A few wrist stretches for editing
My co-author was doing his final read through of our big academic book, and complained to me that it made his wrists tired and tight
My co-author was doing his final read through of our big academic book, and complained to me that it made his wrists tired and tight
I’ve just finished a book, and my co-author and I had fun thinking about who we would like to thank in the Acknowledgements section, and you will need to do the same at some point. But you might also want to make a less formal, less constrained, more honest version!
You might love your PhD. Or you might have been told you are supposed to love your PhD. And love is weird, and complicated. PhDs are messy and complicated. Let’s talk about feelings.
Want to feel calm, get fired up, or find a balance? Give yourself 2 minutes and some mind control of your lungs, you can do it!
This year was the year of so much editing for me. Having two books coming out a few months apart meant that I had barely submitted responses to one set of edits than the edits for the other book would arrive in my inbox (sometimes I could count the breathing space in hours). It was tough for my brain to stay focussed, but it was also tough on my body.
If you are like me, you are used to having a to-do list and deadlines and plans, and really more work to do in the
Your brain is not seperate from your body. Your brain is an organ of your body, and it requires energy, hydration, blood flow and rest.
I can easily see how theory that is wrapped up in liberation, that sees and tries to help people in pain, can be understood as ‘healing’. I can see how philosophy that emerges out of the lived experiences of marginalised groups, allowing them to be seen and heard and valued, would be ‘healing’. But what about other kinds of theory?
I don’t know that I think you should make your writing sacred. But I do think that you could and you might like to. In any case, this thought-experiment about ‘what would it mean to make your writing sacred’ may help you to think through what you do think about your writing, how you define its meaning and place in your life, and what habits and environments you put around it to help you get that thesis written.
I am a massive fan of writing luxuries. Somehow the beautiful pencil or the diffuser scent or the ideal snack makes an outsized difference to how excited I am to sit at my keyboard. Maybe it’s a bourgeois trick, and maybe it’s self-care, and maybe it works for me and anything that works is worth exploring.
