Happy New Year, Everyone!

Today is a great day to work on your writing project.  So many of us have big plans for the coming year, and its important to look for the tools and strategies that can help us stay on track.  We hope that FFPP’s academic community will be a resource for you as you build your career and set your writing goals.  Carrie Hintz former Mentor and Friend of FFPP offered some great advice “On Distraction and Tomatoes” about how to get a little bit of work done every day–even when teaching, committee work, and life make their demands on your time. You can also read it in last year’s “New Year, New Goals” post to our community of scholars.

FFPP Mentor Mark McBeth’s new book, Queer Literacies:  Discourses and Discontents was just published by Rowman & Littlefiled.   Congratulations to Mark!  He has some excellent advice about how he planned his work and worked his plan:

• Set a “Backwards Calendar” that sets a manuscript completion date as well as benchmark achievement of tasks that contribute to the final goal.  Some folks call it a “Reverse Calendar,” which you can read about here.
• Don’t beat yourself up when you miss a deadline.  Instead, reset it.
• Keep a journal that notes your accomplishments.  These notes can reassure you that you are indeed getting work done–and sometimes you need to pat yourself on the back.

Our Professional Development Day will take place on April 3.  We’ll have seminars and workshops on publishing books and articles, finding and writing grant and fellowships, on organizing your tenure and promotion files, on self-care and so much more.

Your Working Groups will meet from 10AM-1PM on these days–you can use your presentation dates as benchmark achievements toward your final goal:

February 7; February 21; March 6; March 20; April 24; May 8