A week of writing, reading and being

I have once again been thinking about whether to bin or re-launch the blog. Given that I have just spent a week away predominantly for writing and writing is definitely a habit that gets easier the more you do it, I am going to try and stick with it and see what happens! Just excuse the outdated stuff while I get organised.

I have had great success with writing retreats of various forms in the past. But they have always been either half a day or a day and it has been a very very long time since I have had the luxury of concentrated writing time. In order to ensure I can actually do the DBA, I negotiated a week per academic year in addition to my annual leave to take off specifically for working on the thesis. I did of course have all sorts of plans of being way further ahead when I booked the week. I had plans of mapping out empirical work and refining already drafted chapters… but I think it still worked out really well.

Before going I had done no real work on the thesis. I had submitted my final assignment which was the research proposal but I haven’t had my mark and feedback yet so I have not been able to complete the transfer to thesis paperwork or have supervisors assigned. In some ways I am therefore working a little blind. Before going, I had spent a little bit of time searching for relevant literature with a particular focus on the theoretical framework and I saved a whole load of journal articles and links and obviously some of the work had already been done for the proposal. That was the extent of my preparation. Just before leaving I picked up some key edited collections on legal education from my book shelves and crammed them in my bag.

You can see how the week went in a bit of silly fun reflection here. But in essence, I spent day 1 travelling there and settling in, days 2-4 working on stuff and day 5 packing up and heading home and being a bit grumpy and tired. The plan for the week had been to get the context chapter as written as possible and then spend time on the literature review with a focus on the theoretical framework sections. I wanted to work in roughly 45 minute bursts with alternating short and longer breaks. The shorter breaks were going to be little 10 minute yoga flows, a quick hot tub dip or just a cup of tea outside and the longer ones were to be longer hot tub or yoga breaks, walks, other exercise or just chatting with Kath. I was also intending to go for a run most mornings if not all.

True to recent form I did not manage to be awake enough to run first thing. It used to be pretty much the only time I could run and now I just can’t seem to get going. So running before anything else didn’t actually work. I did get out for 2 runs though and I am actually pretty happy with that given how much I have struggled with running recently. The rest worked pretty well. 45 minutes is a good time for a concentrated session and the breaks worked well. I didn’t set an alarm. It wasn’t that sort of week. My wake up times were dramatically different. So one day I didn’t start working until 9ish and another day I’d done yoga and has breakfast by 6.30. I also didn’t have a clear set finish time in mind. On day 1 and 4 we booked the pool for a swim at 7pm and on day 1 I did a little more after that and on day 4 I wanted to spend the last evening there with Kath so I didn’t log back on.

On reflection I think I actually did quite a lot. I finished a first draft of my context chapter – focused on policy contexts of legal education and social justice. It’s too long at the moment – I think some of what I included actually belongs in the literature review and other bits are too historical and probably not relevant for the thesis in the end. I feel like it is a solid first draft that can sit until I have a clearer idea of where the empirical work is taking me and can adjust for relevance and focus then. This chapter came to me fairly easily. It’s mostly stuff I am familiar with, have read lots about and which is so part of my day to day work that it really didn’t feel too difficult to get about 7000 words down quickly. Once I had that where I felt like I could leave it, I turned my attention to the literature review.

I quickly realised that I was not going to focus on the theoretical framework like I had planned. While I had all the literature there with me, saved on my computer, I hadn’t printed any of it and I just wasn’t up for reading on screen. So instead I spent a bit of time mapping the various sections of the literature review and trying to work out what would go in each section and what order they would work in. Then I turned my attention to the books I had brought with me. In total I read about 15 book chapters that I deemed relevant to the literature review headings. I used sticky tabs and a highlighter (yes, I highlight in my books and I understand the anxiety this will cause some of you – sorry) and then spent the afternoon and evening of Day 4 adding in key points and some nice quotes under the various headings and getting some of my immediate thoughts down. All in all I ended up with around 10000 words written – made up of a complete context chapter and a fairly well mapped our literature review with some initial thoughts.

It was an interesting week and I would definitely recommend that sort of away time for thinking and writing. I was surprised at how quickly I settled in. I definitely write better and am more focused in the morning and later in the evening. Quite frankly I should not be left unsupervised in the afternoon – I don’t function well at all. In the morning or last thing, the 45 minute sessions overran – not by much but I just wasn’t clock watching at all. In the afternoon I would lose concentration much more quickly and had to force myself to keep working. In fact by Day 4 I gave up any pretence of really trying and moved from the dining table to the sofa. In the morning I also kept the breaks between the 45 minutes very short, even 10 minute yoga felt almost too long (but was definitely good for a brain re-fresh) but in the afternoon I was more prone to lingering and ‘just another minute’.

Next time I do anything like this I will try and prep better and make sure I print anything I want to read, otherwise I just won’t. I will also make sure I have jobs like formatting, basic editing and sorting out references etc to do in the afternoon. That way I can do really useful work and feel good about it but not have to do the heavy thinking and writing when I’m more like the bear of very little brain than anything else. We got a lot of things right during the week, healthy but easy to prepare food as well as some treats like ginger nut biscuits to dunk in tea, taking our yoga mats and running gear, not setting alarms, not having major plans and spending less time doing, and more time just being. I think we got the balance right. Part of me wonders what would happen if we did a Friday to Friday or Monday to Monday and how much difference the extra days might make. What sort of rhythm would I settle into then? But I was tired on Friday. Productivity dropped and working on the thesis switched from being fun and exciting and something for me to something that felt like a chore, another thing that has to be done. So I think maybe the Monday to Friday cabin is actually just right for keeping the fun and excitement of the research as well as getting stuff done or a longer stint but with some deliberate half days or a full day off in the middle might also work.

Now for keeping the momentum going – watch this space.