Kiss Your Writing Worries Goodbye.

The Academic Writing Club has many components, but the heart of it is the small group accountability system found on the Daily Progress Page (See “Access Powerful Online Tools” above). Our goal is for you to learn the habit of writing for reasonably short periods of time daily. After you do your daily writing, no matter how much you wrote (or didn’t write), you check in with your group online small group, reporting your progress and any challenges, by answering daily questions. The group will then respond to you within the next day, giving you support and encouragement. You will also support and encourage other group members.

Please read this entire page carefully, especially the section entitled “Access Powerful Online Writing Tools.” Be sure to click on each tab on the left, to fully understand all that you get from the Academic Writing Club.

Believe it or not, you will save time in the long run if you join the Club. There are several reasons for this. You will manage your time better. You will find times for your very important long-term writing that you didn’t know you had. The encouragement from your peers and coach will make your emotional state steadier, enabling you to do more and to take time off.

Finally, our extensive data shows that on average, each club member spends seven or eight minutes a day on the site. Surely you can afford that amount of time in order to write and publish more? What is the cost of not getting that paper in, not finishing that chapter, not completing your dissertation, not publishing enough for promotion or tenure? It really is worth 8 minutes a day!

No. As a matter of fact, unless you feel the need to share, most people won’t know what your specific area of work is. Neither your coach nor your fellow group members will read your work. The Writing Club is all about helping you write a reasonable amount each day, so that all the distractions or urgent deadlines don’t continue to come before your all-important long-term writing. For that reason, we focus on your process of writing, not the content of your writing.

No. See previous FAQ, “Will anyone read my writing?”

No, the Academic Writing Club is not a course. The community discussions, classes and Challenge Chats are all extremely useful, but optional. Our main goal is to help you write more by writing for reasonably short periods daily, thus developing a writing habit that allows you to live a manageable and enjoyable life. Therefore, the accountability part of the Club, namely the Daily Progress Page (See “Access Powerful Online Tools” above), is the most important part of your experience in the Club.

We announce the schedule of classes/groups/chats at the beginning of each session.

That’s the beauty of a program like this, which gives you the most important support you need in an “asynchronous” way. In other words, the members of your group are potentially there 24/7. You might post in the Progress Grid about your writing challenges on Friday, Jan 7, 9:00 am in Australia; and someone in New York City will read your response an hour later at 7:00 pm on Thursday, Jan. 6. That person will then comment, and you will get the full benefit of the comment, along with the support and feeling of collegiality. We have many members in Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, and of course all over Europe.

Similarly, our coaching groups and classes are all recorded and made available on the site in a downloadable mp3 format, and you are always reminded to submit comments or questions ahead of time. Our Challenge chat sessions will be held at different times of the day to accommodate most time zones.

Yes. We have many highly experienced professors, some of whom have published a great deal, who find their motivation flagging or are unsure about the direction of their next research project. Often, tenured professors are so drained after being granted tenure that they need some structure to get going again. For whatever reason, most people on earth need accountability, structure, support, or reminders at various stages of their life! Needless to say, you will not be alone when you join.

Absolutely! One of the research-based premises of the Academic Writing Club is the idea that writing helps you find out what you think, and even what you know. It’s difficult to move forward in your thinking if you don’t write. So, even when you don’t know what you’re going to write that day, you should write anyway. You can write messy drafts and delete them, make lists of options for your topic, debate pros and cons of various approaches, or do anything that moves you forward. Even bad writing and dead ends will get you to your goal faster than writing nothing. You will save months or even years of dissertation writing if you use this technique!