I started writing this post in an empty apartment. My husband got a job in California and so the last few weeks were busy with preparations, both material and emotional, for the “big move” West. Moving takes up emotional space: when you’re not filling out change of address forms and canceling utilities, you’re running “the list” through your head and expectedly, my dissertation has slowed to a crawl. Big life changes are always a challenge when working on a thesis or dissertation, but they don’t have to be fatal for your project.

Here are some steps to keep up with your dissertation during major life events:

1) Don’t overpromise. We went to Oakland to house-hunt and when I returned I thought three weeks was sufficient time to complete my next chapter. This, in a nutshell, was wildly optimistic. We had movers and packers come and having never experienced this before, I thought my job was done — that whatever we had to do in the three weeks before our move was marginal, leaving plenty of time for writing. Ridiculous! I barely scraped together a 4 page outline for my final writing group meeting. Lesson? Don’t do this. If you’re moving, give yourself a month before and a month after to get back into the swing of things, and if you can help it, don’t promise ANYTHING.

2) Check in. When going through a move, you don’t have to abandon your work, at least, not altogether. It helps me to check in with my work, as a reminder. I make it a point to write a 200 word abstract on my current chapter as a writing exercise. I keep that abstract in it’s own scrivener page and check in to read it as often as I can. When I do read the abstract, I jot down a few notes and questions in the same document so I have a record of my thoughts. This counteracts a major hindrance to writing: momentum loss. If I’m away from work too long, I forget what I was working on. And when I forget, I grow increasingly anxious about where to go next because I don’t remember where I was going when I started. Checking in keeps your head in the game.

3) Meet with your committee and/or writing group. I met with two committee members before I left New York and they gave great feedback for next steps. I also presented a 4-page outline to my writing group for feedback on next steps, clarity, and organization. I recorded all meetings and once we’re settled, first thing on my “To-Do List” is to transcribe those meeting notes. I will then form those notes into a to-do list that I will use to get started again.

4) Be easy on yourself. If you’re anything like me, you’re scared to death of taking too much time away from your dissertation, for fear of losing “it.” But listen, a move is a BFD and incredibly stressful, so get a new shower curtain and welcome mat, the work will always be there.

Anyway, I thought I’d open the door to a day in the life of a writing mama. I keep a pretty regular schedule which, for me, is the only way I accomplish anything. This is just what I do and I would love to hear what all you dissertating mamas do as well.

Daily schedule:

5:45–6:45AM: HELLO MOMMY! HELLO DADDY!

6:45AM: Get out of bed

7:01–8:15AM: Coffee, Rachel Maddow Show, hang out with the Mr., catch up on emails, read daily news, blogs, tweets

8:16–8:45AM: Get dressed for gym, pack snacks for Althea

8:46-11AM: Walk to the Y and drop Althea at childcare (SO AWESOME!), Kill myself on the treadmill for 40 minutes, then take Althea to open gym or the playground.

11:01–11:30AM: Head home and shower. Althea gets a snack and watches an episode or two of Maisy.

11:31–3:00PM (give or take 30 minutes): Althea naps, I work.

3:01–4:00PM: snacks, storytime, drawing, etc. She’s starting to play a lot by herself which buys me another half an hour of writing time.

4:01–5:00PM: Do dishes from the day, tidy, sporadically check email

5:01–6:30PM: Prepare and eat dinner or get takeout. The Mr. comes home.

6:31–7:30PM: Bathtime or playtime (depending on night)

7:31–8:00PM: Bedtime for Althea. It takes this long for diaper changes, finding favorite stuffed animals, and reading a bedtime story.

8:01PM-10:00PM: Have a beer and flop down on sofa. This involves lots of sighing. I usually spend a few minutes of this time organizing my work schedule for the next day.

10:01–11:30PM: Go to bed and read academic blogs or Reddit.

I do this without fail Monday through Friday. It’s pretty fantastic because I get time with my kid and time with my husband. Work happens slowly but reliably so I keep a really nice momentum. For me, the key is routine routine routine. The much younger me would have hated this life, I thought in order to keep things interesting I had to be spontaneous. But I have a 30 pound perpetual motion machine of spontaneity, I don’t think I need to insert any more chaos into the equation.

The big secret lies in that 3.5 hour window of writing time. You might think that’s not enough. You might think that the only way to plan to write is to set aside entire 8–10 hour work days. But I learned that I really only have 3–4 hours of solid critical thinking time in a day. Some folks have a bit more, others less, but in talking with colleagues and from my own experience, I don’t think anyone can sit and generate new connections and ideas for 8 solid hours. I work in 25 minute bursts, take 5 minute breaks, and I manage to get remarkable amounts of work done when I focus my attention that way.

Before having my kid, I never had this kind of focus. I would spend days doing other stuff and bank my time for long 10–12 hour work days. 10 hours is a lot of time in theory, and I had fantasies about all of the amazing reading and writing I could get done if I just blocked out an entire day. But they were just that, fantasies. I can only critically think for up to 4 hours, the remaining 6–8 hours would inevitably fill with procrastination and guilt. So I guess when people ask how I write my dissertation with a kid, I should say, I don’t know how I ever wrote without her.

• Writer’s Rooms and desktops
• Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments (of writing)
• Open source self-publishing platform to create your own ebooks
• Directory of Academic Blogs on Google Docs
• And finally, this is an old TED talk, but a good one:

In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools’ dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.

I don’t have much time, so here’s what I’ve been up to:

1. I had an incredible 90-minute meeting with one my committee members about my recent chapter submission and I feel like a real, honest-to-god scholar. His feedback was supportive, specific, and critical — I left his office invigorated.

2. I’m finished with Chapter 2 for now. I’ve done all I can is put it on the back-burner and let it simmer while I prep for my next chapter.

3. I just finished Caleb McDaniel’s excellent post, “The Digital Early Republic” on the research database methods for finding trends in primary sources.

4. Cleaned out my diss drawer in my desk and found a ton of articles I planned to read, but never got to. I have a cold today so I’m going to track them down electronically so I can read them on my iPad (see above).

5. I really need to stick to my diss map, or at least, keep it in front of me as a reminder of what the hell I’m doing.

The holiday break was fantastic, but it’s time to hit the books. I had a meeting with my dissertation advisor yesterday and it was AWESOME. She chewed up my chapter and spit it out and I’m psyched. It’s been a couple weeks since I really looked at my chapter so before I review her edits, I’m going to review with my own edits. That way, I can have a conversation with her edits rather than just following her instructions.

I’m a bit writing rusty from the break so I’m just going to end this here. Let’s hope that is not a harbinger of 2012.

Courtesy of Shirt.Woot

On Twitter the other day, someone asked about exercise in graduate school. Like you, I’m busy with writing and life, but I make it a point to work out 4–5 times per week. Before you think I’m one of those ultrafit “supermoms” who throw elaborate toddler birthday parties while writing my dissertation with perfect manicured nails, let me just say HAHAHAHAHAAA! My house is much less Cosby Show and way more Roseanne. I go to the gym because it’s a break. My local YMCA offers free babysitting for up to two hours, so I have, in a word: incentive.

I used to struggle with getting to the gym. I would pay out the nose for gym memberships only to go for a week and give up. Starting an exercise routine is easy, maintaining it is fucking hard. But I think, no, I KNOW, that taking time for yoga/jogging/meditation/Zumba is crucial to your intellectual maintenance. When you’re writing a dissertation, it’s the equivalent of running a brain marathon and you need to keep your mind and body fit. I don’t mean anything drastic, I simply mean setting aside time for yourself. Some people knit, others bake, I exercise and if you want to workout, you can to.

Like I said before, I used to join gyms and lose momentum after a week. Why? Let’s blame the “excuse center” of your brain. My excuse center goes into overdrive when I have to do something I don’t want to do. I am incredibly stubborn and this can make me my own worst enemy. So in the interest of getting you off your butt, here are my top 5 excuses and how I deal with them and maybe they’re resonate with you too:

1) I don’t have time! Yes you do. Working out doesn’t take long, and if the thought of leaving your dissertation for an hour freaks you the hell out, then go for 30 minutes or do one of these 20 minute yoga sessions. The fact is, a good workout boosts your energy which will give you more stamina to write.

2) Ugh, I just don’t feel like it today. It’s one thing if you’re sick, you should never workout when you’re sick (duh!), it’s a completely different thing if you’re just unmotivated or feeling lazy. Rule Number One in regards to physical health and fitness, you have to make it a habit. This is hard because a habit, by definition, is a regular practice that you do, often without thinking about it. When (re)starting an exercise routine there’s nothing regular or unthinking about. It can feel like you’re adding extra stress into your work routine, which for control freaks like me is simply chaos. It takes three weeks to build a habit and make it stick, but start easy. When I first started going to the gym, my goal was to go on Tuesdays and Thursdays for three weeks. That’s 6 times total, easy. Workout buddies help, so does making bets. I told myself that I only had to do it for three weeks and if I didn’t like it, I’d quit the gym–but I had to go for three weeks, no exceptions.

3) It’s raining/snowing/hurricaning outside. Listen, I live in New York, bad weather is ugly. It’s cold, wet, dirty, sloppy, basically: the perfect excuse to hide indoors. So when it’s pissing down rain, the thing that really gets me out the door is knowing how awesome I will feel for the rest of the day. Even if I have a shitty writing day after the gym, I won’t feel like the day is a total loss because at least I did something. However, sometimes it is weatherpocalypse outside and it would be pointless to wade through waist high snow for a workout. On days like that, just stay inside. It would be good to download free podcasts or invest in workout DVDs, I like Jillian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred is available on DVD on Amazon Instant.

4) I went to a conference for a few days and blew my entire routine. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve managed to workout for 5 weeks straight, it’s unheard of, you feel amazing! Then you leave town for a few days and instead of using the hotel gym, you sleep in and shmooze with Duke’s history department. When you come back, you feel like that 5 week stretch was for nothing, you have to start over, you ruined your streak. If you’ve been in this position, just remember that a habit is a practice. If you went a week without practicing, it doesn’t mean you should give up on it altogether. Just pick up where you left off and keep going.

5) Exercise is boring. Yes, it can be. I get bored doing the same thing everyday so I shake it up. I take classes, I do circuit training, I run. If the thought of going to the gym is too boring for words, change your playlist, go for a walk in your neighborhood or the local park, or sign up for a different class at your gym.

If you want to exercise it is within your control to do so. Listed below are resources that worked for me, hopefully they’ll help you too. Good luck!

Couch to 5k — C25K Running Program — I’ve been doing this for the past 3 weeks. It has an iPhone app and the site is a great all around fitness resource

one hundred push ups, two hundred sit ups, seven weeks to fitness, etc. — I like this one because all you need is your body, also a great all around fitness resource

Nike Running — Another iPhone app that syncs your runs on the inter-webs so you can see your progress in cool infographics

Nike Women — iPhone app of free circuit training workouts that are serious butt kickers. It’s an incentive app so after you workout for a number of hours, new workouts are made available to you

reddit fitness resource — Reddit is a news site with user submitted content. They have an incredible fitness and nutrition page with tons of helpful tips. Reddit is FULL of nerds, so most of their content is aimed at the desk-sendentary like us

Exercise News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip — Lifehacker

Disclaimer: Of course, this is not a substitute for advice from your doctor. You should always consult with your healthcare provider before starting any fitness or nutrition program.

When I was 8-years old, Berry Gordy’s Bruce Lee homage The Last Dragon was my favorite movie. I was so in love with this movie that I took kung fu classes, I did flying kicks off my sofa, and I watched Bruce Lee movies with my dad so I could get the references.

This bit of American nostalgia is brought to you by the last day of Academic Book Writing Month. I first read about AcBoWriMo on November 1 and decided right then and there to participate. I did it because the dissertation kicked my ass all over like Sho-Nuff and it was time to declare that I was the master, not my diss. Now if only I could get that sweet glow while sitting at my desk.

As you can see on my counter over there, I only made it to about 1/3 of my whackadoo 30,000 word goal. But the glass half full version of this story is that in just one incredibly busy month I have nearly two new chapters of my dissertation.

Some responses to this past month addressing some of the AcBoWriMo guidelines:

1. To Word Count or Not to Word Count? In AcBoWriMo, there was some dissent regarding the word count goal. In jest: Leave it to academics to find controversy in anything. I decided to do the word count as a loose benchmark for me to measure my progress. But I had other benchmarks as well. After talking with a friend about dissertation goals and progress, she suggested a concept goal. She works until she gets three ideas or explanations down on paper. Seem vague? Well, I’m a humanities major so yeah, it’s a little vague, but it’s also highly adapatable. I also set time for editing, that way I don’t have pages of word diarrhea at the end of the month.

2. Community Support. It isn’t hyperbole when I say I would be NOWHERE without the amazing Twitter and Google Plus community of scholars, writers, parents, nerds, activists, et al. My morning routine now includes reading the (#AcBoWriMo) hashtag on Twitter over my coffee. Knowing that I’m not alone in what is often an inconsistent, fitful writing process is an incredible motivator. So to you all, I do hope you keep the posts coming under the new hashtag #acwri. In addition to reading others’ successes and slumps, I was accountable to the great wide internet. I don’t know about you, but promising a giant word count to hundreds of strangers was more motivation that anything my committee, husband, or brain could ever give me. You all made slacking impossible and you should all get a badge or the Medal of Freedom or something.

3. Plan. Plan. Plan. This doesn’t mean a minute by minute script of what you should do for the next hour/day/week/month/year. But I found it useful to end my writing day with some bullet points of what to do that day and the next. Also, I use the Pomodoro Technique and the Pomodairo app (Mac and PC) which allows me to label my pomodoros, so I always know where to put my focus for that 30 minutes.

4. Picking up where you left off. I had two different sets of houseguests this month, a week-long trip to Washington, DC, Thanksgiving, protests, and the flu. These are all some legit reasons to abandon #AcBoWriMo because I fell behind and my perfect month of work was suddenly imperfect. I learned that all months are imperfect. Hell, minutes are imperfect. But you just deal and then pick up where you left off. I made sure to set aside time to write when my houseguests were here, I worked in DC, and I took time to be sick rather than “powering through it” and prolonging the illness until the Spring. If you’re dealing with the heaviest that life can hurl at you, I highly recommend Charlotte Frosts post about working through tragedy.

5. Keep the count. Even though there’s only an hour or so left of AcBoWriMo here on the east coast, I can say happily that it was awesome. I plan to keep my word counter over there because I do eventually need to get to 30,000 words if I’m going to finish my dissertation. And I love coming to my blog and adding to the bar, it’s another motivator when I’m in the writing muck. I’m also pleased that #acbowrimo is now #acwri because I want to keep this going, I want to check in with you and I want to read how you’re all doing so long as I can lean on you from time to time.

Thank you so much to Charlotte Frost and everyone who participated. This was my best writing month ever, now on to the next one.

Dear Writers, I’ve been laid up with the flu since Friday so work has simply stopped. I’m so sore it feels like I fell down a few flights of stairs and I spent the first day in the fetal position because my guts were trying to escape. But I have some advice for other sick grad grinders out there, be sick. I’ve laid on this sofa for 2 days, watched Seasons 1 AND 2 of Downton Abby, drank tons of water, and had plenty of wonton soup. What I haven’t done is work. I’ve done quite a bit of reading: blogs and the news (there’s plenty of that, right?) and I did revisit the last few notes I left for myself when I left off on Friday, but no sitting at my desk and no feeling guilty about not sitting at my desk. I need to rest and if you’re sick, you should too.

Some internet finds:

• GOP Clown College — Photoshopped Politicians

• A History of the Sky — Time Lapse

• OWS, Police Brutality, and the War on Terror: An Empire State of Mind — Essay

• CMYBacon — Designy blog

• Life in a Day — Video Project

Since I couldn’t do anything but watch Twitter, I went to the gym. A. needed some playtime with other kids and I needed to run my ass off for an hour. It didn’t help.

Sitting down to write this afternoon was a no-go. I received some kind advice from the internet (thanks @lizgloyn, @phd2published, and @ThomsonPat). I also reached out to a friend wherein we discussed OWS in the context of trying to finish our dissertations and struggling with our history of union activism. Today was an “all hands” kind of day and I’m suddenly very thankful to all of the great people in my analog and digital life. I’ve been in a funk for the past week or so about not getting the right kind of advisement or not being far enough along when, in the end, I’m not doing this to for my advisor nor is there any other measure for how I should do this other than the way that I’m doing it. I write because I love what I do and I’m lucky enough to have allies who see its value as I do.

As for Occupy Wall Street, hang in there guys, I’ll see you November 17.

Well? Do ya punk?

When I started writing this post, I didn’t feel productive or lucky. I just felt behind, like I ALWAYS feel. I also felt a little angry, despite raising the stakes of dissertation completion, I’m not really pushing along any faster. My word surge at the beginning of AcBoWriMo is beginning to look increasingly like a coincidence rather than the result of an outspoken obligation. A few folks have discussed AcBoWriMo as being as much about timing as it is productivity. You have to be ready to output words, it doesn’t just happen because you’ll say it will happen. Productivity-wise I was pretty productive today: I revised my chapters in a more productive manner, using the choreography method in Helping Doctoral Students Write, (p. 92), I did some reading, and I added another 677 new words.

I think the problem with dissertation writing is that so much of the work is not measurable. I met with my diss advisor early this fall, and she told me she feels like I’m in the same place as I was a year ago. I’ve done a ton of work since then, but it’s all research fragments, reading, and processing. I want to think that this work is crucial to finishing, but it doesn’t feel valued by my advisor or institutions at large. So how do we measure progress in the process of writing the dissertation when so much of it isn’t fluid writing yet?