30 Days of Writing Prompts

UofG Colleagues who contributed to the blog: Nathalie Tasler, Alison McCandlish, Hannah Mathers, Carole MacDiarmid, Linnea Soler, Marie McQuade, Smita Odedra

These writing prompts are designed for colleagues who want to begin writing about their teaching, as in reflective practice, or the early stages of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. They are a mix of prompts that encourage you to reflect on your relationship with writing, concrete tasks such as formulating a social media post, and also creative writing activities to help you break through a writer’s block. 

The Activity 

Nathalie: This year I set myself the challenge to write 30 writing prompts focussing on encouraging colleagues to write about their teaching and engage in SoTL and scholarship. I tried to theme these: exploring our relationship with writing, what motivates us, and also giving concrete tasks to follow. All the weekends had creative writing tasks that aim to help you break through a writing block or just have fun and play. Where suitable I also added further resources that might be useful. 

The writing prompts are now live as open access resource for a 30 day writing prompt month! And if you are a Notion user this is a template so you can download this for free into your own Notion at adapt it. 

The Intention 

Nathalie: The aim was to show colleagues how much writing can happen during a month, if we consistently write for only 5-10 minutes every day. Peer support–or body doubling–with tasks that are otherwise challenging can be very effective. So knowing we are all part of a joint venture was to motivate us in our writing.

The Learning 

Nathalie: If you use Outlook lists for your mailing list, set yourself a hard deadline until when someone can sign up. Adding new people to the list does not automatically add them to the scheduled emails. Which means they all had to be rescheduled. The upside of Outlook lists is that you can schedule-send emails each day at the same time. So our writing group knows what time the prompts will come in and can plan their writing accordingly. And if you are the prompt writer(s) you can front-load the work and get everything in place for the start of the month. 

The Experience

Alison: I really enjoyed taking part in the daily writing prompt activity; the sense of collective camaraderie in knowing others were doing the same thing in their own way was very encouraging, as was a safe space to experiment. I learned that I can create a body of productive work within a relatively short period of time, given consistency- the prompts bookended my day and offered a structured activity to explore reflective writing and reflexive practice. I was delighted to end up with an abstract for a paper which has been puzzling me for some time; a 10 minute sprint of writing got it all out onto the page.  I am now using this to structure my paper, and feel like I have a set of creative tools to draw upon for future scholarship. I also just had fun with the prompts, and look forward to catching up with other colleagues who took part in the writing, we have a connected group of SoTL writers now!

Hannah: During AcWriMo I engaged with three of the writing prompts, towards the end of the month. As someone who can feel a lot of fear and trepidation around writing, it was really supportive and motivating to have positive, playful prompts. This removed the cramping around ‘I should be writing about...’ and made the engagement more exploratory and creative. Though I had planned (before November) to write on certain dates and topics it was actually more interesting and realistic to work with the prompts and just shoehorn the writing in or use the prompt as a moment to focus on my own development as a writer; taking time to write in a nice journal, with a coffee, in an unrushed but focused way; rebuilding positive associations with the writing process. As I didn’t engage with all prompts, I haven’t necessarily got the skeleton of a piece that I would return to, but instead I have happily sown the seeds of a less critical and more optimistic relationship with my writing.

"I have since agreed to review a manuscript for an educational journal and sent off a proposal for a vignette for a new discipline-specific educational book. Thanks, Nathalie for all the encouragement!" 

Carole: I’ve taken part in an AcWRiMo before and was semi-successful in that I kept going for a while and then dropped off. This time I was keen to take advantage of the daily writing prompts as a way to focus and get me started (or in fact on some occasions,  round off) each day and to see if it would help maintain writing over the month. I’d say it did- I think I managed to write something every week day and added to the shared document- this helped me I think for accountability and motivation. I missed not having them after the month end!

The prompts were varied and for a way to just get writing provided pretty focused tasks. Some took longer than the 10 minutes set, especially if the useful additional resources were explored, but I’ve saved them all to explore at another time. Some were more practical, for example I enjoyed writing a social media post for a project I was working on, writing an abstract for a conference and generating ideas for future projects. Some were more reflective and encouraged us to think about ourselves and our writing. I was surprised at first to see these as I was thinking ‘you need to be writing’ but in fact I really valued the opportunity  to think more holistically about the whole process, from reading, thinking about our writing, to where and how we write best.  While I  overall enjoyed the range, I did tailor the prompts to specific pieces of work I was doing. For example, from ‘Free write for 10 minutes  on a teaching challenge’, I changed to free writing on a specific article I was working on. This helped me make the most of my time. I think if I did again I might like an overview of the types of prompts and perhaps a pathway. For example, ‘ if you want to write on a particular area, then you might like to…’ and  show an example of an adapted prompt, or ‘if you want to take part in an open creative log then try these’.  I really enjoyed being part of this group and month and also having the opportunity to contribute to the final reflection (if writing is ever final?!). Thanks Nathalie for setting up and keeping us going!

Linnea: It is hard to express (ironically, since #AcWriMo is intended to help us unleash our wordsmith within) how incredibly helpful these prompts have been.  They are written with a voice that immediately calms my anxiety, soothe my fears, and motivates me both to engage and to have the courage to undertake this journey.  It is like having a trusted friend at your side to keep you going and giving you advice that you simply know is good for you.   I have hoarded all the prompts (much like Smaug and his gold) and I intend to use and polish these as treats for myself when I get moments of freedom to enjoy and explore this journey of academic writing.  

Marie: Participating in Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) this year has been somewhat transformative for my writing process. This has been prompted by a unique addition to my routine, the prompts shared daily by a colleague. These prompts allowed me to interrogate my relationship with writing, with the pressure of outputs, and with good habits, and guided my thinking, offering structure, reflection, and sometimes creativity and fun.

Some prompts were helpfully and pleasingly practical, allowing me to progress my thinking on a tangible project I have been working on, others allowed me to dream a little about future projects or partnerships. My favourites were those that created a little space to reflect on my teaching, and those that encouraged me to think about what I valued in my writing environment and what could be enhanced (tidy up your office Marie!).

To keep track of this journey, I created a WordPress blog. I had no intention of making it public but wanted a pretty, inspiring, and dedicated place to complete this challenge. It became more than just a log; it was a space to chart progress, experiment with voice, and consolidate writing not just from the prompts, but from other projects. Looking back at my posts, I think AcWriMo gave me the discipline (I managed more than 20 out of the 30 days), the prompts gave me the direction, and the blog gave me the space to reflect. Together, they made this month one of the most productive and rewarding writing experiences I’ve had. In addition to the prompt responses, I’ve created blog posts, a conference plan, two abstracts, teaching resources and a draft article. My next challenge is keeping the habit and putting it to use for scholarship, collaboration, and my own PhD studies. Thanks Nathalie for all your efforts, time and encouragement.

Smita: This was my first time taking part in #AcWriMo – I’ve heard of it before, but I thought the idea seemed a bit intimidating. I really enjoyed Nathalie’s daily prompts, finding them manageable and motivational. Although I didn’t act on all of them, I am planning to refocus on them out of term time. Some of the prompts have really changed how I think about academic writing, and also how I can help my students to improve their writing.