A short post today. There’s not too many people reading these days, anyway. I guess people don’t like to read about Italy or France, or about kids. People don’t like positive writing. Negativity sells. Don’t worry, in a couple of weeks I will be back to my daily rant about the horrors of academia, seen through the lens of an early career researcher, struggling in a different country.
The real reason why today’s post is shorter is another one though. I’ve been working on another blog post – a contribution to a major blog – which will accompany a recently accepted manuscript. (More on this soon.) It took me quite some time to write it yesterday and today. With this post I have already made it past my self-imposed daily word quote, so the purpose of the blog – to write every day – feels less important. Usually I have a pretty simple strategy for writing my posts, but even for academic writing. I first just ramble on. The goal is getting words out. Then I do a rough edit to get the story straight. Usually, that’s where I leave it for my personal blogs. It doesn’t need to be perfect. One of my goals is suppressing unrealistic perfectionism. With this particular blog post I’m now working on, I will also do a third edit, where I leave it to rest for a bit, ask my co-lead author to read it, and then do the final brush-up. The second edit is almost done, and I will hopefully finish tomorrow. When the post is up depends a bit on the journal, but it should not be too long. Anyway. I said I would keep it short, so that’s it for today.
Robin Heinen 