I didn’t post last week, but that’s because I had a busy week: busy hurting myself (falling down the stairs–OW!), busy teaching, busy in meetings. Busy. But most importantly, I was also busy writing!

Last week, I wrote two conference proposals: one for PCA/ACA and one for the Children’s Literature Association. Normally, I don’t associate writing conference proposals with, well, writing. They feel like busy work. “Oh, I want to go to that conference. Okay, let’s pump out a proposal,” I think. But it is writing. I labor over these proposals, sometimes struggling for an hour on a single sentence.

Just as I don’t see my proposals as writing, the cadets in my classes don’t see what they do (mostly online) as writing. I tell the cadets all the time that they’re writers, but they don’t recognize all the ways they write. They write status updates on Facebook. They tweet at their friends. They produce content on Instagram. They communicate all the time, and I want them to see that, to recognize it, and to invest in that. I want them to see “writer” as part of their identities, because they write! So what if it’s not strictly academic? Who the heck cares if it’s not a sonnet? It’s writing, and we need to start with our cadets where they are.

If I’m being generous to cadets, then why can’t I be generous to myself about my identity as a writer?

So, that’s the whole point of this blog, right? To focus on the bright side!

I wrote last week. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more. My texts were short, about 350 words (excluding titles). But they were more difficult to write than a chapter or an article, in some ways. They’re shorter. They have particular rhetorical aims and audiences. Often, I have to talk about a paper before I have researched or written it, so I have to work quickly through invention strategies to meet a deadline while sounding as informed and persuasive as possible. (Not everyone does it this way. Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s been successful so far, though!)

So, success, right? I wrote! It was glorious. And I got accepted into two conferences last week: Rhetoric Society of America (holla, Hotlanta!) and PCA/ACA.

And now I have to write those papers. Whew.

But that’s why I like conferences. I need due dates. They keep me accountable. (There’s that pesky word from the previous post!) That’s how my colleagues and I write our book on The Hunger Games: we used a conference as a motivating deadline.

I’m glad I wrote a total of 700 words of research last week. It sounds like so little, but it has made me feel so accomplished.

What did you do last week that made you feel accomplished? Share your stories in the comments!

Happy writing!