Early career researchers seeking to pursue an academic career face many challenges. Their existence is characterized by insecure employment conditions, conflicting demands and limited experiences of acting as independent scholars. In addition, many of them are at an age when it is common to start a family. Knowledge of how to feel well and achieve success on your own terms is rare, as few academics give others an insight into their life as an academic and what it feels like. In A Year of Academic Writing, David Larsson Heidenblad lays bare his own life as an academic. This book started out as a popular blog about academic work and writing. We here get to follow a year of his life as an academic and read about his thoughts on his academic career and what it entails, his reflections on the forms and conditions of writing and his observations on parenting and gender equality. The book is aimed at early career researchers wanting to master their professional role but also at their mentors and others interested in the many aspects of life as an academic.