Guest post by Dr Chris Hill.

Previously, I wrote about the role of inspiration and mental well-being in productive writing practice. Here I explore how good sleep habits can improve your writing productivity.

If I am not happy and balanced, then it is no surprise that I am easily distracted and uninspired. And so, achieving balance and happiness will involve some kind of reflection on my thoughts and emotions. Let’s use techniques that can improve your mental well-being and cognitive performance to make you a more productive writer.

Here are the main things a writing coach can help with: Guide you with a methodical approach to writing; Analyse your writing for problematic patterns and show you ways to overcome them; Set deadlines to boost your writing dedication and productivity; and Provide writing and organisational tips to take that burden off your shoulders.

The writer Peter De Vries once famously quipped: I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired every morning at nine o’clock. It sounds like a quote about discipline and the rigour of regular practice, but seen another way, what De Vries is really talking about is inspiration.

If there’s one thing there’s never enough of in academia, it’s time. The elasticity of academic tasks can mean that you are constantly eating into your quiet thinking time, the time you reserve for working on your scholarly research. Here are some strategies to protecting your time from student grade appeals.

Is bad writing bad science? Bad science here refers to imprecision. Based on that idea, we can say that imprecise scientific writing—which is another way of saying “bad writing”—definitely creates bad science.

The main reason faculty were not signing up for my workshop was because of confirmation bias: “The fact that I am publishing confirms that I am a good writer, which means writing workshops are not for me.” But ask yourself this: Are you publishing in top-tier journals? Have you tried, but just can’t seem to make it? And have you considered that the problem may not simply be your research, but your writing?

Writing is a solitary act, but it doesn’t have to be done in solitude and isolation. A Zoom writing community (a.k.a. writing circle, writing group) is a space for writers to come together and write synchronously; it provides companionship and support, intellectual and emotional.