As promised, I’ve gathered a long list of most useful posts for your must-read list this week. This week’s list is full of great writing tips and tools to help you move your writing project forward. Although only a month into this weekly series, I have to say these are some of my favorite and (hopefully) most useful posts yet. These are never in a particular order, just randomly placed, so make sure to read all the way to the bottom as they are no less important! Happy Halloween and, as always, happy writing!

The right tool for the job: Five collaborative writing tools for academics
This is a well thought-out piece on tools for academics writing collaboratively. The author, Christof Schöch, gives advantages and disadvantages for five different tools. Schöch evaluates each tool using a series of requirements he feels coauthors would need when using collaborative writing software. Have you used any of these?

The Confidence Gap in Academic Writing
I think this is an important piece of writing to read for all scholars, particularly women. Theresa MacPhail, an assistant professor in the Science, Technology & Society Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, offers suggestions on how to write with less self-doubt and the “red flags” of this doubt that may already be making appearances in your writing.

Topic Sentence Paragraphs
Rachael Cayley’s writing is so easy to follow and understand, not to mention the great advice she gives for academic writing. Here she discusses topic sentence paragraphs and how they can be used to identifying structural issues.

10 Tricks To Make Your Author Website Rank Higher In Search Engines Like Google
You created an author website (blog) but how will people, or search engines, find you? While some of you may find this to be written in another language, I think most of you will be able to take away at least eight concrete tips. Are you finally ready to take that leap and create an authoring blog but don’t know how or where to start? We’ve got a great video tutorial series to help you: How to Create a Blog to Promote Your Academic Work

tactics for proof-reading
Pat Thomson offers practical and solid advice for proofreading in this blog post. I agree with her, I am the worst at proofreading my own writing. I like her third tip and know that I sometimes use the fourth one, but need to do so more often. What tips/tricks would you add to this list?

The Digital Academic, A Changing Culture – Interview
Again, this is a great piece for those unsure about blogging and how it can fit into your academic life. In her last bit of advice, Charlotte Mathieson offers an idea of how she uses blogging to talk about her research without giving away everything or having to worry that someone else will than investigate the same thing you are.

Don’t React Personally
I have to say, it’s a bit refreshing to hear someone say that it’s OK to take rejection personally. After all of the time and effort that goes into any piece of writing, how could one not take that rejection letter personal? I’m not an academic, but I think rejection of any kind can be applied here. It’s how we handle that rejection and move on from it that is important. I highly recommend you read this article.

Take the Weekends Off
Sometimes we just need a reminder that taking a weekend off isn’t such a bad thing. Tanya Golash-Boza gives ideas on how to not work on the weekend so that you’ll feel rejuvenated come Monday.

Don’t forget Academic Writing Month starts November 1! Learn more and declare your goal here: Announcing Academic Writing Month 2014