The unpredictable practice of academic writing

As I walked the stage this past May with my diploma in hand, it was hard to believe I had actually come to the end of my doctoral journey. The five years seemed to have flown by, although there were times that felt gruelling. But that was all in the past.

I told myself, I will never write again.

Well, that didn’t last long. I changed my mind after two weeks.

It was ironic. I thought that after the massive undertaking of completing a dissertation, I would have had enough of academic writing. But I actually felt drawn to it. I even missed it, like a long-lost friend. It was a sacred ritual in some sense, a place where I felt completely locked in. A place where I sometimes lost track of time. A place that was, for the most part, free from distractions.

Now, I am working on my first publication since graduation. This publication addresses student perceptions of academic advising approaches and their influence on first-year student persistence. In the thick of this writing process, I had the timely opportunity to participate in the 2026 CGHE Postdoctoral Autumn School. One of the sessions that particularly stood out to me was Dr Lauren Clark’s Good Day, Bad Day: Writing Reflections. We were encouraged to draw one image representing our good days and one representing our bad days in academic writing.

I’m not an artist by any means, but I drew a spider web to represent my good days. When I am having a good day, there is a sense of interconnectedness among my thoughts and ideas. The connections spur more connections. I feel in the zone, focused, and like a spider, creating my web. Someone pointed out that the spiderweb was an interesting choice because one might expect to get tangled in it! To me, there is beauty in the chaos of this entanglement. A sense of cohesion, albeit sporadic and overlapping.

To represent my bad writing days, I drew oddly shaped dots spread across the page. Unlike a spider web, these elements floated in isolation, disconnected from each other. On days like this, my brain has a difficult time stringing the words together. I could be in the perfect environment, and yet something unexplainable seems off. My thoughts and ideas feel fragmented and apart. The thread to bring them all together is missing.

As we shared our images and discussed how we represented good days and bad days in academic writing, one thing became clear: the perfect writing day does not exist! Moreover, good days can overlap with bad days, and vice versa.

It made me think: How can we have the good days without the bad? And if it weren’t for the bad days, how would we ever know what was good?

It seems like every writing opportunity operates on a spectrum, rather than a binary of good and bad. Upon further reflection, I feel grateful for the challenges I face on the bad days. These challenges make me appreciate the good days. This feels like a refining process that emphasizes the importance of committing to the craft—the idea that I will push through difficulties because I believe in the work I am doing. I believe in contributing to the academic field, and I want my perspective to make a difference. Rain or shine, I will put in the time to write.

Some days, I write three sentences in one hour. Other days, I write three paragraphs in the same amount of time. Sometimes, I stare at a blank page for five minutes. Other times, that number is higher! I have days when I feel motivated. I have days when I feel disappointed. There are times when my phone is a needed distraction. Other times, my phone is locked away.

It could be a bad day or a good day, but it’s just another Tuesday!

While some routines and rituals can certainly aid our success, I do not think there is a formula for avoiding bad days. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where I don’t have any of them.

Consistency, it turns out, is far more important than perfection. Commitment matters more than getting it right the first time! Let us learn to manage our bad days without trying to avoid them. Let us embrace all the days of academic writing—the good, the bad, and everything in between.

Written  by Joel Navam, Scholar Advisor at Wallin Education Partners