It’s clear that planning and executing a ‘new’ research project with multiple data collection processes — and the need to then make time to analyze these data — is too ambitious for my current workload (the project as a whole would be officially above and beyond my job responsibilities). However, as much as I’d enjoy being in a tenure track position focused on this kind of research project (which certainly would come with other pressures, for example to fund the project, to work with specific graduate students, to publish on a particular timeline perhaps), I have to work from the position I’m currently in: a lecturer teaching 3 or 4 classes in fall and spring, and 1 class over the summer (that is a lot of teaching, especially when at least two of those classes have about 100 students in them). So this post is about being realistic — and strategic — with my writing expectations.
But let me be honest with myself: I am constantly thinking out loud about my ideas, about what I’m observing and learning as I go through the world and work, and I enjoy developing my own ideas on the page — I do actually want to make time to do more of this. I can probably make about 3 hours a week (to start with) to work on writing, just by starting 3/5 days from 8-9am with writing. Furthermore, I’m not starting from scratch. On the contrary, I have been following my heart organizing the work that motivates me for some time, and now I want to do the work that connects the various projects I already have opened, tying them to my first central contribution to engaging the world from my shoes today.
Where I’m stuck is with outlining and sticking to a realistic objective. Is it: (a) another journal article, such as the one Ben is proposing I lead; (b) the book chapter that could happen with Duván and colleagues; (c) the book project, as I have begun outlining it, in some way including framing chapters at the front and back end, with case study chapters throughout? Okay, I know my ambition was for (c), so I should go for that, but getting there may necessarily involve going through (a) and (b), that is, by writing collaboratively with colleagues on separate pieces I can best develop the building block materials for (c). I have the room, I think, to steer and lead these pieces, while also having the beneficial support and inputs from colleagues, so I should go for it all — the trick becomes scheduling: what piece to start and finish first, how to balancing new arising work, etc., all within only 3 hours of writing a week? And even as I develop the individual pieces, will should still be working on the overall frame…
This is where a gantt chart probably makes sense [I will develop that elsewhere].
But the blog remains a key place for working out my ideas, for finding the language for expressing them effectively, perhaps for working on the framing literature context that houses the various case studies — that bigger picture integration that speaks to a wider audience’s concerns about ecological consciousness and social change.
So my next steps include: 1) the Gantt Chart, for mapping projects onto time; 2) a blog post per week, for developing a comfort zone in conversation with others working on related ideas (I don’t want to be writing in a vacuum, right, I want to find my own voice while situating my ideas in relation to other key contrasting and complimentary forms of thinking; 3) defining the parameters of the individual projects in ways that speak to the intersection of my interests and the interests of my collaborators; and there is a kind of 3a) point about research and data gathering whereby each collaborative project will require showcasing some evidence, a research methodology, a more defined literature review, I think. All together, this should lead to something like Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature or Denise Nadeau’s Counting our Victories, or Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism — these are some of the formats that I see as models for my work.
Is this realistic, is this strategic, is this too ambitious? I do have doubts and fears — will I be able to follow through? But even in the likelihood that some collaborative projects fall by the wayside or morph into something else, it seems to me still necessary to embark on a process of organizing writing across the evolution of these projects, rather than confining my mind to flailing and scattered work here and there. Let’s see what happens…
ecologicalconsciousnessdotorg 