End of Year Check-In … 2013 is nearly over!

There are many ways a writer can stay motivated.

Setting small goals and meeting them is one example. However, setting big goals also can be helpful.

Setting large goals for the year, for example, can help you to think about the big picture. And, once you meet those goals, it can be useful to think about all you have done so that you can develop motivation to move forward.



The trick is to set reasonable goals and reasonable expectations for meeting them.

The end of the year is a great time to go back to your big goals and see all that you have accomplished during the year.

As I was looking over what I did for last month, I was a bit down because most of what I did was to continue to revise works in progress. It can be hard to see the progress I am making when all I have to say for November is that I revised a chapter and an article and they are still unfinished.

To pull myself out of that slump, I decided to look at all I have done over the course of 2013. And, it turns out I have some major accomplishments to report.

I have been working on a fifteen-chapter textbook for just about three years. I wrote the first chapter in early 2011 and have been moving forward slowly ever since. This was the year for the final push and I managed to write the final six chapters this year! That is 48,000 new words. In addition, I returned to the reviews and made final revisions on each of the chapters. The final deadline for the textbook revisions was December 6, so the book is now officially in production. The book will be out in August 2014, and I will certainly celebrate that. (If you are curious, I have details about the book here.)

I also have been working on a book on deportees for a while. I completed the interviews in August 2010. I finished going through the transcriptions, writing memos and doing the preliminary analyses of the interviews in January 2011. I have been writing up the chapters ever since. In 2012, I wrote the Introduction and the first three chapters. In 2013, I wrote chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 – four new chapters or about 40,000 words!

In addition to those two books, I have also been working on articles and book chapters for edited volumes. I wrote and submitted one book chapter and one article based on the interviews with deportees. I also wrote a rough draft of another article. Those three pieces overlap somewhat with the book manuscript, but are not exactly the same.

While writing this, I looked back to see what I did in 2012, and my productivity was similar – five textbook chapters and four chapters of the deportee book in addition to a few shorter pieces. It is good to know that I can maintain a consistent writing pace. It is also remarkable to me that my productivity for 2012 and 2013 were so similar. Perhaps I really have found my writing groove! As I mentioned last year, I have been able to accomplish all of this writing by maintaining a consistent writing habit of two hours a day, five days a week.

I find looking back over my accomplishments to be rewarding. It also gives me energy to move forward and keep up momentum for next year.

Now that I am finished with the race textbook, I can focus all of my energies on revising and submitting the book on deportees. There is no doubt that I can be finished with the revisions by Spring 2014. This is fantastic, as I am ready to be done with it!

Once I finish the deportee manuscript, I can work on the three articles I have drafts of. And, then I can move on to my next project!

What about you? Did you make goals for 2013? Have you met them?

Negotiating an Academic Job Offer: What are the Secrets?

The academic job market is difficult, but people are still getting job offers. When you do get a job offer, how do you negotiate? Should you negotiate? I think the answer is yes and I offer some tips for how to negotiate in this post.




For my first job offer, I did not negotiate at all. I had heard I was supposed to negotiate. However, I had no idea where to start or what to ask for. I meekly asked for more moving expenses. The chair said he could not budge on moving expenses. Instead, he offered me $1,000 more in salary and I took the offer.

I had interviewed at another place, yet withdrew from the search before (potentially) receiving an offer. I had heard that I could use a second offer to negotiate, but I feared that I would appear greedy.

It was my first academic job and I was happy to have a job at all. So, I did not negotiate for a better salary.

I am not alone. Only seven percent of women negotiate when they get a job offer, as compared to 57% of men!

After six years in my first job, it became clear that my salary was not competitive. I asked my senior colleagues for advice on how I might get a raise. They told me that the only way to get a raise was to go on the job market and get another offer. So, I sent off three job applications.

One of those applications turned into an interview and then a job offer. The job offer included a significantly higher salary and a substantial amount of perks that I did not have at my then-current position.

Still, I did not want to regret not having negotiated. And, after six years as a professor, I had heard plenty of stories of people getting more resources when they negotiated. So, I decided to ask for more resources in each of the following categories:

• base salary
• research funds
• conference funds
• equipment funds
• course releases
• summer salary
• moving expenses
• housing allowance

For each thing I asked for, I gave a justification. When I asked for help with housing, I explained that I would be unlikely to be able to sell my house due to the housing crisis. When I asked for course releases, I said I would use the time to write a grant. When I asked for research funds, I explained what I would do with the money.

I made out my list of requests and accompanying justification, ran it by a few trusted people, and sent it to the Dean.

I didn’t get everything I asked for, but the Dean was willing to give me some of the things I asked for.

What I found interesting about the process is how simultaneously hard and easy it is. It is hard to work up the nerve to ask for stuff. But once you have the nerve to ask for things and know what to ask for, negotiating is remarkably easy. You ask for it and the Dean either says yes or no.

In my case, the Dean said yes to some things, met me halfway on others, and said no to others.

I took the letter back to my university and they offered me a substantial raise, research funds, and course releases. The hard part was making a decision: should I stay at my job with improved resources or should I leave and venture off into unknown territory?

Eventually, I decided to move because the new job and location seemed like the best option for my family and I was ready for something a bit different professionally.

Now that I have the job and the accompanying resources, I am glad I negotiated because I feel like I got the best deal possible. In my first job, I always had that nagging feeling that I should have negotiated.

The important lesson here is that you never know what you will get if you ask, but you can be sure that if you don’t ask, you won’t get anything.

It's November, also known as #AcWriMo

For the past couple of years, academic writers on social media have begun to participate in #AcWriMo - Academic Writing Month - the academic version of National Novel Writing Month.



I first heard about #AcWriMo from PhD2Published - which has a post announcing and describing the 2013 version of #AcWriMo. I have done #AcWriMo for the past two years - using my Twitter account.

I plan to do it again this year, and I hope you will join me.

Here are the four basic components of #AcWriMo that you might find helpful:

• Decide on your goals. These goals can be simple or multifaceted. For example, you can have a goal of writing 750 words every weekday, or completing four pomodoros every day, or finishing a draft of an article.
• State your goals in a public forum. You can do this on Twitter using the hashtag #AcWriMo. You can do it on the public spreadsheet created by PhD2Published. You can start an accountability group over email with friends. You can post your goals in the comment section below. You can do it anywhere you like. But, don't skip this step!
• Post your progress. If you are on Twitter, you can post daily updates using the #AcWriMo hashtag. If you are on Facebook, PhD2Published also has a Facebook page where you can post. It is important to have public accountability, because it actually works!
• Declare your successes at the end of November and celebrate!

In the spirit of public accountability, here are my November writing goals.

During the month of November, I will write for at least two hours each day. Most of my work is revising, so I will stick with a time goal, as opposed to a word count goal. When I am doing new writing, I will try to produce 500 new words a day.

My specific writing goals include:

1. Put the final touches on OUP15 - the last chapter of the race text I am writing!
2. Revise DEP5 - the fifth chapter of my book on deportees that is nearly finished.
3. Finish writing DEP6 - the sixth chapter of my book on deportees that is in disarray.
4. Pull together a first draft of DEP7 - the seventh chapter of the same book that is all in pieces.
5. Finalize ASA conference paper.
6. Work on grant for next project and submit to any November deadlines.

I will post my progress on Twitter. Happy #AcWriMo!

How to Read A Lot

A few weeks ago, I posted a picture of a stack of books on Facebook that I had on my list of books I need to read. I know many other scholars also have similar stacks of books and articles they plan to read because I have seen such stacks. After posting that picture, a few people wrote to me to ask how I am able to keep up on reading.

I posted that picture nearly three weeks ago, and have gotten through five of those books. This post will explain how I keep up with my reading, amidst my other responsibilites.

As I reflected on my reading process as well as this thoughtful post on reading by David Leonard, I realized that my reading habits have changed over time.

Reading like a single, childless graduate student

My first year of graduate school, it seems all I did was read. My first semester, I read a big book for theory and another book for my race seminar each week. In addition, I did background reading for my first seminar paper. I’d come home from the library with stacks of books and would read them voraciously. With few commitments in my life other than graduate school, I just read all the time.

Fortunately, in my first semester of graduate school, my theory professor Charles Kurzman suggested to all of us that we take notes on every single thing we read and that we label the computer files with a .nts extension. I still have those notes from that semester and the semesters since.

When you have few externally imposed limits on your time, to read a lot, all you need is passion and perseverance.

Reading like a graduate student with small children

My twin daughters were born in my fourth semester of graduate school. If I read anything that semester, it was on how to survive being a mother of twin infants. However, when my twins were five months old, I went back to graduate school and had to figure things out again.

My third year of graduate school was the year I took my comprehensive exams – which meant I had to get through two lists of 100 readings each. To do this, I worked with a group of two other students also studying for these exams, and we made goals for ourselves of the readings we planned to get through and met weekly to talk about those readings. To get through the readings, I left my twins at home with my husband from 9am to around 3pm each day and went to the university to read and take notes. I also would read if and when the twins took naps in the afternoon and evening.

Reading like a new faculty member with small children

When I got my first job, my twins were four years old and my youngest daughter was one year old. We did different things with childcare over the first few years of my job. However, one thing remained constant, and that was that I did not have responsibility over the children between 9am and 5pm.

With small children, it was important for me to be home with them after 5pm. It was also important for me to focus on my work for eight hours each day. Thus, I carved out time during the day to read. I would try and spend at least an hour a day reading.

One other thing I did during this time to keep up with my reading is that, two or three days a week, I would take the kids with me to the gym so that my husband could prepare dinner in peace. The kids would go to the daycare of the gym and I would read for class the following day while on the treadmill or the elliptical.

Reading like a tenured faculty member with children in middle school

When I took my new position at UC Merced, my twins were in their first year of middle school. Middle school has meant that my children are no longer in afterschool programs, and thus get home between 3pm and 4pm. For me, this has meant that I often also need to be home around this time to help my children with their homework and to keep them on track. I have found that I am no longer able to keep a 9 to 5 schedule.

However, another thing has changed, which is that, once my kids are done with their homework, they no longer require my immediate attention. In addition, we have instituted a “no electronics after 8pm” rule in my house. This means that, at 8pm, everyone has to turn off their devices and go into their rooms and read.

I also take this time to read. I find that I generally have enough energy to get in one to two hours of reading after 8pm. I use this time to read for my graduate seminar and to get through my stack of books.

My reading habits have changed over time, but what has remained constant is that reading gets done if and only if I carve out the time for it.

I should also say, in closing, that I also make time to read fiction – either in the evenings, on weekends, or when I travel. This year, I have read every single work by Octavia Butler, inspired by my colleague Erica Williams, who did the same. I also read books by Tayari Jones, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Tannarive Due.

What about you? What are your reading habits? Do you make time for fiction? Do you read mostly books or articles? Do you use a Kindle or do you prefer paper?