The ERC, bad writing days, and a free workshop
Welcome back. Three things this week: a piece of ERC news that will matter to anyone planning a big grant application in the next year, an honest conversation about writing days that go badly, and an invitation to a free one-hour workshop I'm running on how to actually finish your summer writing project through the retreat method.
01 · In the field: The ERC just got a €2.8bn work programme for 2027
Some good news for a change. Meeting informally with EU research ministers in Dublin on 21 July, Research Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva confirmed that the Commission has adopted the 2027 European Research Council work programme, worth €2.8 billion. This is the money that will flow through the Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, Synergy and Proof of Concept calls next year — the schemes that fund a very large share of the humanities and social-science research being done in Europe today. Zaharieva put it plainly: "science without scientific freedom simply does not exist."
The 2027 programme sits alongside a broader push the Commission is calling Europe's "fifth freedom" — making knowledge move as freely as goods, services, capital and people. The European Research Area Act, due this autumn, is designed to remove barriers to mobility, cross-border research infrastructure, funding and sustainable careers. This is happening in parallel to the messier FP10 negotiations we talked about two weeks ago, meaning the near-term (2027 calls) looks stable and generously funded, even while the long-term (2028 onwards) is still being fought over.
Why this matters: If you've been sitting on an ERC Starting or Consolidator idea, 2027 is a good year to move. The scheme structure and evaluation criteria for the 2027 calls will be almost identical to what you know today, and the budget is confirmed. Watch the ERC's official news page for the exact call opening dates — these are usually announced in July with openings in September–October. While the familiar ERC schemes remain in place, 2027 brings widened post‑PhD eligibility windows and revised re‑submission rules, so check the official ERC 2027 Work Programme before you finalise your plans. Talking to your research office before the 2026 summer ends is not premature; it is the perfect timing. You need to start preparing your grant at least a year before the deadline.
02 · On the craft: The writing day that "didn't work"
Something I want to say to my clients more often, and don't always manage to: a writing day where nothing usable came out is not a failed writing day. It's just a writing day. And if you're serious about a long project — a monograph, a big article, a grant proposal that needs real thinking — you will have many of them. Treating them as failures is one of the fastest ways I know to talk yourself out of the practice altogether.
Here is what I've learned to look for instead. When a session is over, wehther it was a good day or bad day, I ask three quick questions, and I write the answers in one line each at the top of the next day's file. First: what did I learn about the argument today, even if I didn't get words down? (Sometimes the answer is "the second half of the paper doesn't actually follow from the first," which is worth more than three polished paragraphs.) Second: what am I avoiding? You almost always know. It's the paragraph you keep scrolling past, the sources you haven't checked, the reviewer comment you've been pretending you didn't understand. Third: what is the very first action I will take tomorrow? Not a topic. The actual action. It is astonishingly hard to sit down in front of a blank document; it is easy to sit down in front of a document knowing what your next step will be.
Doing this turns "wasted" sessions into information. It also breaks the shame cycle, which is what usually keeps academics away from their desks after a rough week. The truth is that most of the real progress on my clients' papers happens in the sessions where they thought nothing happened. They just didn't have a way to see it yet.
Try this week:
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At the end of your next writing session — however it went — write three lines: what you learned about the argument, what you're avoiding, and the first action for tomorrow.
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Do it especially on the days that felt useless.
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At the end of the week, read the seven "learned" lines back. That's your actual progress. It rarely looks the way we expect.
03 · Free workshop: Finish your writing project this summer: the Retreat Method
Here's something I want more academics to know. A study of 1,323 scholars across 15 countries found that only 11–13% of them write every day. The most prolific writers, seven out of every eight of them, don't. They work in intensive, focused bursts with real recovery in between. I call this the retreat method, and it's the single biggest shift I've watched turn stalled projects into finished ones.
On Tuesday, 4 August, I'm teaching it live in a free one-hour workshop: Finish Your Writing Project This Summer: the Retreat Method. In sixty minutes we'll cover why daily writing fails for most academics, the reframe that changes everything, and the three moves that make a writing burst actually work: shrink the goal, protect the block, close the loop. You'll leave having written one concrete micro-goal for finishing your summer project, and knowing exactly when you'll do it.
It's hosted inside the Emerge Café, my free community of 300+ social-science and humanities academics. Free to join, live plus replay, and no strings attached—come for one honest hour and take the method with you.
Join the Emerge Café & save your seat →
That's it for today. May you have a productive yet restorative week ahead!
All the best,
Melanie Sindelar
Founder, EMERGE Scholars Collective
