#AcWriMo Week One

Week one of #AcWriMo has been over for three days now, but I am feeling pretty good about my progress so far (as always, you can track everyone's progress on the #AcWriMo Accountability Spreadsheet). So, in the last ten days I have:

• Finished the book manuscript! There is still more work to do. My partner is going to read the Epilogue (formerly 'Conclusion'), and I will make some changes after that. There are still three (of seven) images to find, and place markers appropriately into the text. Of course, there will (in time) be readers reports and suggestions from the editor, so that will all need to be dealt with. But for now, it's finished. And it will be ready to send off by the 14th, which was my original goal. November 14th is one year since my PhD viva, so I thought an appropriate occasion to send off the book manuscript.
• Written about my teaching! But again, there is still more work to do. Last Friday my teaching was observed as I prepare an application for Fellowship to the Higher Education Academy through teaching recognition. For this I had to prepare a plan of my lesson, write a bit about what I was going to do in the class and why, and a bit about the implications of the class. I spent this afternoon at a workshop about the rest of the application, so I am going to make a start on that very soon. 
• Tweeted #AcWriMo Encouragement! At the start of the month I pledged to tweet someone some encouragement every day. I randomly select a person by scrolling though the Accountability Spreadsheet (starting from a different position every day) to find someone who has reported for the day in question. I try to be specific in my encouragement (so, for example: the person I tweeted today's goal was to finish a draft of their PhD thesis, so I commented that I hoped it was going well).

I tweeted the other day that I was going to blog about why I was a bit disappointed with my progress at the end of week one, but I'm not when I think about it. I am very pleased with my actual progress. I am disappointed with my self-discipline, and I am disappointed that I haven't 'exceeded' my expectations (even though I am ahead of where I had planned to be). My disappointment comes from a deep place of academic guilt, I think. It comes from the hope that I can do everything humanly possible to ensure I get a job next year (and continuing!) but logically I realise that's impossible. All I can do is everything I am currently doing and hope that I also get lucky.

Tomorrow is my day off with Child (seen above, 'working' as I work), and I hope to do a little bit of reading, and some work on my research proposal while she is at ballet. Thursday and Friday will be dedicated to getting the manuscript in tip-top shape, and starting to flesh out my (next) book proposal. And that book proposal will be the task for next week. 

And then continuing...