writing · Francisca Concha-Ramírez

Not quite an habit yet

2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

I haven’t been to constant with this blog lately, but I have been constant with writing, which is what matters, right? :D

I feel like the biggest reason why I haven’t been writing here is because, even though my writing has been consistent since my last update, my writing habit has not been.

What I mean with this is that I’ve been writing a lot, and in general doing at least 1 writing block almost every day, but they have been… messy. Since I was away from my office for all of September and the first days of October, when I returned I had a lot to catch up with. I was working remotely when away, but there is some stuff that just works better when I actually am sitting at my desktop computer and not connected to it through not-always-trustworthy internet connections.

So I returned and I started getting a lot into actual technical work, developing scripts, profiling them, and such. When I first arrived I though I would not have time to keep up my writing. But it turns out that the code I’m working with right now takes a while to run; depending on the inital conditions I use it can be anywhere from 20 minutes to 32 hours (but most tests I’ve ran fall within the less than 1h mark). So I have actually been doing my writing in between code runs. I just felt bad wasting all that time. So when I say I’ve been filling up about one 1-hour writing block I day, I mean that I’ve done it in chunks of around 20 minutes.

This is… not bad, but also not great. I have kept writing, which is good. But I’ve noticed that around the 20 minute mark is when I usually started getting more focused and the writing starts flowing better, and then I have to stop. Of course I could keep going, but my priority right now is developing this script so as soon as it’s finished I want to know how it went and fix bugs.

So yeah, the habit part of the thing has not been doing well, but the writing has. Also: we revived our PhD writing group! It sounds kind of pompous, but it’s just 4 PhD students. We meet every two weeks and set accountability goals related to writing. I wrote about it a bit in my original post. There I also mentioned that we used to have a 9am writing block on Thursdays, which has also revived, but I’ve missed all of them. I my defense I have to say it was not for not waking up on time (I am actually arriving to the office before 9am every day, which is CRAZY for me), but because I’ve had a lot of conflicting meetings and appointments. Hopefully I’ll start joining next week.

So, no block-planning this time. I’m not even sure on which week of the challenge I’m on! And I’m not counting weeks for any particular reason, so it doesn’t matter. The nature of my work right now will keep my writing schedule messy until at least the end of the year, I think – but hey, at least I haven’t stopped writing!

Except on my writing blog, of course :P

Working away from the office

2018-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

Whew! What a few crazy weeks these have been. In less than two weeks I aced my Dutch 2 test (9/10! :D), traveled to Belgium for a wedding, then flew to the US with my boyfriend, who’s now moved to Princeton. Our studio right now consists only of a inflatable bed, a few boxes, and suitcases laying around, but even so we’re making it feel like home (furniture will hopefully arrive by the end of September). More importantly, after the craziness of the pre- and post- trip couple of days, we’re setting our new routines, which means: I’m back to work!

We do have internet at the new apartment, so technically I could work from here, but I’ve never been a big fan of working from home and much less so when I don’t even have a proper chair to sit on (believe it or not, having to be in bed all day can get uncomfortable). Luckily, right after our arrival I realized we’re only two blocks away from the Princeton Public Library!

The library is very nice and has lots of work and study spaces to which you can access without a library card. Some are just tables on the hallways which can get a bit busy, but there are also designated quiet spaces for people to work without distractions. And they allow you to bring in covered beverages, so coffee is welcome!

I have now been to the library for a couple of days and am very happy with it. It’s silent enough for me to work and focus, and having other people around looking busy also helps me stay on track.

My work set-up for today

It has not been easy to go back into work, especially since it’s been so long since I’ve had time to dedicate to my actual PhD projects. Luckily, a few months ago I started using Trello boards, which helped me remember what I was doing (no joke). I’ve been taking it easy and making daily “work plans” on my planner to help me get back on track. Today I started doing real, actual work again, and even if I got stuck with some technical issues, it feels great to return to doing science!

Now, regarding writing… I have scheduled some blocks for this week, but they’re all related to my outreach projects. Since I’m coming back to the technical side of my PhD projects, I decided I will take a break from imposing myself to do work writing blocks for a while. For this week I assigned one block for this blog post, and three blocks for my astronomy outreach blog. I must say, my astronomy blog has been the most benefited by my writing plan. When I started it in 2015 I was doing one post every two weeks, but during 2016 and 2017 the number of posts went down because I would never make time to write. During 2017 I was averaging one post every two months! Now I am back on track with one text post and one podcast episode per month. I am not only writing more, but also organizing myself around writing and planning better posts :)

So, for this week (which, by the way, is week #10 since I started this project!) the plan is:

Week 10 (10-16 September):

One 1-hour word-cluster block.
Three 1-hour outreach blocks.

I am thinking about doing a “How I work/plan” post soon, inspired by this one in Sweet Tea, Science. I am also thinking, as much as I loved the process of building this blog in jekyll and Github pages, to move it to something that allows for more user interaction… but I’m still undecided.

Some crazy weeks

2018-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

The last weeks have been a little crazy, and it will keep being like that for at least a couple more. So I’m going easy on myself, trying not to force myself to do too many things that are not really necessary.

During the last couple of weeks I’ve been taking an intensive Dutch course in the mornings, which is taking way more time than I had originally planned for it and I mean WAY more. Who’d think that an intensive course would be this intensive, huh?

I had originally planned that I would go to Dutch class in the mornings and then go to work in the afternoons. But it turns out I have a lot of homework to do every day, and it takes me more than one hour to do it, usually two. The first days I went to the office after class and left the homework and studying for after dinner, but that ended up with me going to bed super late and having a really hard time waking up in the mornings (the classes start at 9 am which is awful for me). Some days I tried to do my homework first and then work, but after finishing it I would be so tired that my brain would not be able to think much. This also coincided with some very warm days (30+ degrees C) which was a terrible combination.

So, in the end I decided to take it easy. The Dutch course only lasts three weeks (this is my last one!). Nobody’s going to die if I work slow for three weeks. So, after my classes, I do my homework, take a little break, browse astro-ph and tackle any small task on my trello board that feels achievable. So it has been going slow, but by focusing just on small tasks it was also been going well. This means that my work-related writing blocks have been inexistent though.

On the other hand, besides the Dutch course I am dealing with an overseas moving. My boyfriend is moving to the US in two weeks, and I am going to stay with him there for the first month. We currently live together, so we’ve been dealing with having people over to see the house, packing, moving and getting rid of furniture, de-cluttering the house, and deep-cleaning it. This has also taken way more time and dedication than I had originally expected. Our schedule is super tight for the next two weeks so there are things that we really can not postpone. That has also been taking up a lot of my time and energy.

Of course, to top it all, my anxiety has been through the roof. Especially on the first days of the Dutch course, I was extremely worried about “not working at all”. I was also worried that I was not studying enough Dutch. I am feeling better about my work now, but I am still stressed about it. And the whole moving/trip is adding loads more worries. My current situation is anxiety galore. I feel I have been coping with it… okay-ish. I’ve had a few bursts and whatnot, and I feel like these last days I’ve been having constant stomach and head aches, but in general I am dealing with it. Or, more than dealing with it, I am accepting it. I have several stressful things going on right now and it is totally ok to be anxious and nervous about them! No big deal!

Needless to say, I have not been keeping up with my writing. However I have a very nice writing achievement: last week I finished and published an article for my astronomy outreach blog, which I had started months ago! And I also started a couple of new ones. So, yay for small but important writing achievements!

Now, the fact that I have not been writing as much as I’d like to does not mean that I have not been thinking about writing. On my previous post I mentioned that I was not too happy with my system for tracking writing blocks. Last week I came up with a very nice solution on my Hobonichi Techo planner: using the empty space on the left side of the monthly view!

I got inspired by some posts on Hobonichi Facebook groups, and I noticed that each month I had a lot of empty space on that page. Each week is six squares high, so I track each day of the week + the weekend in just one row. I must warn you though, the picture above is a total lie: on the week of the 13th of August I only did like half an hour writing for my outreach blog. I incorrectly copied the blocks from the week of the 6th of August into that week. And I said copied because I am also now tracking the writing blocks on my daily pages:

I am really liking the combination of these tracking systems. They also allow me to take notes next to each planned squared, so I can know if I need to write about anything specific.

I planned some writing blocks for this week and one for the next (since I need to publish a podcast episode on the 31st), but I am mostly going to wing it and see what I feel like. This is probably the opposite of working towards building an habit, but my mental health is the priority right now.

Catching up on past weeks, starting week 5

2018-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Ironically, I’m very behind on updating this blog, but I’m not behind on the rest of my writing!

On my previous post, which reviewed my goals for weeks 2 (July 16-22) and 3 (July 23-29) of my personal writing challenge, I had set up a goal of four writing blocks each week. Week 2 was a work week so all of my writing would be for work; week 3 was holidays so I assigned three blocks for my science website and one “free” block which could be a personal thing or outreach.

The four work writing blocks of week 2 were easily accomplished, since I have been traveling a lot lately and had many work stuff to catch up with. However, my proudest moment so far is the fact that I did not write a single word during my holiday week! Not. One. Word. Not even opened my laptop!

Now, it took a while for me to feel proud about this accomplishment. I think of myself as being good with work-life balance: I never work on evenings or weekends unless I have a very important, life-or-death (academically speaking!) reason to do so. However, since my holidays were right at the start of my writing challenge, I considered those days to be a critical time for building the habit, so I did not want to stop writing. But, as a way to still keep it a “light” writing week, I assigned only outreach writing. Which brings me to another thing I realized on that week:

Outreach work is work. It doesn’t matter how much I love it and enjoy it. It doesn’t count as “free time” just because I do it on my free time from grad school. It is still work, and requires a lot of thought and preparation and concentration to do it.

I have been doing outreach for many years. At the beginning it was as part of the team at the most wonderful touristic observatory in Santiago. It was a job, I got paid, and it was scheduled onto my week as actual work. That made it easy to have the connection of “holidays” == “I’m not going to the observatory”. I would send a schedule to my boss with my holidays so they would know when to call someone else. However, with my science blog, it’s been different. It’s something that I’m doing on my own, and I take time out of my free time to work on it, and of course I don’t get paid to do it. More than the payment though, I believe it’s the not having a strict schedule for it which makes it feel more like part of my leisure time, when really it is not.

So, I have made a few decisions regarding the work for my science outreach website:

When scheduling writing blocks for the week, I will schedule at least one weekly block for my website.
The amount of weekly blocks dedicated to my website can change, depending on my work load/things needed to do for the website.
Originally I said I would not schedule writing blocks on weekends. I want to stick to this; however, on the last weekend of every month I am allowed at most 2 blocks for my science website. I am already doing this: before a new month starts I go through astronomical events, set up social media posts and newsletter emails for the month, and so on. This has helped me a lot to stay on track with my website, so I’ll implement it as a new rule.
FREE TIME IS FREE TIME. This means that I DO NOT work on my science website during my free time. Nothing wrong is going to happen if I don’t keep up with my posting schedule. It can wait another couple of days, until the next assigned block, to be finished. I need to separate my outreach work time from my actual, free for real free time.

So, considering this and the rules I set up on my first post, my plan for the coming week is:

Week 5 (6-10 August): four 2-hour work blocks. One two-hour outreach block.

Yes, I’m also moving from scheduling 4 weekly blocks, to 5. I think it’s going well enough to do so.

Something for me to keep in mind is that I’m also starting an intensive Dutch course this week! And it will last until the end of August. I have lessons in the mornings, and according to the course description I’m supposed to do three hours of personal work every day. I will take this first week to see how that goes, and how to structure my writing time around it.

One other thing that’s bugging me a little bit is how to keep track of my writing blocks every day. I am currently using the vertical monthly pages of my Hobonichi planner to do so, but lately I’ve also been using those pages as an “index” when I take notes:

My planner has daily pages, which I sometimes don’t fill up during one day and then use them for note taking. I keep an index of said notes on the monthly pages for quick reference, but now it seems to be interfering with my writing tracking. I also used these pages to track my period, but now I got rid of that or I would have even less space to write the index. Still trying to figure out what to do about my tracking system.

One last thing: I’m working on setting up comments/a “follow/suscribe” option for this blog! Hopefully they’ll be up soon.

Review of week 1 and kicking off week 2

2018-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

So the first week of my writing challenge is done! It was a bit harder than I expected, but pretty successful, I would say. This is what my writing tracker looks like now:

I did at least half a block every day (except Friday, but I did one on Sunday) which is pretty great! The personal block on Sunday was a letter to a friend. I think the hardest block of this week was the one for my science blog, on Monday. I usually write for my blog when I’m feeling inspired or feel like I have something to say, but in this case I had nothing and I really had to force myself to keep writing for the hour. I think I spent most of the time deciding on what to write about, and reading interesting articles about different topics. In any case, I wrote down the grand total of 416 words, so I count it as a success! And, in the end, building a writing habit means exactly that: getting used to write when I feel I have nothing to say.

My work blocks were actually not spent writing, but reading papers for my future project. I mentioned in my original post that for work related things, I would consider reading papers to cite as part of the writing process. I made an effort to just read for the whole hour and not get distracted. I’m not sure if I achieved the latter but I definitely did some good reading and took some notes. I also wrote a post for this blog in the middle of the week which I had not planned originally, so, great!

The week after this I’m going to be on holiday, but I do not want to stop writing. I will tweak my plan for this week to do only work blocks, so that during my vacation I can do only personal/science blog blocks. And this week I will be skipping Friday again, but I think four blocks a week is still very reasonable. My plan for the coming two weeks:

Week 2 (July 16-22): Four work blocks
Week 3 (July 23-29): Three science blog blocks, one “free” block

I wanted to add a “personal” block to week three, but I said I would not force myself to write things in the personal category, so for now I’m just leaving it free. I will decide along the way what I devote it to. Also, one of my blocks in week three has to be spent planning my next podcast episode. Since it will be a holiday week I will also not schedule the blocks right away, but I will pencil-in in my planner some topics that I need to handle during each block.

Let’s see how I keep up!

My experience with 'Letters to a Pre-Scientist'

2018-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

I was browsing twitter yesterday and noticed that Letters to a Pre-Scientist has started to recruit scientist pen pals for the 2018-2019 school year. Having participed before and loved it, I decided to write a little bit about my experience. Looking through my emails to see when I had participed, I realized it was for the 2015-2016 school year! A long time ago, but hopefully the spirit and experience has not changed much.

Letters to a Pre-Scientist (LPS) is a program that connects scientists from all over the world with middle-school students in the United States (I wonder if there is a similar initiative in other parts of the world, for now I haven’t been able to find any). It was founded in 2010 by Macon Lowman and Anna Goldstein, after the former became a 6th grade teacher in an under-resourced county. Goldstein helped her set up a network of scientists to be pen pals with their students, and the program was born (you can read more details about their history here).

From their own website:

We help students form friendships with scientists from around the world. Our program is a cross-curricular experience where students learn science while improving their reading and writing skills and broadening their understanding of world geography and culture. We believe that every student is a pre-scientist, and we aim to give them the tools they need to continue their education.

At the core of our mission is a desire to see students of all races, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds succeed in their science education. For this reason, we focus on bringing our program to schools with a high proportion of students from low-income families.

I found out about the program while I was doing my Masters, and immediately loved the idea. In my opinion, it has the great advantange of not only bringing kids closer to science (and scientists), but it also paints scientists in a new light through kid’s eyes. In my letters with my pen pal we did not talk only science, we also told each other about our families, friends, and hobbies. I think it really helps the kids see scientists as normal people, going beyond the “genius” stereotype that sometimes permeates media and culture. I also love how they refer to the kids as ‘pre-scientists’, supporting the idea than anybody can become a scientist.

Back when I learned about LPS I lived in Chile, but that was not an impediment for me to sign up. As they said in my welcome email, there are only two requirements: write letters to your pen pal, and send them in time. There have been some changes for the 2018-2019 period:

All scientists have to complete a 1-hour training video, which will provide resources for writing age-appropriate letters, ideas for what to discuss with your pen pal, a guide to navigating potentially difficult situations, and more. I believe this is a new addition to the program and this year will be the first time they do this.
The form to sign up was much more complete this year than I remembered. They asked about my hobbies, and the languages I would feel comfortable communicating with my pen pal in. This seemed like a very nice addition.

On my first time I got matched with Miguel, a 5th grade boy who wanted to learn about space. My distance to the US made the mailing process a bit slow, but luckily LPS provided links to upload a digital copy of your letter, so your pen pal could get it at the same time that their classmates, even if the actual physical letter had not arrived yet. And yes: every kid in the participating classes gets a pen pal! The organizing team was also always super helpful, they quickly responded my email and they were always sending reminders/links to upload letters to make sure all the kids get their letters on time.

Something that worried me back then was that the organizers asked scientists to attach stamps and envelopes to their letters, if possible, to make it easier for the kids to reply. Sadly, being in Chile it was not possible for me to send US stamps. Now that I live in Europe I will have the same problem. However, this time I found out that you can donate/sponsor the program to support a pre-scientist’s materials! This makes me very happy and if you enjoy the initiative I would recommend considering a donation.

Below is a copy I found of one of my letters, so you can get an idea of the level. Getting letters from my pen pal was very exciting and it always put a big smile on my face. I hope he felt the same way when he got mine. The questions kids make can be very surprising, and trying to put an answer in simple terms that they can understand is an excellent exercise for anybody interested in sharing their research. I absolutely recommend participating in this program!

Kicking off week 1

2018-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

The coming week will be the first one of my writing plan, and I’m excited to start! The next two weeks are going to be a bit different from my usual schedule, since I will be Teaching Assistant at the Computational Astrophysics Summer School for undergrad students from Beijing Normal University. I will have to be with the group all through the day from 9h30 to 17h, so my timing will be less flexible than usual. Even so, I managed to make a plan that seems achievable, with four writing blocks for the week (two work ones and two for my science blog).

This week will also be an experiment on how to track my writing habits on my planner. I’m old school and use paper and pen for planning; I’ve been using a Hobonichi Techo original (size A6) for four years now and I’m absolutely in love with it. There are some column-view month pages that I never use (only for period tracking, when I remember about it) so I intend to track my writing there. It will also give me a nice visual of how consistent I am through the month. For this, I already separated weekdays from weekends (which are not considered in my official writing plan) and set up a color coding system for easier visual tracking:

I also added a temptative timing for each of my writing blocks on the daily pages of my planner:

Usually my daily pages consist of only to-do lists for the day, but for the next two weeks they also hold the schedule for the summer school, which is why there is a bit more time tracking. I intend to keep writing down the blocks with this system, though.

I normally do this week planning on Sundays, but tomorrow I’m a bit busy so I decided to finish it today. I expect to do a especial post dedicated to my planning system and how I get organized for each week.

At the end of this week I will update about my progress. Let’s see how it goes!

Getting my writing habit back

2018-06-27T18:25:48+00:00

I write a lot. As a 2nd year PhD student, I am dealing with writing my first papers and conference presentations (yes, I count them as writing). I also have a science blog for the general public: I write blog posts, social media posts, and podcast outlines. As part of Astronomy on Tap Leiden I write newsletters, event descriptions, and more social media posts. On top of it, I also keep a personal journal and write occasional letters to friends.

Earlier this year I finished writing the first draft of my first ever scientific paper. The process of writing a paper was a frenzy: I felt like I had so many ideas in my head that I could not put into words. I had the vision of all the processes that had been executed for the substance of my paper, but I had a hard time describing them. The fact that I have to write in English (my mother tongue is Spanish) did not help. Around that time, and thanks to a lovely friend who is doing a PhD in Literature, I came across the world of writing books. Turns out that having a difficult time trying to write is obviously a very common problem and there are many sources of help for struggling writers like myself.

The first book I read regarding writing was “How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing” by Paul Silvia. I absolutely loved the book and it brought me into a mindset of being more conscious about my writing and writing habits. I even started an agraphia group with some PhD colleagues (basically a group to talk about writing and get together to write), which is currently in involuntary hiatus since, well, we kind of forgot about it. But the 6 or 8 weeks in which we were active were extremely useful and I am looking forward to bring it back to life after the summer.

The reason why I have decided to start a writing blog is because, despite the list of writing tasks mentioned at the start of this post, I believe I am not writing enough. Let me explain myself.

According to “How to write a lot…”, the first step to become a prolific writer is to set a tight writing schedule. This is a time block during the day in which you are not to be disturbed, not to plan meetings, not to answer the phone. Just pure writing. The book also presents guidelines on how to prioritize what to write (I expect to comment the book more in depth here soon), but getting into a writing habit was something that I felt I needed to do. With the agraphia group we set a writing block every Thursday at 9am, which I believe I only attended twice, for two main reasons:

I am not a morning person no matter how hard I try. Even if I wake up early, my brain is not fully functional until around midday. When I “work” in the mornings, I do less demanding stuff such as answering emails, browsing astro-ph, or anything that does not demand full concentration. For this reason, a 9am writing block is simply not the best fit for me.
I constantly found myself with nothing to write. Even when I had to update my paper, many times this depended on my supervisor’s comments, which depended on our meeting schedule, which usually were on Thursday afternoons (after our scheduled writing block). Sometimes I had had a writing spree a couple of days before, because of a deadline, and would find myself wanting to do anything but writing. And other times I felt bad spending 2 hours of my day writing, for example, for my outreach blog, when I actually had a lot of other work to do that was more important in the moment. Now I have submitted my paper, but I have fallen behind with my blog updates and even my personal journal. My writing habits, which seemed to be going so well when we started the agraphia group, have gone back to almost nonexistent. But I still feel I have so many things I have to write, and so many others that I want to write.

So I decided to start this blog as motivation. I pretend to share my advances and struggles. It is intended mostly to be a timeline of my habits for myself, but I decided to make it open so anybody can benefit from whatever it is that comes out.

I have given myself a set of rules to start up my writing habits again:

I will have a writing block every day of the working week, but contrary to the suggestion on “How to write a lot”, their timing will be flexible. But I have to complete one writing block per day, Monday to Friday.
Each Sunday I will review my writing goals for the week and plan my weekly writing blocks accordingly. I already review my to-do’s for the coming week every Sunday, so this will not disrupt my routine.
I will allow 2-hour writing blocks for academic stuff, and 1-hour writing blocks for non-academic stuff. There must be at least 2 academic blocks each week.
If by the end of an academic writing block I feel like I want to keep on writing, I can do it. If by the end of a non-academic writing block I want to keep on writing, I have to first check my to-do list for the day and see if time allows it. I will only extend non-academic writing blocks for 1 more hour.
I will do my best to keep my writing blocks at the same time every day, but will allow myself to be flexible and not stress too much when it can’t happen.
I will also not stress too much if for whatever reason I miss one day, but I will try to not miss more than one writing block each week.

Now, to deal with the “I have nothing to write issue”, I will also list what counts as writing, for me personally:

Academic papers and drafts
Academic presentations and posters
Reading papers that are related to whatever it is I am writing, like things to be referenced in my paper
Reading my student’s drafts and writing comments for them
Blog posts for my outreach site, includes making infographics
Podcast outlines for my outreach site
Social media posts for my outreach site
Code outlines — yes, I will count code outlining, not coding, as writing. The act of taking a piece of paper and thinking/designing whatever algorithm or function I want to implement is something I have been doing for a few years, and the mental work it requires for me is akin to writing.
Blog posts for this site

My personal journal and letters I consider part of my leisure time so I will not intend to force that writing. I will force myself to write on this website, though, to give me more writing tasks and to keep this idea alive.

(As you might have already noticed) I am a highly organized person and pretend to keep track of all my writing projects and schedule on my work planner. I will probably add an entry on my organization system after running it for a few weeks.

Let’s see how it works out!