Mindful Academy
Mindful Academy
4.06 Conversations with Lisa Munro: Writing Support for Humanists
In this episode of The Mindful Academy Podcast, host Jennifer sits down with Lisa Monro, an academic publication consultant, to discuss the essential yet often overlooked skill of academic writing. Lisa shares her journey from historian to writing coach and dives into the structural challenges of publishing, particularly for women and scholars of color. They explore argument formation, the intricacies of peer review, and the importance of fostering a supportive writing community. Whether you’re a scholar looking to refine your work or someone navigating the complexities of academia, this episode offers valuable insights into making the publication process smoother and more successful.
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All right. Welcome everybody. Today to our episode of The Mindful Academy, where I am continuing a series of interviews with people in my circle of professionals who work with academics, help academics do various professional and personal growth and development and success things. And today I am thrilled that I get to talk to Lisa Monroe here on Microphone with you so that you can learn about what she does from her.
Hot and sunny abode in the Yuan Peninsula of Mexico where I am looking out my window at freshly falling snow in Edmonton, while my partner hero that he is shoveling. Yay him. So it's gonna be a hundred degrees where you are today, and we're looking at minus eight Celsius. So we're gonna go from 37 Celsius to minus eight in one zoom.
Call God love [00:01:00] March. Lisa, I'm gonna turn the mic over to you and ask you to talk about let's start with how did you get to be a writing coach? I'm gonna call you that. That's fair. All right. Yeah, exactly. I think the snappy title I came up with at one point was Academic Publication Consultants.
Oh that's better than writing coach, writing co. That's the professional title. But writing coach is mostly what I do. I had always been the person in my graduate program, like I'm a writer. That's really what I do in life. That's how I understand the world. To make sense of things.
I write about it. So I was always the person in my graduate program who people were like, oh, can you read my chapter? Can you look at this? Can you look at that? And I'm always happy to do those things. And and every time I submit something anywhere, it's al it always comes back and it's oh, this is really well written.
And I'm like, oh, thanks. 'cause it's, that's what I do. So I had been doing that work for so I finally, in [00:02:00] 2017, I decided to take the jump and incorporate my business, have a real honest God business. So I did that. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time. I was like, what do you like, I don't know what an EIN number is.
How do I get one? What does it mean to have an incorporated business? I don't know what that means either. So lots of learning there. But I started really doing small kind of, it always starts small but doing small editing projects for people and really here's how you can fix your sentence and here's how this could sound better.
And, for clarity you might remove all of these words and maybe delete this paragraph. So those kinds of things. But I started getting I. I moved to Mexico in 2018 and I found my other, the other kind of branch of what I do is international education. So I actually ended up being the director of a study abroad program in the Yucatan.
So I was doing that and then also running the [00:03:00] side gig. And then it was COVID and all the students had to leave and my program had to close. And I was like, oh my God what am I gonna do? So I decided to do some new stu, see what I could do with my business. I was like, okay, if this is the life raft, then know how am I going to patch these holes in the bottom and like actually make this float?
So I started, I started teaching I started teaching writing to people not just reading people's writing, but actually teaching people how to do it. Because people people really did, people need help to learn how to do this. This is not something you learn how to do in your graduate program.
I have yet, every time I give a workshop on write, on academic writing, I always ask people how many of you have received any instruction? Like any instruction, even a little bit on a, on any instruction on academic writing and nobody's hand goes up. You go, oh, did you in your [00:04:00] graduate program get instruction in academic writing?
Nope. Nope. No instruction. It's and it's really the thing that people need to know because that's the piece that is going to move your career forward. I know like people love teaching and teaching is super gratifying and great and students are wonderful. But it's publication that is going to move your career forward the fastest.
And there are a whole lot of people I know who they had the right mentors and they went to the right conferences and they met the right people and. They never really had to learn how to write, 'cause their authority was assumed. But there are a whole lot of people who need to know this stuff.
Yeah. Maybe you didn't go to the right graduate program, or maybe you didn't have the right mentor, or maybe English is not your first language or maybe your right, your home your native writing culture is very different than writing culture in the United States. Or maybe you have, there are many [00:05:00] reasons that people need to know how to do this.
And if your tenure clock is ticking assuming that people are still getting tenure and that's that's an open question now. But assuming that people are on tenure track. On these tenure tracks. Then they need to publish. Like you guys, you kind, okay, so three articles in a book or whatever it is for your particular department.
And you can spend years of your life flailing around by yourself trying to figure this out because no one has taught you, it's not your fault that you don't know, it's just that no one has taught you how to do this. It's what's the secret handshake? And everyone's I don't know.
Sorry. We can't, I don't know. And there's the process of writing, like how do I and the, my, in my last episode I spoke with our colleague Anna Clements, who does similar work for scientists. Teaching them the formula of writing a scientific article. And you get it into pa on paper, you get it structured in a way that flows.
I am. You're a historian by [00:06:00] training, right? Yeah. Yep. And so you and I come from text-based disciplines where, we really care about the story of the article and the close reading and the, that presentation, but then there's the additional layer of how the hell do you get it published?
Absolutely. What's the process of engaging with a journal? What's okay to do? What's not okay to do? Who's okay to email, who's not okay to email? Whats like the automatic submission platforms that now exist that, maybe your mentors don't have to navigate as much because they're super established and you're here, the babe in the woods going, okay, now how does this work?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Like people, I used to invite journal editors to come and talk to my workshops. I used to do that and then I exhausted the generosity of all of my friends. But they would come and they would talk to people and it was like people had these like really. Basic que like, is it ever okay to email the editor And yes.
They're just people like they really are and they're there to help [00:07:00] you, what is it, how do I, what does it mean when my paper gets desk rejected? What should I do with that? How do you make decisions, what's a major revision? What's a minor revision? What would you suggest if reviewer one and reviewer two are in conflict?
How do I resolve that? Email the editor, you can do that. It's okay. And also like maybe tell the editor, this is my plan, right? Yeah. You're in a conversation, you're in a scholarly conversation at multiple levels and feeling confident in navigating that conversation is really important.
Yeah. I'm curious after getting your degree in history, what were your thoughts about. Going on the tenure track, was that ever on your radar? I was on the job market in an incredibly short amount of time because I just don't have, one, I didn't have patience for it. It was just putting together applications is so burdensome.
It really [00:08:00] is burdensome. And it's just a bunch of elitist gatekeeping that doesn't need to be there. But, academia loves elitist gatekeeping that doesn't need to be there. It was so burdensome. And then also my field is dying, which is sad. His, everybody always tells me history is so important and yet nobody wants to pay for it.
It's just, there are so few jobs in my field. And the job, you're talking to a germanist man. Yeah. We're singing from the same hymnal. Yep. Exactly. It just became very obvious in a very short amount of time that this was not gonna work out for me. And it's in retrospect that's okay.
But at the time I was just devastated. I was like, oh my God. What else am I, what else could I possibly do? And then the other thing, that really, was important. At that time, it was like, oh, I can't spend five years on the job market because I need to eat, I need to buy groceries. I can't spend endless amounts of time as my mother [00:09:00] would say, dinking around with this because I need income.
That was really, it was that simple for me. I was only on the, I got a couple interviews never a campus visit, but, eventually I was like, okay, like I'm gonna go get a day job. And at one point I did have a day job. I walked into a temporary employment agency and I was like, hello?
This is weird, but I need a job. And I would give them my resume. And they were like, what are you doing here? And I was like, I know, I like, I get it. But I just, I can do data entry. I speak Spanish fluently. Give me whatever crappy desk job you, somebody needs done. I'm happy to do that, happy to do that.
So I had these, I had these like bad jobs where I was like combining spreadsheets and I was like, okay, my Excel, my, I guess my Excel skills are getting better. But this is mind sucking. It was not what I wanted to be doing, but at the same time, like I was living with my [00:10:00] parents and I needed some money, so I did this.
I'm not too, I'm I will not lay down in the wilderness and die. Like I, I will figure out a way to keep going. So this is what I did. Then I also had a day job to escape the temp job. I got a day job doing victim advocacy crime victim advocacy at that. 'cause they really wanted people who had served in AmeriCorps Peace Corps and who spoke Spanish.
And I was like, oh, that sounds like me. So I did that as well. So I was literally going out on crime scenes and talking to crime victims about their rights. Colorado has a victim rights amendment, and so I was going out on crime scenes and talking to people about that in Spanish. Hello, I know that this is really scary and I know that you're probably feeling wondering like what your rights are in all of this, here are your rights.
Let me tell you about them. It was intense. It was really intense. But it was from that job that I was, I eventually went [00:11:00] back to Mexico because at a certain point I had gone to Puerto Rico after the Hurricane Maria in 2017 as a part of this disaster mental health team. And I was, it felt like being back in Latin America and I was like, I really need to get back to the part of the world I actually care about.
In 2018 without much of a plan I went back to Mexico and I was like, okay, like I feel good here. This is where I'm gonna stay. So I'm done with it, done with crappy day jobs. And now I am yeah, doing writing, coaching and then also still still working at, still working in some capacity with international education.
Yeah. So first of all, thank you for sharing that. I think that's, I appreciate you sharing the journey of like, how you piece together a career and how it maybe looks like a really coherent path in the rear view mirror, but while you're doing it, it doesn't feel like a coherent path. It feels oh shit, I gotta [00:12:00] eat.
I've talked about this before on the podcast or parts of it. So between my undergraduate and graduate years, it sounds like that's when you did the Peace Corps. I went home for a year to figure out my shit out and also walked into a temp agency and said, I need to eat. I was also living with my mother and they put me in a machine shop as a front office admin person.
Nice. So it was me, the elderly couple who owned the machine shop and a bunch of union machinists. And, low grade sexual harassment on the daily. And so that'll drive you into the arms of grad school really quickly. Yeah. But also, like I can answer phones, I can type, I can, right? You can work, I can reconcile accounts payable and receivable if need be.
I can take a good note. Absolutely. And then after, so graduate school visiting positions, tenure [00:13:00] track job, and on my end it was trying to do the dual career thing because my husband is an academic, he's in libraries, but we're trying to find the same institution and the failure of that to ever click is how we wound up in Canada.
And I walked away from tenure and again, I tried to piece together things like teaching here and being staffed there and none of it felt good. And so the first thing I did when. So my last university gig ended and I was like, no, I'm no longer piecing together gigs. That's, it's not a crappy day job, but it's a crappy feeling to hustle for gigs in your field that is dying.
My first I volunteered. I went to the YWCA and said, how can I help? And they're like, really? I'm like, yeah, really? How can I help? And they put me in employment services. Oh. As a volunteer. I'm like, oh, that's funny. The unemployed professor helping people with barriers to entry to [00:14:00] the job market.
Find jobs. Thank you universe for the lessons I need.
Yeah. The vocational awe of academia, right? Oh, this is the calling. This is this is the only thing that matters. This is the only thing that, this is the only success that I can believe in. It can be super damaging. And so the counter narrative of you got to eat and really you gotta feel engaged.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I really want. I'm willing to do, I'm not too proud to do a day job. Absolutely. I will do that. But yeah, I need to feel engaged and good about what I'm doing at the same time. So it's yeah. Yeah, it's been what I love about writing co what I loved about, what I do still love about writing coaching is really just helping people get their ideas out there.
[00:15:00] Like people are really working on the, even as the humanities are under, have been under attack for such a long time. People are still doing amazing work, still doing amazing work under very challenging circumstances. And peop people really have great ideas and they're ideas that I think can really change the way we think about things.
A lot of people are like, oh ivory towers and nobody ever learns about this stuff, and who reads an academic journal? Sure. But I think about, I don't know if you've seen the the Devil Wears Prada, which is fantastic. I have not watched the movie. Okay. I understand. I'll describe this, I'll describe this scene for you and you can go find it on YouTube, but Meryl Streep is tremendous in this film.
And at one point she is she's responding to somebody the main protagonist who's oh, fashion is silly. And she goes through this very, I. Elaborate explanation about that thing that you're wearing. Here's where it came from. It started as [00:16:00] this, these designers came up with this idea and then it went through here and then it changed in this way, and then it went through here and eventually it filtered down to the masses, and that's why you're wearing what you're wearing.
And I think it is so similar to academic ideas. Yes, they start out in these very kind of closed spaces, but they get bigger. And they do change things for people. They really change how we think about things. We teach, academics teach students, like a lot of academics I know do public engagement, like ideas are getting out there, but they have to be given enough support to be able to get out there.
And that's the thing. People's ideas and the development of those ideas and the publication of those ideas are, are the part of people's jobs that are oftentimes the most important. And yet those are the pieces that get the least amount of support and time. People are given the least amount of support and time around those aspects.
And I don't think that's an [00:17:00] accident. I don't think it's like, oops sorry we didn't give you enough time or support for publication. I think that's very intentional. Really say more about that. I'm super curious because that's my question. Everybody always feels like it's the thing that falls off the to-do list.
Yeah. So if you see structural things there, I'd love to hear. I think it's, I think it's very structural. I think the people who I think people who are struggling, I think to get their publications, we know that academia is structured, supposedly it's on merit, but it's not.
And we know it's as structural as anything else. And looking at the numbers of people and who they are, who make, for example, full professor women drop out. Very few women get there. Very few people of color get there. There's there's these structural problems and I think part of it is that they aren't given time, space or support to get their publications out.
Also there's a lot of, there's a lot that, the people who really make it in academia, they have support systems that most of us don't have by they have [00:18:00] wives. So there's that as well. So I think and probably aren't the first academic in their family and Yeah.
Maybe have generational wealth, the end. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Like those people, if they have children, maybe they're not the primary caregiver. Yep. Like those people. Those people are those people are making it, and yet everybody else is really struggling. And so my thing has always been like, okay, let me help empower you with knowledge about how to do this thing that is unspoken and that nobody else is gonna teach you how to do.
And it is so satisfying to get emails from authors who are like, oh my God, I just published my first piece. And you're like, of course you did. Of course you did. 'cause you're great. That is awesome. You know what? What I see in my one-on-one work with faculty is the phenomenon. And you can read about it in the Chronicle, like it's a [00:19:00] known thing that once a woman or a person of color gets tenure and is associate professor, the floodgates open.
That person of I'm in the middle of facilitating discussions and committee work around a strategic plan. In a law school, there's a very small number of faculty of color and a vanishingly small number of indigenous faculty. And so the, that small number of people the advi, the informal and formal advising burden, the emotional labor of and there's even one white woman who works on violence and domestic violence law and things like that.
And the first disclosures that, like all of the things that these people get that. Slow their productivity down because they're doing the work that actually keeps the institution afloat. Yep. Whether you get asked to be chair as associate professor or had that important committee, or you're given that important project, [00:20:00] like all of those things start happening because you represent something really important to the institution.
So you're doing this really critical work, but it's taking away from your ability to do scholarship. Absolutely. And if it's not, then you're wearing yourself down to this nubbin of burned out threads that's about ready to fall apart. Yeah. That's a really weird metaphor, Jennifer, but there you go.
We'll go with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think, go ahead. I think that hap, and we know that yeah, that kind of labor, it always ends up on the shoulders of the people who can least de afford to be doing it. That's, and it takes away from people's time that they could be using to do publications, to do research, to do, to really move their careers ahead in ways that yeah, you can't, when you are saddled with all of this stuff.
And in this strategic planning thing that I'm facilitating in one of the focus [00:21:00] groups with senior faculty asking them, 'cause I use an appreciative inquiry process when I do strategic planning, I wanna start from what's working really well? What are we gonna build on? What are the opportunities if we build on that?
And when I asked established senior faculty who in the room at that point in time happened to all be male and white. When I asked them what was working, they were incredibly satisfied with what was working and spoke eloquently about, the sort of independent contractor model of being a faculty member and how that this particular school supported that and how that worked for them.
And, it's okay, yeah, that, thank you for that really clear articulation. And I joke occasionally that faculty are a bit like feral cats, right? Leave me alone unless you put the good tuna out and then I might come. And that was definitely the [00:22:00] vibe in the room. And then talking to junior faculty, which is a more diverse group of people.
They're still on the tenure track, right? Like they were not talking about the independent contractor model. They were talking about wanting community, wanting support for them so that they could support students both in terms of their scholarship and in terms of like their overall wellbeing, because that's what's coming to the fore for them.
So a really interesting sort of generational divide in in how academia works that, you and I have lived through, I'm seeing it on the structural end of, okay, what does that mean for the vision of this institution? Who gets to call the shots when it comes to how are we gonna organize ourselves?
Who do we support? How do we support them? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the, and on my end, like my clients are almost entirely women. They are all, a good percentage of them are women of color. Occasionally I do very [00:23:00] occasionally junior faculty who are yeah, the white guys, maybe they didn't, they, they never learned how to write either.
And some of them do realize that they need this kind of help and support and some of them don't. But yeah, by and large my clients are women and people of color, and I'm like these are people I absolutely want to support. Yeah. Because these are the people who are generating they're generating ideas that are great.
Yeah. And it's so fun to engage with those ideas. If you get to be on the receiving it, whether it's a conversation or reading their work it's just tons of fun. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about how you work with people, because I have a sense from our exchanges that you do a few different things that support writers.
So do you do one-on-one things and group things? Institutional things? Yep. Yep. At its most basic, I do a thing called the argument consultation. Because this is really like the thing that this is [00:24:00] probably the most important skill I think that people don't, aren't being taught is just the basics of argumentation.
And that because academic writing, it's all persuasive writing. It's all persuasive writing. Medical writer medical like researchers have argued with me about this. No, our writing isn't persuasive. And I'm like, I'm sure it is. Absolutely it is. You still, even if you say Thing A happens to population B under Z conditions, like you still have to convince me.
You still have to persuade me that your reading of the evidence is correct, like you're making an argument there. You don't call it that, but you are still making an argument. It's always persuasive. And and a lot of people are not taught about that. So I do a very I think I actually call it the quick and dirty argument consult, because it really is quick and dirty.
We'll spend an hour talking about what you think your argument is and then talking about the pieces of it. Where are you coming into the conversation? What's the [00:25:00] debate in your field that you wanna contribute to? What's your personal take on this thing? And then how do you add some, a little bit into your argument about your evidence?
It's just basic pieces, but like people really miss on that. A lot of times. Like probably the biggest rookie mistake is to think your topic is your argument. And PhD students come to me a lot of times and they're just absolutely crushed. Oh, my, someone is working on my exact topic and I'm like, of course they are fantastic.
Now you have someone to have a conversation with. That's great. But they haven't yet, because no one is teaching this. They haven't yet figured out that it's not about whether your topic is unique. It's a ra. It's about whether your take on the topic is unique. That's what you need to develop.
And so I work with a lot of ear I work with writers in very early stages. I just getting the argument nailed down and will it change? Absolutely. As you keep writing, you're gonna keep [00:26:00] revising. And that's totally fine. So we talk about it for an hour. We get really clear on your ideas, on your next steps.
You go with your, with the, all these ideas and then you revise and then we'll come back together a couple weeks later and we'll talk about what you did and what needs to keep happening to keep this going. So that's like the most basic thing I do. But it is amazing how much people get out of that.
Like people come away with that with oh, now I know what I wanna say. You're like yes, absolutely. I love the conversation topic, right? Like you are, and I say this to my clients when they're writing comes up, I'm like, who are you in a conversation with? Yep. And depending on your training or how you've internalized your training, I think when, like for example, when I was in graduate school, I really internalized the persuasive part. I really internalized the unique part. I did not see it. It might have been there, but I didn't see it. The who are you having a conversation with, [00:27:00] which is a little bit different than who are you pushing back against?
And that was what I thought my job was like proving not only that I have a genius, unique insight, but that whoever else has talked about this is wrong. And that is a silly it, and it is the style in which some people work but it blocks a lot of people from Absolutely. Yeah.
It blocks a lot of people from feeling like, oh, I can sit down and get my ideas on paper. Absolutely. Because if you make mistakes that high then. You're not gonna do anything. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of fear around just ha coming out with an argument. People a lot of times will tell me I, I don't wanna argue with pe.
I just wanna like notice something and I'm like noticing is good. Noticing is interesting, but noticing is not what gets published. That is not how that works. So you need to go a little bit beyond noticing something and make a very strong statement about [00:28:00] it. And so I work with people a lot of times on making those really strong statements.
So having an opinion, having a stake, right? Yeah, absolutely. So that's one thing I do. I have been in years past teaching I put together a program I call the Scholarship Success Collective. And it's on hold at the moment, but I work through, it's a full 12 week program. I work through Wendy Belcher's book, writing your journal article in 12 weeks.
And we do the, and we do go week by week. Let's talk about your argument. Let's talk about your structure. Let's talk about why your work matters. Let's talk about like your literature review, which is droning on and on and not saying anything. Let's talk about, all of these pieces, we do feedback too, because nobody's teaching that either. Part of the reason reviewer two is always terrible is because no one has taught these people how to be helpful. People confuse critique with criticism. And it, I [00:29:00] cannot even tell you about some of the feedback I have read from different reviewers and I'm like, oh my God.
Like, why would you say that to someone? That is horrendous. That is horrendous feedback. I have read all different kinds of reviews from, just comments from people and it is very obvious to me that no one has taught them how to be helpful. Sometimes you read, comments from your reviewers that are essentially, you could boil it down to this, why isn't it your work about my work? And you're like, oh, not helpful. My first reviewer too said exactly that. Yeah, exactly. Why isn't it your work about my work? The whole point boiled down to you're not working with this author on this source that has something to say about your topic, and therefore this is not worth publishing.
Absolutely. People make comments like that and you're like, no, that is not the assignment. The assignment is to engage with what the author has said, not what they, not what you want them to say. I'm sorry. If you want them to say something, you write that [00:30:00] paper. But the author is, this is the text that you have.
Are you willing to engage with what the author has actually said? And some reviewers just aren't. On the other hand, like some reviewers are willing to engage, but like they don't know how to word things in ways that are constructive. So you may get feedback that feels devastating, and yet when you think about it, you're like, oh, I, oh, okay.
I get it. I wish they hadn't said it like that, but I get what they're saying now. But no, but we do a whole, I do a whole feedback session with authors in which, we do peer review. We do, yeah. Yeah. Like not official peer review, but like we do peer mentorship and peer review of each other's articles.
And it is, which is probably gonna make them better reviewers when they get to be absolutely a review reviewer because they're gonna learn those skills, like how to be constructive. And because I want people, to, to review a paper is to give back to the community, and I think that's an important part of that.
But you have to [00:31:00] learn how to do it first. And a lot of people just don't know. So we do a lot of work on feedback and being constructive. And I think that's really critical. So that's hold right now, but what else is happening? It's on hold right now, but I do also do that workshop for institutions.
So I just finished doing a full 12 week workshop for a University of Calgary. And they were so much fun to work with and just fantastic. And we all, we all learned together. That's really the beauty of doing a workshop with faculty is that you get to just, yeah. Was that in arts and humanities?
Was that like what group of Yep. They were mostly arts and human. It's always very interdisciplinary, which I also think is fantastic. 'cause I feel like graduate school kind of silos you into different Yeah. Different groups different cohorts. And yet at the same time, I think we get convinced that no one outside our fields could possibly understand our work.
And yet I have gotten [00:32:00] fantastic feedback from political scientists from disaster researchers, from like ge Yeah. Geographers, all different kinds of people. I think it's really important to there's something really imp there's something really powerful about having somebody who is not in your field reading your work and saying, okay, here's what I understand you to be saying.
This part is clear to me. This part is maybe not so clear to me. I wonder if you could elaborate on this a little bit more. This part seems really strong. I wonder if you could pull in your analytical lens from this and maybe talk, use it here too. And I think that would really help. There's something really great about that.
The other thing that happens in these workshops is we all become better readers. Because reading is a skill too. And it's the flip side of writing. And like I'm such a better reader of other people's work because now I have a system to do it, and now I know what I'm looking for. Like, all right, like I'm re, I don't need to, I don't need to read for content.
I need to read for argumentation, persuasiveness [00:33:00] evidence. Like these are the things I read for if I need content, I read Wikipedia. That brings up a couple questions. First of all, you said system, and in my last episode when I was talking with Anna Clements, she was talking about sort of her formula for a, a scientific paper. And and I know I, here, I'll talk about me, my inner grad student who I'm doing a much better job of musing, now that I'm in middle age. But, the inner eager grad student who knows best is in there and says, oh, my preciousness cannot be formalized.
I'm not, what I have to say is not gonna go into some plug and play thing, but when you're talking about a formula or a process for reading I'm curious because I do think that like having a checklist, whether it's mental or written down to, to apply to most really. Intense cognitive work can be helpful.
So what is your process for reading? Absolutely. One of the things that's [00:34:00] great about having a process is like you don't end up getting like overly emotionally involved in something or like intellectually involved in something. You are just checking boxes, you're filling out a form.
And that can be really helpful and it can also be really efficient. So when I read now, like I developed a template a long time ago in, in which I. I just go down the list okay, what is the author's argument as I understand it. Okay, it's this check. What kind of evidence is the author using to support this check?
Do I think that the author has read their evidence in such a way that it supports that argument? Check, does the, is the author leading me through their ideas in a way that seems logical? Or does this just make no sense? 'cause I've read those articles too. Check. Do I understand the conversation the author is entering, and do I understand where they stand in that conversation?
Check. And I just go down the list and by the time I'm done with an article, like I may [00:35:00] not have read every single word, but I have a pretty good idea about what it's saying and then where I think it could improve, where I think it could further develop and further grow. Yeah, e especially as somebody who's focused on the process of getting it written and getting it published, like the content.
That's for the people who are in that conversation to assess, is your contribution valuable? I don't know. You're, you're a historian. Yeah. And I know that historians and literary scholars can look at the exact same thing and come up with a very different way of talking about it.
And the historian took, I took graduate seminars and history when I was in grad school, and one of the history professors was like, Jennifer, you keep asking questions. I'm like, Uhhuh. Yeah. That's really the only interesting thing here is like, what questions does that bring up? She goes what about the, what about the documents?
What about the, the primary sources? I'm like, great, I'll engage with them, but I don't care about how they came to be. I care about the questions they throw up. And she's oh, but we approach it this way and, so like [00:36:00] content, whatever. That's subject matter expertise, but. Can you teach something with what you're writing and can you teach something to somebody who's a well informed outside Yeah, like a well read engaged reader, but who isn't like in, in the depths of your stuff.
Yeah. You don't need to be in the depths of everybody's stuff to read it. Absolutely. And that's really important is to think about, what is it that, the, what is it that the audience probably knows already? And what is it that they don't probably know? And it's gonna depend on the readership of a particular journal.
There are lots of like interdisciplinary journals. Not everybody's an expert in everything. Most people are an expert in a tiny part of a tiny piece of knowledge creation. But can you write in such a way, can you create this piece of writing in a way that it speaks to people who are not experts?
On the other hand, there's really specialized journals that you're like, Ooh. Yeah. You are gonna, yeah. This is not per, I [00:37:00] am not the audience for this. Absolutely. And so you're gonna assume that your reader knows all of this stuff and you get to narrow in on the Yep. The itty bitty thing that is, the pointy edge of Yep.
The argumentation in that field. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you do the 12, I think of them as boot camps, and I know that's not always the best word, but like the 12 week get your article, does that pace feel breakneck to people? It is sometimes, it is interesting in that it gives people, I think it gives people structure, which people really want because it's oh my like I've been, I don't know if you do this, but sometimes I put on my to-do list, write journal article. Oh. And then it, oh yeah. That's not gonna, that's not gonna go anywhere. Yeah, exactly. Not super helpful. In terms of a to-do list item, but one thing that is really helpful, I am indebted forever to, to Wendy Belcher, who really broke this down for people.
And she actually came to one of my workshops at one point [00:38:00] and she was teaching journalism, which has a, which has a structure to it. And she said academics from all different kinds of disciplines would take her courses because they were desperate for someone to just tell them how to do it.
What are the things that we need to look for? What do we need to write? How do we need to structure? They were just desperate for some kind of instruction. And so the workbook really came out of kind of this need that she saw. Amazing. I think, she, her field is really Ethiopian and African literature and I think.
Her work is great. I've really enjoyed reading her articles as well, even though her field is not my field. But at the same time I'm like, oh goodness, she may be better known for this work. That may be her bigger contribution over overall. Yeah. Which I kind of love in a way.
But it's also when you speak to a need, look what happens. Exactly. She really saw this and did this. And so she actually talks in her workbook at one point about if this may be too [00:39:00] structured for some people, like this may real like it really works for me personally.
Like every time I do it, I'm like, oh, there's a framework in place that like, I just need to work the steps and this is gonna turn out, even if this is like the, like that part of the writing process where like you're like at the bottom and you're like, oh my God, like this, I am never gonna make this work.
This is disaster and it always happens. And it's okay. It's a phase you're gonna push past it. But what's helpful to push past it, I think, is to have a structure and be like, okay, I just need to take the next step with this. This is not the end because this is not the end.
I'm working on this thing and Right. Everything is fixable and we just move forward. We do the next good thing on the list. Yep. Absolutely. And I think it gives people confidence that there's a method. It's oh, yeah, like I just don't have to like start from Yeah. I don't have to start in the, I don't have to.
Yeah. I don't have to guess. One of the things that people always say to me is oh my God, it's so fantastic to know. [00:40:00] What the next step is like. To have steps like that is super And you don't have to, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't Yes. The structure, the process, the content, the form.
It doesn't all have to spring from your own genius. Exactly. You're responsible for the subject matter I expertise for your take your argumentation, your contribution. But you don't have to figure out how to write an article in a persuasive style. Yeah. 'cause there's. Zero. Yeah. 'cause we know about that.
Like we already, like there is already an established way to do that. Don't reinvent the wheel. One, one participant in my workshop came and she, one, one week, she was super excited and she was like, oh my God, I made this massive discovery. I was like, oh, tell me. And so she said, I read a bunch of articles just structurally like, how are these put together?
I don't even care about the content, but how are these put together? And she said, they're all wonderful in their own [00:41:00] way, but. Boy, they're really formulaic. Like they're really, it's really obvious, like how you do this. Yeah. And I was like, yeah. And you can use that in your own writing and you can, it's not yeah.
Don't reinvent the wheel and be like how should I structure the introduction? Look at what's been published. Yeah. And break it down structurally and think about it. Where's the argument? You probably wanna put it pretty early. 'cause the cardinal rule of writing is if you want people to notice something, mention it early.
Yep. Yeah. And then ground groundbreaking news from Lisa Monroe. If you want people to notice something, mention it early. Mention it early. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's not academic writing is, it is. Knowledge creation by itself is a hugely creative project. And so p and academic writers hate it when I'm like, you're creative writing.
And they're like, what? We are not. And I'm like, oh, yes, you are. Yeah, I know. Which is really an interesting reaction. But it's these, it's the [00:42:00] writing itself. You have to fit kinda your creative knowledge production into these forms. Yeah. Because we need into the forum that are understandable and digestible that are part Yeah.
In this conversation that you are. Yep, exactly. Exactly. Because that could not, thing is not pleasure. Read it. It's not like reading a novel, you can't read an academic book. There is no way you could not pay me enough money to read a whole academic book. I read. For what I need to get out of it.
Yeah. And what I need to get out of it is this, and this, and then I'm done with it. And you're not if you're trying to write an article, it's not an interpretive dance of your subject matter expertise. No. Because people aren't gonna be able to follow your interpretive dance.
And that sounds flippant but I mean it that way, like Yeah. I know that for me, like my biggest writing hurdle and now that I know it's my writing hurdle, I just get it out of the way, is I spend the initial parts of my work and my writing. [00:43:00] Talking myself and other, and my potential reader into how I got to the point I'm making.
I would like you to follow my brain for a while. Good journey. Yes. This is how I learned this. And that's the interpretive dance of Yeah. Of my subject matter expertise. I delete that. Yes. I might need to get it out for myself so that I'm in that space again and can, groove on it.
But nobody needs my interpretive dance of Yeah, exactly. A lot of book authors will do that too. Here's how I came to this point, and I'm always like I appreciate this, but you need to delete this as well. I'm sorry it's really hard, but nobody needs this piece. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which might be heartbreaking.
And yet I know, 'cause I love that part too. Like I love reading about like how people got there, that's not publishable scholarship. Yeah. Yeah. So you still write your own scholarship? I do. Yep. [00:44:00] Yeah. I'm still, so you, I, you and I met each other via rest in Peace, Twitter. Rest in peace.
'cause we don't go there anymore. I deleted my account. It's done. It's done. Yeah. Ditto, Gonzo. But yeah, you and Jen and I, that's how we met. Jen Polk, who will, I'll be talking to soon. We met there and you were talking about, writing, but you were talking a lot about your own. Work and your own scholarship.
And now that Twitter is RIP I don't see much of that anymore. So I'd love to hear what have you done and what are you still doing? Because one of the, one of the interesting things about working for yourself is, assuming you're paying your bills, you ki you get to allocate your time and your projects the way you want to.
So where does your own work fit into what you're able to do now? Absolutely. It will not surprise you that my scholarship focuses on cultural relationships between the United States and Latin America. That was, [00:45:00] that's always been my interest. How do we understand each other? How do these places understand each other?
And because I think that's, I think that's critical work. Especially given our new, what are we calling it these days? Our current landscape. That work, I think, oh, that's so euphemistic. I just call it the United States slide into fascism. Yeah, we could call it that too. But I think it's really important to be able, I think that kind of wor, I mean I know his history is dead essentially, but I think that work is still important.
I think it's still really important to think about. The thing that really always calls my attention is like how how I personally am complicit in certain things that have happened in Latin America. And I did I wrote a blog post about this at one point about my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer and kind of this transformation from oh my goodness, I'm gonna, I'm gonna help these people with their economic development projects.
And then this [00:46:00] transformation into oh my God, I am essentially here to impose this neoliberal agenda that is also intimately related to these episodes of state violence. And so that's what I was really interested in. A lot of my, a lot of my, I would consider myself to be a historian of imperialism.
A lot of my work, I have a great article, nobody cites it, or at least they haven't cited it yet, but I'm not promoting it actively either. Authors, if you're listening, self-promote your own work because if you don't, nobody else is. But I have a great, I have an article about a textile designer, industrial textile designer who goes to Guatemala in the thirties, and she like, under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution, and she says she's gonna collect all these textiles and create this textile collection.
And so she does that, and then with newspapers who report it because it was so unusual that she would do this. There was a lot of press about it. And so [00:47:00] through news interpretation, ana analysis of news sources it comes to light that she's doing this in ways that are very coercive.
She's trying to, and, but she's collecting this stuff and then she goes back to New York with it, where she puts it into production with the Macy's department store. And so you could buy all of this like weird, like Maya themed stuff. Like you could buy like these, like Maya themed shower curtains.
Like it all became home decor. And it's oh yes. And then what, what does it mean when you buy that? Like how are you participating in these processes of dispossession? So that's what I, that's what I'm interested in. So I published a couple articles about that. I'm interested in the history of archeology for similar reasons.
Like how do we interpret the indigenous past. The ancient indigenous past and some people. I have an article in the Bulletin of the History of Archeology about two different archeological [00:48:00] expeditions and how they did very different readings of the Ancient Maya past in Yucatan and saw it in different ways and used it for different purposes.
I'm working, I'm already on revising my dissertation into a book, a project I've only been on the fence about for 10 years. Because it seems reasonable. I know. I was like, it's history. It's it's like everybody's dead. It's not going anywhere. Yeah, it's not going.
Nobody is going anywhere, so it's fine. They're all dead. It's okay. We're all dead. Yeah, I know. It's it's such a great field for so many reasons. But I'm, I am working on that and that's still it's now it's really about us, us consumerism driving driving imperialism in Latin America.
Yeah, it's happening. And then I do have a rejected article that was about these women who go and they have these, what they would call adventures. They were adventure journalists in Latin America and how they saw indigenous people and how they saw themselves vis-a-vis these [00:49:00] indigenous people.
And what that, what, how they advanced us interests and advanced their own interests, which were, which was this emerging feminism at the same time. So that article's been rejected twice. But it's okay. Because what I know from having done this for a long time is that perfectly publishable articles get rejected all the time.
It like, it's a, it like, it's almost meaningless. Je, rejection always feels terrible, but when you think about it in terms of academic publication, it's like almost meaningless. 'cause you're like, oh, like it's just a numbers game. It's okay, it's fine. It just hasn't come the right home yet.
Which, which is maybe the corollary or since I'm Canadian now corollary to the fact that perfectly hireable teacher scholars don't find jobs, absolutely has nothing. It like your merit, your worth, your article's worth your worth. These are not actually in play here. Yeah, exactly. Feel in play. But they're [00:50:00] not in play.
I know. Like it's not about you. Which is great. So it's I got these rejections and I was like, eh it just hasn't found the right home yet. That's fine. So I'm going to as I always counsel, authors do the minimum do a little bit of a revision, like not very much. And then I'm gonna send it out again.
Yeah. And it just needs to find like a new conversation to join. It's conversation is probably about like media and women and communication and maybe Yeah. Something Yeah. Us like I don't, I haven't quite figured out the conversation yet. It's getting there. You're making, yeah.
And it's fine in, in serving individuals, in doing group things either open enrollment or for institutions in staying active as a scholar, which I must say as somebody who runs a boutique coaching and facilitation business, kudos to you. I have a couple book projects that are not related [00:51:00] to my academic discipline informed by, but not publishable in that are very comfy on the back burner, right?
Oh yeah. Like they're super happy back there. And I drag them out every once in a while and I dust off the lid and I open the pot and I look at it and I go, oh, you're cool. And then I put them right back where they were. So kudos to you for actually writing like, yay, team. Yeah. But how do you keep yourself together, like mind, soul, and body supports?
And I'll tell you why I am asking this question. So in this series of conversations that I'm having with people who do work like you do or like I do, is, you work alone at home. I work alone At home, I have a dog. It's snowing like crazy outside. So my husband's working from home too, but it's, it's usually just me and my screen.
It can feel a little isolating, but it also, at times for me [00:52:00] feels a lot like the isolation of being a humanities professor, where I felt like it was me and my books and my brain, and I was solely responsible for everything. And and it could get really heavy. It could feel like an uphill battle. And so I have come to this point where I think that running a solo entrepreneur business has a great deal in common with being a faculty member.
Even though I do not always appreciate the independent contractor model of being faculty, I know that feeling is very much there. Yeah. So like how do you stay healthy in mind, soul and body as an independent contractor? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great question. I think. The independent contractor model, it's essentially the Uber model.
Now we're all Uber drivers, right? We're all in the gig economy, right? That's really, it is outsourcing, and it's part of the, like the adjunctification of faculty. This is all tied together it's, I think it's really it's tied to this bigger [00:53:00] shift that, that's been underway for some time now towards neoliberalism and competition as the greatest social good.
And I think that is I reject that model even as I have to live in that model. And I think one of the things that really helps is finding community. I think being, one of the things that always comes out of my workshops with people, and one of the reasons I started doing teach like actually teaching, writing to groups was that I just wanted a little bit more community.
Like I wanted Yeah. Somewhere I could talk about my writing. And people always tell me, they're like, oh. The most valuable thing I've found here is really like just being able to talk about my writing. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Because your mom doesn't wanna hear about it. Who do you?
I know it's hard. She doesn't, does she have a copy of my book? Yes. Yes, exactly. Just mine look like it has ever been cracked new. I know. I'm like, you don't have to read my writing. It's okay. It's fine. Like it's totally fine. But I want somewhere to talk about my process, like what I'm struggling with, [00:54:00] like where, what, what's really working?
Like how, what did I get done this week? What have I not gotten done? I wanted somewhere to talk, it's like my initiatives are always to some degree self-serving as well. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah. So that really super helps me. So I think that's important. And then I think also, I think connecting with people in the real world. Like I try really hard to participate in stuff that's happening in my city. There is, for example, there's a bike ride that happens on Wednesday nights. Fantastic. So I go on the bike ride, I'm like, that's great. Yeah, doing stuff like that.
There's a meetup tonight that I'm, sometimes I bail on the meetup, but so it's Friday night, right on the one hand, like it's Friday night on the other hand. Oh my gosh. I'm like, oh, I just wanna read my book. Sometimes it's that too, so that's okay. But doing stuff like that yeah, seeing friends yeah, absolutely, like just doing stuff in the community I think is really helpful.
The bike ride, [00:55:00] the bike riding actually is a. It is a, it's a a new thing for me. I started riding a bike again last year after a 30 year hiatus. Wow. So that was big. And now I own three bikes. I know the perfect number of bikes is like n plus one. N plus one. Yeah. I live, I, so there's, there are two numbers in cycling.
And I know this because I live with. A guy who, oh, Uhhuh. For whom this is very important. So the perfect number of bikes is n plus one, n being the number of bikes you currently own. Yep. The other, but the maximum number of bikes. And there's a difference between the perfect and the maximum. Maximum number of bikes is s minus one s being the number of bikes you own when your spouse kicks you out.
Oh, yes. Yeah. Or when you have to live in the shed or the garage or the basement or wherever with Yeah. Bikes. Yeah. Yeah. The bikes are taking over my house, but I got a [00:56:00] bike off Facebook for $60. It was like by learning bike, it's like a fixie, it's like a super simple bike.
And I rode that around for a long time and I was like, fantastic. And then last year I felt like I could upgrade to a, like a new bike. Like it was the first new bike I bought since I was like 12. Yeah. Bought a bike. I was like, how did the gears work? Like I, I have no idea. But figuring it out. So that's been good.
And then my latest obsession has been a folding bike, so I bought a used folding bike 'cause I was like, I don't even know if I'll like this, so I don't wanna like invest. So I bought a used folding bike 'cause I was like, oh, I would love to be one of it's always so helpful. You and David Byrne, man, right?
Yeah. I read his book and I was like, I wanna do that. Like just go to places and be like, I'm now going to sneak my bike out of the hotel. And into the elevator and, into the parking garage. And then I'll get on my bike and just ride around these cities. Yeah. I gave that book to my husband for his birthday, I think the year we moved to Canada.
I just remember where he, where we were when he was reading [00:57:00] it. Yep. And yeah, and you, we think of David by, as the talking head. We don't know about the folding bike and the adventures all over the world. Like everywhere he goes, he brings the bike and he is I know the city because I biked it.
Yes. I think that's amazing. I would love to I would love to take the folding bike like to various places. There are a lot of places on the peninsula I would still like to explore and I would love to take the folding bike with me. So that's the plan. So is your new bike a road bike, a mountain bike, a gravel bike, mountain bike?
Which I had never had before, so I'm not a fast cyclist, but the roads here are not in great shape and we don't have a whole ton of cycling infrastructure. It's gotten a little bit better, but. A lot of times you're riding on streets with some pretty significant potholes, and yeah, the road bike would be dangerous.
Road bike might be dangerous yeah. But it's been an interesting experiment. My mom is still I can't picture you on a bike. And I'm like, I know. Isn't that weird? I'm on a bike. So that's been fun. Is there something about picking up [00:58:00] a bike after 30 years of not and using it for transportation and for exercise and for entertainment?
I, what I hear there is beginner's mind or e exercising new parts of your mind, body connection, right? If you picking up something new is. It puts us in a different head space, and I think it probably opens up creativity and, gets us literally moving and thinking in new ways. So what, what's that been like for you?
It's been really fun. It's been fun to Yeah. Learn new things about Yeah. How do you not get hit by cars? That's always a good question. And then it's a very important thing to learn. Very important thing to learn. So now I have these I have the, oh, I don't have them here with me, otherwise I would give you a demonstration.
I have LED slap bracelets. Oh yeah. Yes. Which are just making my Gen X heart so happy. It's like a book home and yeah. I feel like I'm like, wonder why? And I turn that they're pink and I turn them on [00:59:00] and I'm like, oh God, this is amazing. But I have, the bike has been so much fun because it's been such a great, it is.
Like Yucatan has a real. They have a lot of bikes here. And, but bikes in the, in Latin America tend to be the vehicles of poor people. Like the pinnacle for a lot of people is to buy a car. Yeah. And not have to take the bus. And so a lot of people are like, in this, in-between space.
Like maybe you buy a motorcycle, which is half and half or, yeah. But there's a lot of sort of infrastructure devoted to the pa the acquisition of cars has been the pinnacle of development, but there are a lot of bikes here, lots and lots of bikes. And so it's been inter, but what I don't see a whole lot are a lot of women riding bikes.
So I went on this feminist bike ride a couple weeks ago, and that was really interesting because I was, I usually ride alone and I was riding with all these women and there were people shouting at us on the [01:00:00] street. People were like, get off the road. And I was like, oh. I was like, this is this is different.
And then we finished the bike ride and we got together and we talked about that and it was like, oh this is the kind of, this is the, this is related to the same kind of violence that women face on the street every day. And it was like, oh yes, absolutely. And so it was really enlightening in that way.
And people were like, yeah, tell me, tell us about your experience. 'cause you're not from here and so we'd love to hear your outsider perspective on this. So that was really interesting. That's. But the bike has been a great ambassador for, in a lot of different ways. Like people will stop me and they're like, oh, you're riding a bike.
And I'm like, I know. In the world it's so crazy. It's been really, it's been really fun to, to, for it to spark conversations. And then I can talk to people, I'm like, oh my gosh, what I'm doing is I'm trying really hard to contribute to the ever I'm trying not to contribute to the traffic problem.
I'm like, [01:01:00] I would really love to see like the city, take a turn towards more sustainable transportation solutions and greater street safety and greater pedestrian safety and greater cycling safety. I think that would be fantastic. And so we can talk about infrastructure and so it's opened up all these really interesting avenues for conversations with people.
Cool. Cool. And you get to use a different part of your brain Yes. And be social and be connected and live where you live. Cycling is very much like I'm out there on the pavement in the community. Absolutely. And I think whether it's people like you and me who work behind a screen at home or the digital nomads or whatever, there, there's, I feel like there's a lot of disconnection from place that is available to us in 2025.
And yeah. I like hearing about biking as connection to place. Like Absolutely I'm here doing this thing. Yeah, absolutely. What I've never wanted to do is be like the, oh, the academic tourist, you kind of swoop in somewhere and you do this research [01:02:00] or it's extractivism.
Yeah. And then you leave again and you publish something and then knowledge never comes back. It's I'm a very aware of that and I don't wanna be that kind of person who lives somewhere in these extractivism ways either. I really want to be connecting with people and I wanna be supporting people and I wanna be, I wanna be a part of this, a part of this community in ways that I think are sometimes hard for people who are foreigners. It's like, how do you really adjust into a community where people speak a different language? People don't look like me. It's a different place.
Like people have different values. It's how do you do that? And so I always go feeling my way forward. But it's really fun to be able to connect with people and be like, oh, like we're really different. But, here's what we have in common too. Yeah. Right now so I just came back from a retreat in Portugal and one of the very few things that got me off the.
Hammock in the resort. 'cause that was my [01:03:00] agenda, was do yoga, eat good food, swing in hammock, play in water. That was all I was gonna do for a week. But our group did go on a little sailing tour out in the Pacific, and the boat had our party and there like 35 people on there. And there was a group of Canadian doctors young doctors who were reuniting in Cuba a year or so after their residency had finished.
And they'd all gone off to their new jobs and they came to Port, came to Costa Rica to meet up and have a good time. And one of them had parents who had retired to Costa Rica, which is why they were all in that particular location. So I talked about, Canadian parents retiring to Costa Rica and how much they liked it or didn't.
And their daughter was like, oh yeah, they found this great little community. And my sense was it was not a community of Costa Ricans, right? It's a community of fellow retirees. And right now I know a lot of people who are, have either already or who are looking at retiring to Portugal, and I'm just really interested are you learning [01:04:00] Portuguese right now?
And what, especially at retirement age, like what's that gonna look like? Are you just an island unto yourself? Are you building a little enclave? And I, and maybe there's nothing wrong with that, but as somebody who has lived in foreign countries and speaks foreign languages, that always oh man, what are you missing if you're not integrating yourself in that way?
Absolutely. My question is always like, how are you eating? Like, how are you like finding food to eat? Oh, that seems really hard. At a basic level, learn some very basic words so you can at least eat food. That seems really important. I had, yeah, I've been studying Spanish for about 20 years now, and so it's pretty fluent at this point.
That has been such a massive blessing and just has opened so many doors and people will tell me now, they're like, oh yeah, your Spanish sounds really yuca tech in. And I'm like, that's a great compliment. That is a great compliment. Yeah, that's an excellent, yeah. Yeah, that is an excellent compliment.
Yeah, [01:05:00] absolutely. But I think it's so important to to be building alliances with. Local people. I think that's so important. They told us in Peace Corps, they were like, you'll be a culture, like you'll be part of the community. And I was like, yes. But sometimes you just have to own like your own foreign weirdness too.
Yeah. Because people have said to me like, I feel like you do all these weird things. I'm like, I know, right? It's just I do these really strange things because I'm not from here. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes you have to acknowledge like yourself as like the outsider and be okay with that.
And then sometimes it's oh, yes, I do feel like I'm a part of this. Oh, that's a good observation. Acknowledge your own weirdness. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a foreigner but I live, I choose to live here and I choose to be a part of this. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say like it's a really great feeling like when you get invited to a wedding or something and you're like, oh yeah, I'm here because people want me to be here.
Yeah. Yeah. And I have community, which is, [01:06:00] yeah, that's my word for 2025. Get out from behind the screen. Make connections with real life people. That's a great word. Yeah, absolutely. So if people are interested, and I hope they are. And my in the previous episode when I talked to Anna, her work really focuses on science, a little bit of social science, and you're coming at writing support from the humanities perspective.
So I love the fact that these two episodes are probably gonna air back to back. So if people are interested in working with you one-on-one or in bringing you in for their department or their school or faculty how do they find you? Yeah, my website. You're not on Twitter? 'cause Twitter, I'm not on Twitter anymore.
And I have yet to find I mean I built huge, a huge I, but not huge right? But a substantial following on Twitter because of certain issues that I'd advocate for. But like the writing stuff, like it was really. I made relationships on there that I don't know if I can replicate on other platforms.
So I'm not so much on [01:07:00] social media these days. LinkedIn, which is the most boring social network on the planet. I'm still, I'm there. I'm very findable there. And then also, but my website, like lisa monroe.net is really the best way to get me. Okay. And it's M-U-N-R-O? Correct. Why do I want to put an E on the end of that?
Yeah, it's apparently the E is the English spelling and the without the E is the Scottish spelling. That's what I've been told. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I've been told. Yeah. I just find my pen just wants to do that and then I look at it like, oh, that looks wrong. And so I scratch it out.
Yeah. Yeah. It's the fanatic spelling. Yep. Yep. Okay. So lisa monroe.net and and I'm really excited to hear that you can come into an institution and say, okay, college of Arts and Sciences, you have a bunch of junior faculty who want some writing support. Let's spend 12 weeks going from point A to point B and just up the.
The pace, the [01:08:00] productivity, the focus, the outcome of writing, especially for career scholars. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do those workshops, I do them. I've even done one hour workshops with people, with institutions like, hey, like how do we actually do the, like how do we make a plan to get writing done?
Okay. Let's talk about that. I've done one day writing workshops with people. Yeah. I'm doing a two day workshop with the University of East London. And what's also been really cool is I've gotten to I've gotten to work with scholars all over the world. People I would never work with.
I was working a couple months ago, I was working with women in Saudi Arabia. And I was like, oh my goodness, that's amazing. Like fantastic and amazing. That's fantastic. I was working with a scholar in Malaysia, like wonderful. I was working with a group of Muslim scholars in Germany and I was like, Fanta these are people I would not normally come into contact with, but wow.
Aren't we all learning something from each other? Yeah. Yeah. No, [01:09:00] that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for your willingness to spend some time with me and talking about your work and where you live. I, one of the things I love, as much as my own focus is on, like being rooted where I am for now, the fact that in, in my little community of consultants and coaches, I can talk to people in the us, in Mexico, in Australia, in, in the Czech Republic, in Germany, here in Canada in the uk. Like as long as we can navigate time zones, which occasionally, even with all technologies, help bites me in the butt because I live in the mountain time zone, which no, nobody lives here.
I know what's confusing is that Mexico no longer changes time. So half the year I'm on Mountain Time and half the year I'm on central time. I'm like, Nope, I, no, I will either be an hour early or late. I'm sorry. Yeah. And then I went to Costa Rica and I had to fly to Toronto to get there, [01:10:00] but by the time I landed, I was on Mountain Time.
Yeah. I was like, whoa, brain just did this thing. Yeah. It's just an hour. It's complicated. And then like, where I live, so doesn't change time, but then Cancun is on a different, which is just a couple hours away by car, is on a different time zone. And so it's like how what time do I need to go?
What time do I need to go get my flight? I don't know. Oh, ouch. That just hurt my brain. Thanks. Yeah. It's confusing. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm so glad I got to talk to you today. Yes. Excellent. For those of you listening, check out Lisa's work@lisamonroe.net. And if you're not familiar with Wendy Belcher's book on 12 weeks to writing your article, like it's, it is a great resource.
The people I know who've picked it up and tried to tackle it on their own, occasionally feel. Totally overwhelmed. So I think having the support of somebody who is super familiar with that process and can guide you through it is really [01:11:00] critical. And yeah, LinkedIn is not super exciting, but it feels also pretty sane.
So it is the place where I think a lot of us are showing up. I had a conversation in Costa Rica with some academics about, okay, if this is where we're going to have our social network front page, what should it look like? What is important to have up there? What do I keep off there? So if you're not on LinkedIn, maybe this is just one more nudge that it's an okay place to have a front page and to check in every once in a while to see if people are trying to talk to you.
Yeah. Because in the absence of academic Twitter yeah, a lot of us are feeling a little lost and blue sky. I. I don't know. I open it, I look at it and I get angry because the people I follow are all justifiably angry. And I have to check out of the rage in order to feel well with the world.
So yeah, LinkedIn feels like the safe space for me at the time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm there. Lisa's there. I think most of us are there. Thank you again. And for [01:12:00] those of you listening, I will be again in your ears soon. If you have comments, questions, people you wanna hear from, things you want me to address, I am so easy to find jennifer@jenniferaskie.com, or on LinkedIn.
Talk to you soon.