Monographs

I attended a workshop for young faculty (I'm young!...well for faculty...). It was about writing, something I feel I struggle with a lot. I do alright (pretty high output) but I then read something that JD Dalcanton or her many students has written and have to just admire the writing.

Much of writing is the editing of course. I am re-learning that as I am now editing down a MsC report into an A&A paper. It's tough and requires focus. Focus is where is all lies really. The ability to do deep work. And distractions aren't just the UPS flights that land practically on my head here. It's twitter, facebook, politics global and local etc. It all...distracts...

So I read the book by Scalzi on writing ("Your hate mail will be graded" etc) and I try this blog. Quick writing exercises.

Back to the workshop. These are very considerate in that these are organized. How do I write? Put all my effort in grant writing? Papers? And the question came up on the writing of a book (monograph) which is essentially a requirement for tenure in certain fields (not astronomy thankfully) and the advice was to get up at the crack of dawn (middle of the night really) and write 1-2 hours with a word count target. Edit later but hammer out that word count. Unfortunately the advice on prioritizing is...harder for a panel to give and thus we end up with Do All The Things once more...

It struck me also how it strange it is that a University requires such a Deep Work effort all the while not really providing the environment to hammer it out. Now I strongly suspect nothing but gibberish would appear if I start writing at 5am but I agreed with the carve-out-time-interval and dedicate it to writing and also that it should be every workday. And mornings should hopefully work best. But 5am? Really?

So here goes...blog/articles/grant prop...

PS: I am glad there is no need for another astronomy book. I would have serious issues getting up so early and write one...