How do you get into your academic writing 'flow?'
I'm a doctoral student beginning work on my master's thesis over the summer. During Spring term, I've put together a great outline, have a generally comprehensive literature review, and am ready to start really putting pen to paper. However, after coming from a traditional career, I've been surprised to find that graduate school days, and I presume academic careers even more so, are broken up by meetings, day-to-day events, and workplace interaction much, much more than I expected, very similar to a traditional career with the expectation of ALSO putting out a massive, well thought out document.
Writing is a strong suit of mine, but I've always been a binge writer, especially when motivated by a upcoming deadline. I'm finding that practice isn't as possible in grad school as I thought it would be. I also don't think it's the best way to write; I find I often lose out on some great thoughts when I just vomit everything out. How do you all manage to 'switch' your brain into writing mode, especially when it's easy to be distracted by emails, reading another article, upcoming meetings, or tinkering with R code? I will be able to find those long writing days over Summer, but I'd like to be able to work on things even on those days when I've only got a couple hour block.