LTUacwrimo wrap up - and looking forward to a summer of productive writing

The silent room at the RED writing retreat | Photo by Katherine Firth

La Trobe's Academic Writing Month (#LTUacwrimo) 2017 is finished for another year!

This is a perfect time to look back at where we started and reflect on our goals.

During November, we planned to work together to:
  •  Think about how we write,
  •  Form a valuable support network for our writing practice,
  •  Build better habits for the future, and
  •  Make progress towards our writing goals!
November is a busy time for academics, with marking, conferences, grants proposals and research all on our desks.

So, #LTUacwrimo can help you think about how to make progress even when it’s busy, and you may end up looking forward to December and January when many things other than writing are already starting to crowd out weekdays and evenings and weekends.

Perhaps you discovered writing warm ups, or the Pomodoro technique, or a new writing group? Or you may have realised that November was a time for starting new research projects, or for lots of final proof-reads of work going off to be published in January? Maybe you thought more deeply about publishing and authorship, or put some faces to names at the All Campus Shut Up and Write, or enjoyed going on a writing retreat? Did a blog post help you to think about how you write, or how you deal with feedback on your writing?

Six weeks ago, we set out the 6 basic steps of AcWriMo. Goals were decided and declared, strategies drafted, progress discussed, momentum maintained (or dropped and picked up again).

Now, it's time for the final step:
6. Declare your results. Tell us about your achievements via the #LTUacwrimo Twitter hashtag! Find a way to celebrate your successes!

And don’t stop there! While LTUacwrimo only lasts for a month, think about what strategies, support networks or techniques worked for you, and plan to integrate them into December, January, and the academic year ahead.

For researchers, in some sense, every month is academic writing month. At the beginning of this month, we reflected on the purpose of #LTUacwrimo:

November is a moment to celebrate writing, to get some words down or polished or submitted, but also a chance to celebrate the work researchers and graduate researchers do every week, and the work that Schools, Colleges, Research Centres, and central teams like RED do to promote academic writing every day for everyone. We hope the month is a chance for you to discover more about these opportunities, and to build them into your habits for the rest of the year and into 2018.

Workshops, drop ins and intensives, and Shut Up and Write will continue across La Trobe over the summer months.

Academic writing blog content is always available, you can read all the posts from the last 5 years here http://redwritinghood.blogs.latrobe.edu.au/search/label/AcWriMo.

So, as #LTUacwrimo 5 finishes up, here's to making 2018 another Academic Writing Year!

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