Pomodoro collective

by stronged

Simon, Steve and I have been structuring our days around chunks of pomodoro writing and reading each others work. So far it has been going quite well. We arrive at the Honours lab around 9am to settle in for a 9:30 pomodoro start. We knock out three to four pomo’s (25mins with 5min breaks) before reading and critiquing a page of each others work. We then briefly debrief and discuss the comments before amending the pieces.

Here’s a demo from the first day of this pomo collective:

 

Structuring the days has been useful. Less chit chat and more writing is what’s needed at this stage in semester. The sounding boards both Simon and Steve offer me has been incredibly helpful. It is interesting that students from such diverse backgrounds and with such strong, individual writing styles have been drawn together in this year of intense study. Steve’s informal, personal and reflective style balances Simon’s close attention to grammatical detail and tonal intelligence. Both bring quite different yet deftly nuanced sophistication to the table which in turn makes me want to lift the quality of my own writing. I am immensely grateful to feel supported amongst my peers this year, as it would’ve been quite a difficult slog without them!

A common theme that keeps popping up in my writing is the need to neutralise my dogmatic claims. I seem to spurt out quite strong claims that are unnecessary in the context of my piece. I need to be more selective as to when I make academic claims and when I should hold off and let the theorists make the claims for me. I guess it is all about ownership. If it’s a lit review, then it is important to let the theories stand up on their own merit, supported by those who uphold such theories. Whereas in my reflective and creative work I need to present my own claims and support them with the evidence I have obtained in my reading and constructing my lit review. Funny, seems like such a basic realisation to make at this stage of the game – but perhaps I just need to keep reinforcing these basic points to keep myself on track.