October 2024: HARVEST
Writing prompts and reflections to support you all month long
Welcome back to #AcWriMoments, a yearlong experiment in purposeful scholarship creation. On the first day of each month in 2024, we offer you a guidepost with a unique theme and simple prompts for living out the theme as a scholar and a human. Return to the guidepost all month long, anytime you need support for cultivating SACRED (strategic, artisanal, creative, reflective, embodied, delicious) moments of communion with yourself and your work. May these offerings encourage you in your pursuit of whatever goals and visions you deem worthy of your attention—the most precious resource you have.
Theme for October 2024: HARVEST
After a long wait, the rich rewards of Harvest season come at last. Wherever you are in the world, Northern Hemisphere or Southern, the month of October can be a time of harvest — because harvest is anytime you gather the fruits of labors past. For scholars, harvest season comes whenever we generate writings, materialize ideas, or turn plans into knowledge products. Just as the fecundity of the Earth generates the food that sustains our bodies and the flowers that decorate our living spaces, the fecundity of our shared knowledge ecosystem generates new insights and ideas that expand our understanding of the world and guide our efforts to repair it.
The word HARVEST derives from Indo-European root words meaning “pluck” and “fruit,” and it can be either a verb referring to the act of gathering ripe crops or a noun referring to that which is gathered or to the season of gathering. This month, see what fruits and flowers you can pluck as you nourish the larger cycles of planting-and-sowing in your body of work.
Whether the term HARVEST conjures autumn vegetables or freshly cut flowers, the gathering of provisions for winter hibernation or the gathering of sunlight and spring rain, we hope this #AcWriMoments theme helps you savor the delights of the season and gather nourishment for the days ahead.
Here are some Reflection Questions and an Experiment to get you started!
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Appreciate harvests present. What fruits and flowers are ripening or blooming in your life and work right now? Maybe the word count of your draft has been swelling each day like a harvest pumpkin, or your thesis is blossoming like spring flowers? Perhaps your scholarly reputation has been strengthening, or your relationships with students or colleagues have been deepening? Make a list of everything around you that’s ready to be harvested: that is, turned into nourishment or inspiration for future work.
Anticipate harvests future. What seeds can you plant right now in anticipation of future rewards? Listen to what your body (of work) is hungry and thirsty for in this phase of life and career. What do you need more of, and what is the embryonic or seed form you can bury and tend in your little corner of the world?
A HARVEST EXPERIMENT
Create a Mood Board for a Desired Harvest. A mood board is a flexible and expansive way of orienting toward the future. Compared to a traditional goals list or strategic plan, a mood board is intuitive and open-ended, while still focusing your intentions. Create a mood board for your body of work. As you go about your life, notice images and phrases that catch your imagination and hint at what you’d like to have or make, or who you’d like to become. Collect all these pieces in one place, whether a literal poster-sized, cardboard mood board or in a journal. As the pieces accumulate over days, weeks, or even months, arrange and rearrange them and see what themes emerge. How do these meanings help you clarify or revise your more prosaic to-do lists and mundane goals? How does your mood board help you cultivate your next harvest?
As you live the theme of HARVEST this month, what fruits and flowers fill your figurative cornucopia? What seeds are you planting for harvests future?
Thank you for joining us for #AcWriMoments! We’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a comment to let us know what you’re learning, trying, and discovering this month.
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