Navigating Writing with ChatGPT

Utilising ChatGPT as a supporting technological tool for writing can increase productivity. Here, I will share my personal experience with the model; how it assisted my writing practice, and the issues writers must be aware of.

ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It generates human-like responses to questions and performs other language-related tasks based on training data, mainly from the Internet. Its ability to use language, process data and arrive at conclusions has made it one of the top technological developments in 2023 globally. Here are four ways to utilize ChatGPT in your writing process:

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Busy TAA People: Beverly Stein Signs Contract for Music Textbook

TAA member Dr. Beverly Stein, a professor in the Department of Music at California State University, Los Angeles, signed a contract with Rowman & Littlefield in May 2023 for a textbook entitled, Unlocking Meaning in Art Song: A Singer’s Guide to Practical Analysis Using Schubert’s Songs, to be published in June 2024 in time to present to the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) conference.

“Rowman & Littlefield has a new imprint that is combined with NATS, so it’s perfect for my book, which teaches singers how to analyze their songs, using Schubert’s lieder as examples,” says Stein. “I so appreciated TAA for helping me to learn about contracts, when I was considering their offer.”
Congratulations Beverly!

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TAA Member Phil Wankat: Archival Articles on Money From the ‘TAA Report’

The fifth installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Money, is now available. Articles include “Frustrations of a University Book Author,” “The Simplified Employee Pension,” “The New Paradox of the College Textbook,” and more.

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. 

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Choosing a Knowledge Level for Your Target Reader

Your research is done. You have been thinking about getting down to writing for a while. You have decided on your format (e.g., poster presentation, peer review journal article, monograph, textbook). Maybe you have a target publisher or website in mind.

Before you start to write, think about your target reader (or conference attendee or book customer) and what their level of knowledge is. This may seem like a given but take a moment.

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The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process (Part 4)

Hello fellow TAA members, thank you for reading this fourth post of “The Psychology Behind Writing.” With monthly offerings, we’ll get into some of the psychological processes that support our academic writing as well as the ones that derail our writing. And, we will definitely explore strategies for amplifying the positive and mitigating the negative. Read the first post, second post, and the third post in this series.

Decisive Writers vs. Inclusive Writers

As many of you might know, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is structured with 4 personality scales, each with two “opposite” preferences that rest on a continuum of intensity for that personality scale.

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More Archival Topics From TAA’s Print Newsletter with Commentary From Long-Time Member Phil Wankat

Long-time TAA Member Phil Wankat has dug back into his TAA print newsletter archive, this time into the black-and-white early issues published between 1994 and 2010, finding more gold to share with you along with his brief commentary of the value of each article.

We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” along with the other articles he shared from the TAA Report, over the next few months. The articles are organized into 12 categories, including Authors Needed, Bios, Contracts and Legal Comments, Diversity, Managing and Planning, Money, Production, Publishing first book, Recognition and Rewards, Teaching, Textbook Scholarship and Textbooks in Promotion Cases, and Writing and Writer’s Block.
The first set of articles we are sharing, in the Authors Needed category, include:

“Co-authoring a book originally written by another,” by Frank Silverman. “Look for a book that has an author who is retired, or close to retirement or, well, deceased,” says Wankat.

“Authors uneasy over Pearson deal.” “Big mergers ‘reduce the opportunities for new authors and even close the door on experienced authors,'” says Wankat.

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