My family and I recently moved into a new house, and with new views and rooms has come the challenge of turning this empty house into a home. One aspect I was especially excited about was the way the empty house served as a blank canvas for me to create a home for my family. Fast forward a few months, and I’m in the middle of my living room with my collection of decor strewn around me as I stare at my empty bookcases. My goal is to create beautiful vignettes in my bookcases. That one small word—vignette, a fancy way of saying 'beautifully put-together decorations on a surface'--belies the inc ..read more

 In his 2017 bestselling book Finish, author Jon Acuff writes, "I thought the biggest problem for people was the phantom of fear that prevented them from beginning...Fear was the ghost holding them back and starting was the only way to beat it. I was half right. The start does matter. The beginning is significant. The first few steps are critical. But they aren't the most important. Do you know what matters more? Do you know what makes the start look silly and easy and almost insignificant? The finish." Last March I introduced the blog's 2021 theme of Motivation. This year--a year actua ..read more

I can't believe it's already the end of December. It seems this past year was both unending and insanely short. (Or is that just me?) I introduced the blog's theme of motivation in March and--while it hasn't been a full year--it seems fitting to look back at that theme and start planning for 2022. (It will probably be March again before I'm able to write 2022 without either first writing 2021 or feeling the need to double-check that I'm not making up a year). My WriteCast cohost, Claire Helakoski, will be posting an episode focused on SMARTER goals at the beginning of next month and the discu ..read more

How does confidence impact writing and the motivation to write? What adds to our confidence when it comes to writing, and what diminishes it? How can a writer maintain, develop, or rebuild confidence in their writing skills? I've been pondering these questions lately. In fact, I decided to do a bit of research into the topic to find out what the literature says about confidence and academic writing. As a writing instructor, i want to make sure I'm doing all I can to help boost the confidence of the students I work--in addition to teaching about things like structure, synthesis, flow, and for ..read more

Two of our recent blog posts on motivation (and several other Walden Writing Center resources created in the past) mentioned the Pomodoro method as a helpful technique for productive writing. The technique was developed by university student Francesco Cirillo,  who was inspired to develop a time-management system based on a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. The heart of the system is breaking down tasks into three 25-minute sessions of uninterrupted work followed by a 5-minute break, and then one final 25-minute work session followed by a longer break after the completion of four consecutive ..read more

Sometimes just getting started writing can be the most daunting task. Even though I am an experienced writer, I still struggle when I start a writing project. However, once the first few sentences are on the page, I can generate ideas much more easily, and I experience what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1997) calls flow. In a state of flow, I lose myself in the joy of writing and forget about time and outside pressures. Flow is different than just enjoying an activity like binge watching a series on Netflix or eating a favorite food. You cannot engage in flow as a passive participan ..read more

You did it! You finished a draft of your document—huzzah! And now it’s time for the often-skipped, less desirable part of the writing process: revision. You might be wondering, ‘why should I take time to revise when I just spent all this time writing a draft in the first place?’ Well, I’m glad you asked! Here are some motivational arguments for and approaches to revision! Why Revise? Revision is an opportunity to take the great thing you wrote and make it better. And it can always get better! So, if you like your work to really shine, revision is for you! Not feeling like you have time to re ..read more

Have you ever come across a piece of writing, whether it was a novel or poem or even an academic paper, that impacted you in a memorable way? Maybe the author described something with words so beautiful it brought a literal smile to your face, or maybe they expressed an idea in a way that never occurred to you before and it changed the way you think about life.  I have. It’s part of why I love reading all kinds of literature, and it’s part of why I love writing. It’s also part of why I love teaching writing. The written word can change people’s lives; it can even change the world. At ..read more

When Kacy shared with me her vision for the blog in 2021, I was excited to hear about the focus on motivation. As I mentioned last September, productivity usually isn’t a problem for me. I wrote that September post earlier in the pandemic, and when I look back now, I realized I’m in an entirely different headspace now. As we head into the one-year anniversary of COVID lockdowns, I’ve hit what I’ve heard others refer to as the pandemic wall. The term “the pandemic wall” comes out of a Twitter thread from NPR host Tanzina Vega (she talks about “pandemic burnout”), and it refers to “the particu ..read more

2020 was...a year. One way to illustrate the kind of year it was: I'm introducing myself and the yearly blog theme for 2021 in March.  My name is Kacy Walz and I've been a Writing Instructor at Walden University since the end of 2016. I've written a few posts for the blog in the past and, this year, I'm excited to take the reigns. I'm also excited to share the theme of 2021's upcoming posts: motivation. I'm going to be honest with you. I have ulterior motives (pun completely intended) for selecting this theme. I'm a doctoral candidate currently working on my dissertation. And I've been ..read more