“Parking your writing downhill” as a strategy to keep momentum with your academic writing

This blog post describes my understanding of the “parking your writing downhill” strategy to kickstart your academic writing or simply to keep going. It was Dr. Veronica Kitchen who first said to me that she usually “parks her writing downhill”. It sounded like such an interesting strategy that I had to research it.

How do you do it? How do you “park your writing downhill”?

Well, I researched the idea and found a few resources.

Here are a few resources on “parking your writing downhill” https://t.co/2fBsWL6gCAhttps://t.co/jBl5I9w9sChttps://t.co/O4dCV4ne2qhttps://t.co/dxFRX6NO3o

After reading all of these, I realized that I, too, park my writing downhill on a regular basis. Here’s how *I* do it:

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) March 15, 2022

And herein are a few of my own strategies to “park my writing downhill”.

1) I leave an article, book chapter or book on my desk, so I have materials to read first thing in the morning, as soon as I wake up. I normally do this reading with my first cup of coffee.

2) I leave unfinished paragraphs that I need to complete as prompts to get me going.

… the goal is to get sentences completed and paragraphs written: https://t.co/vbHefr5nAK

Think of every time you put pen to paper, or you start typing in your computer, it’s an opportunity to develop and further refine your writing practice.

Remember to set small goals.

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) March 15, 2022

There’s an important issue I want to raise here:

A writing practice does not emerge automagically. You need to give yourself reasonable goals that you can achieve. For me, a VERY reasonable writing goal in a session is 50, 75, 100, 125 words, 15 consecutive minutes of writing: https://t.co/Aedss19GxQ

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) March 15, 2022

You don’t need to “park your writing downhill” at night. I write in the mornings and early afternoons, maybe you do your creative work in the evenings and late at night. The point is to do the parking at the end of your writing session so you can “hit the ground running”.

Hopefully this blog post will help those who are struggling with their writing right now!