Kimberly Hirsh

I’m struggling to write a blog post today or even a short note. My mood is low due to extreme uncertainty in both the wider world and my own specific circumstances.

My kid has been binge-watching Magic School Bus and Thomas & Friends. All I want to do anymore us sleep and play & Final Fantasy VII Remake.

But he and I did just bake a cake together, so in addition to living in about the best situation one can, I’ve got that.

Today in My Son, the 3 Year Old Fic Author: a crossover in which Spider-Man and the Ninja Turtle Michelangelo team up to defeat Dormammu.

I’m reading Dr. Katie Linder’s blog archive. One of her earliest posts is titled 51 Tips to Help Academic Writers Be More Productive. It’s a very different sort of set of tips than the kind I was complaining about yesterday. The latter is all about telling you what kind of work you ought to be doing. Not, here are actual tools to help you get the work done, but just… remember all this work you could be doing. Don’t forget how you could use this time wisely.

(Phrases I hate: “use your time wisely” and “live up to your potential.” Blargh. If I want to fritter my life away reading fantasy novels and only be an A- student, that’s my business, middle school teachers. Oops, sorry, went to a dark and distant place there.)

Dr. Linder’s post, on the other hand, doesn’t remind you that there’s work you could be doing. Instead, it gives you tips for how to tackle the work you’ve decided to do.

Her first tip is to start a daily writing practice. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, and struggle to build up consistency. So I went beyond Dr. Linder’s help, and went to another favorite scholar of mine, Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega. He offers four strategies, both for creating a good container in your schedule for writing, and for deciding what to write when you’re making it a point to write daily so you don’t just stare at a blank screen for 15 minutes a day.

The first of his tips involves working to deadline like Wendy Belcher suggests in her book, Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. So I “got out” my ebook copy of that book and looking through the table of contents, discovered that she has a whole chapter dedicated to responding to journal feedback.

Well, I’ve been sitting on an accepted with revisions article for well over a year, and it’s pretty embarrassing. The other day I sat down to make the revisions and got overwhelmed quickly. I ordered a print of both the article and the reviewer comments from Staples, so that should be here soon. And now I have this schedule from Belcher’s book that’s got me ready to actually get down to it.

So here I am, essentially going to do Dr. Jo Van Every’s 15 minute #acwri challenge, using this revision to launch my daily writing practice. Guess what Internet? You’re my writing buddy and you’re going to keep me accountable.

Here’s the schedule:

4/15 - 4/19, Read through p. 298 in the book and follow the instructions for reading the editor’s letter and reviewers’ reports.
4/20 - 4/26, Identify which journal decision was made and decide how I will respond.
4/27 - 5/2, Prepare a list of recommended changes and how I plan to respond to them.
5/3 - 5/9, Revise the article.
5/10 - 5/16, Draft my revision cover letter and send the article back out.

Basically, a month to turn this thing around. And I’m going to try to have my (sadly at different times of day, thanks coronavirus) work schedule be:

First 15 minutes: Settle in, review to-do list. Second 15 minutes: Write. Remaining time: Work on data collection and other tasks.

Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. I’m a learner who writes.

📺 So is Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist a jukebox-musical version of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend?

I’m sure there are grad students for whom a list of ways to stay productive right now might be useful, but I am not one of them.

I just DMed 6 cosplayers on Instagram to invite them to participate in my study. 5 were in person acquaintances, 1 was recommended by a friend. Feels like I’m actually, you know, gonna do research!

Sometimes, as an exercise to give me insight into what I should be focusing on, where I should put my attention, whenever I’m choosing an activity rather than fulfilling an obligation, I ask myself, What would I do if money were no object?

For at least a few years now, maybe longer, the answer has been that I would learn in public. That’s it. My perfect day would be that I would get up, have a walk and breakfast with my family, take my kid to school, then pop on a podcast about whatever I’m learning, go home and spend the morning writing about what I learned yesterday, and the afternoon learning some more: reading or listening or watching or, most importantly, practicing whatever my new thing is. And then I’d get the kid, and we’d learn something together, and then maybe go for another walk, and have dinner as a family. And then I’d play games of some sort, and eventually I’d go to bed.

It’s kind of amazing that I just banged out that perfect day so quickly, because I’ve been thinking about the perfect day exercise for years, and been stumped, and just now as I was writing about learning in public I realized that this is it.

Something else I’ve been moving toward and that really gelled for me this morning is the idea that, even though money is an object, I can still learn in public. Whatever new thing I’m doing, I can write about it.

And then, of course, I realized that I’ve actually been doing that for years, too.

Hm. And oh hey, look, when I first bought the domain name kimberlyhirsh.com, I even said that the whole point of the thing was to write about what I’m learning.

But now I’m going to do it a little more deliberately, I think. A bit more consciously. I’m toying with the idea of doing something like they do on the By the Book podcast, picking a domain and then within that domain picking a book or website or whatever and then applying everything I learn from that resource, and blogging about it the whole way. We’ll see. I’m starting with Jeff Goins’s book, You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One). He said, “Commit to writing something–anything–today. Maybe… Write it just to get it out. Right. Now.” And here we are.

🎮 I think Tifa is my fave now? I always liked her, but now I like her best?

🎮 It’s happening.