THE PRODUCTIVE WRITER

The Productive Writer had its genesis in 2005, when PhD students at Columbia University first signed up to receive writing advice and encouragement during the semester break. For the next seven years, BreakWriting email messages arrived every other day in December and January to help students who had writing goals (and looming deadlines) for the semester break. In 2012 the BreakWriting posts became the Productive Writer listserv, now with over 19,000 graduate students, post-docs, and faculty from more than 300 graduate schools in 18 countries. From 200 students in 2005 to almost 20,000 writers in 2023, we became a global writing community that supported academic writers in identifying effective writing strategies to move our writing projects to completion and publication.

The original Productive Writer posts were revised and expanded into a book, The Productive Graduate Student Writer, with templates and writing guides. Here are both some original and new Productive Writer posts. I hope you find these supportive and encouraging of your own writing and degree completion.