working). In order to be successful, writers have to mind this iterative relationship between their writing process and the words they put on the page. Because of this, I’ve made the decision to only offer my editing services to my Productivity Pipeline clients. 

I love working with writers to figure out the “big picture” of their manuscripts – how to develop a narrative arc, positioning their argument, creating a coherent structure, and so forth. Some of that can be done with developmental editing and manuscript evaluations, but it’s done best through workshopping and conversation. That’s why I created the Art of the Article, an online course I co-instruct with Kel Weinhold of The Professor Is In. For more on that course, click here. 

With this narrower range of services, I’ll be able to provide more substantive support to my clients. I’ll also be able to offer more in-depth trainings. It’s really no different than a researcher choosing a sub-field. I’m excited to go deep on a few topics, and I”ll be sharing them with you in the weeks and months to come.

I’ve set some big goals for Up In Consulting this year, and one of them is to help 1,000 writers. Like any good productivity coach, I’ve developed a plan to do this that includes: 

• Quarterly workshops. I’m doing my first one in collaboration with Katy Peplin of ThrivePhD and Michelle Dionne Thompson (of her eponymous consulting service) on Tuesday, January 14th 2020. We’ll show you how to make a semester schedule and develop planning strategies that will serve you throughout your academic career. You can register here.
• Video coaching: If you’ve been on my Facebook page recently, you’ll notice that I’m doing more video this year. You are always welcome to message me there with a question about writing or productivity, and I’ll answer it in a video or …
• Blog posts and newsletters: I publish this blog regularly and will be adding even more this year (especially on book-writing). I also send my newsletter subscribers exclusive information that I don’t share anywhere else. This is sometimes a writing tip or a full-blown tutorial. Like my Facebook videos, I take requests! 

These are in addition to the Productivity Pipeline and Art of the Article, which you can register for at any time. 

I want to be clear that as excited I am for 2020, I’m also painfully aware that the world is a frightening place right now. This strengthens my mission to support academics. In this time of chaos and deliberate misinformation, using my skills to help researchers bring their ideas into the light has never felt more vital. I want to help every academic I meet speak truth to power. Studying and challenging structural inequality both in and outside of the academy is work that needed to be done yesterday. Empowering marginalized members of academia — especially Black women — to take up more space and use their voices is the privilege of my work.