"Many eye-opening moments” or “motivating reasons for writing” was the feedback of visitors of the Long Night as well as the critique that there was not a writing group for advanced writers. A review about the Long Night Against Procrastination 2019.

On the 7^th of March, the Long Night Against Procrastination (LNDS) took place for the third time. This event always happens on the first Thursday in March worldwide. In Dresden, it is organized by the Writing Center of the TU Dresden (SZD) in cooperation with the State and University Library (SLUB). Already in the afternoon, you could see the transformations in the corridors of the library. Red balloons lead you like a red thread at the staircase railings up to the foyer of lecture hall on the first floor. There you could find a soup buffet or fill in a writing-type test.

Entering the lecture hall, you could take part of the interactive program. After a short welcome and introduction, the participants started with a freewriting, a popular method of getting into writing. Following you had the possibility to enrol in one of the five writing groups, which mainly had the focus on writing together, but in a structured writing time.

There was e. g. a group where writers worked on their writing projects by means of the Pomodoro-Technique. The participants motivated and benefited from each other and relaxed at the breaks together. “The presence and the concentration of the others motivated me” was one of the entries in the guest book. In the writing group, “revision despite overload” participants revised each other’s texts by passing it on in coordinated time periods.

Besides the writing groups, the visitors could walk along the “Writing Process Walk”, a poster gallery visualizing the phases of academic writing. The short oral quiz at the end of the walk soon developed into a platform for discussion about academic writing amongst visitors and staff of the Writing Center.

The red balloons in the staircase led on your way to the second floor where Speed-Dating took part at 8.30 pm – not for finding the love of your library but a suitable writing partner. At the end of the session, the students formed a new writing group where they can now work together on their different writing projects (master, bachelor or seminar paper or even articles for magazines) and at the same time support each other.

During the whole evening, everybody who had questions about academic writing could get individual writing counselling by writing tutors. Those who already had spent too much time in front of the computer could furthermore take part of the hourly desk yoga sessions. And those who didn’t have anything to write that night were not banned to do nothing – they could enjoy the line of tables with homemade cakes.

Find more information and photo gallery here.