Some people equate being highly prolific writers and researchers with producing dross. They prefer to constantly refine and perfect The One Idea they have. Perhaps because they think their idea is so special. Perhaps because they think they’ll never have another idea again. Either way, we believe that the best way to improve is to be unashamedly and un-apologetically productive – writing lots, failing lots, picking yourself up, writing more and improving. [click to continue…]
Expert advice
Writing sprints provide boundaries, which give you clarity. Without boundaries, you get ambiguity – as any good parent or pet owner will tell you, you need lines that shouldn’t be crossed to avoid red-faced temper tantrums or Fido sleeping on your bed. When you’re a writer, ambiguity results in procrastination and/or perfectionism. So, as New Year looms into view, here is our 7-step training plan for running a personal writing sprint you can use to turbocharge your writing in 2019. [click to continue…]
Everyone has their own method of coaxing their creative gene out of the bottle – but the myth still lingers that true creativity only appears when the mind is set free from constraint and allowed to wander. Whilst it might work for some, research now proves that to be creatively productive requires you working within boundaries and creative limits. Setting limits on your creativity sharpens up your thinking and makes you more productive long term. But how do you limit creativity without limiting it?
So – you’re committed. Your New Year’s resolution is to write. But whether you want to kickstart your blog, finish that manuscript or get that burning idea out of your head – you need a plan. After all, you won’t want your 2019 writing resolution to go the same way as 92% of other resolutions (ie. the wrong way). So, here’s our practical, 9-step guide to making sure your writing resolution sticks in January – and beyond. [click to continue…]
Starting out in any career is going to be tough – and academia’s no different. But the interim findings of our study into scholarly writing practice suggest that early career researchers – those in years one and two of their career – find it particularly tough and that’s something that could impact their publishing productivity and wellbeing long term. [click to continue…]
Why is being prolific so important for long-term success as a writer? And how can you develop your own creative process so you can be more prolific? That’s what Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn podcast asked me. Here’s an edited extract of the interview where we discuss how to be prolific. [click to continue…]
Can Prolifiko be used for other working projects aside from writing? After spending 20 years working in offices, publishing supremo Simon Linacre landed a plumb, home-based job for US company. But he soon came to realise that teleworking can be tough without the structures of an office environment. So he decided to find out whether Prolifiko could help him work from home more productively. [click to continue…]
Beta reading relationships are a great way of being held accountable in your writing practice. In this first part of a series on how to shape an accountability relationship, we look at critiquing partners and talk to a pair of writers who met on a writing course – and have been reading and giving feedback on each other’s writing ever since.
You might think you have a publishing plan for your PhD but what if it’s the wrong one for you and your academic career? Academic publishing expert Simon Linacre, director of international marketing and development at Cabells, argues that being strategic is about where, how and when you publish your research – and this makes all the difference between scholarly success and failure. [click to continue…]
Have you ever start a challenging writing routine or a new fitness regime only for it to fail a few days later? If so, don’t blame yourself – blame your brain! When you take on something that’s too ambitious or too complicated, you can trigger your brain’s fear centre – and this leads to overwhelm. But you can control your brain using two simple methods, both harnessing the power of neuroscience… [click to continue…]