Every six months through the writing of my thesis, the university would request something official be filled in and sent back to the research office, signed off by me, my supervisor and my head of school. This was called the progress report. At the time, I found these forms absolutely ridiculous, just another piece of red tape waste of time hoop to jump through. Now, however I am starting to see their value…in principle at least.

Because I find that unless I set myself strict deadlines for my various research and writing projects very little gets done. It’s so easy for deadlines to slip further and further out of reach, gradually fading into the horizon. So I have to set myself clear short, mid and long term goals for anything to even look like it’s getting done.

With this in mind I have set myself the following timetable of writing:
500 words a day for 8 days out of the next 10. This gives me some leeway…for interruptions at work. It is also a manageable amount of writing to achieve in a day in between actual work duties.
That also still gives a further seven days for rewriting and redrafting (which I also do along the way).
I have also been finding the 6000 word minimum word limit quite daunting because this is not writing that is being cribbed out my thesis. And I think I have been angsting on it fairly unnecessarily. Because a lot of this writing is “from scratch” (something that has not happened for at least 2 years truth be told) and it seems like I am learning to write all over again at this stage. So what I have decided today, after a sensible conversation with Anne, is just to do as much as I can saying what I want to say and even if it’s a bit less, send it in.
I also decided that if I don’t get it into a form that I feel is right for this particular call I’ll finish it anyway and find somewhere else to send it.

There endeth the progress report.