Have you ever heard of an inspiration or vision board? It’s a collage of images, quotes, and affirmations of your dreams and goals. Creating a vision board that illustrates what you want to achieve in your writing career could motivate you and inspire you on days when you need it most to get you writing. Use it to gather quotes from authors that inspire you, journal covers that you wish to be published in, or positive comments from reviewers. Learn more about how they work and how to make one here: The Reason Vision Boards Work and How to Make One. If you do create a board, or if you already have one, post it in the comments below for all of us to see! Happy writing and happy visioning!

The Research Student Blog Challenge – #HDRblog15 – November 2015
If you are a research student I suggest adding this challenge to your calendar for the month of November. This challenge is a great way to kick-off your new blog, get it going again, or just something fun to get you blogging and connecting with other researchers!

At Penn State, robots begin writing the textbooks
Robots, writing textbooks? Is this what the future of the textbook looks like? Here is a bit more about the project: About BBookX

How to Get Past Writer’s Block
Although Michael Boezi wrote this piece more for content creators, it is very much relevant for any writer. What are you doing today to move your writing project toward completion?

MOOCs Are Still Rising, at Least in Numbers
The hype about MOOCs hasn’t been as great lately, however there are more MOOCs today than ever before. I think the question still remains if MOOCS can and will provide another avenue for authors to gain royalties from.

9 Compelling Reasons Why Writing a Book Is the Best Personal Development Program
If you’ve already written a book, would you say these nine reasons are accurate? What would you add to this list? If you have yet to write a book, maybe these will help you finally sit down and do it.

On the need for reflection in academic writing
“Our profession is all about ‘think hard, reflect, expand your horizons’ and the reality is, we have become paper-churning machines.” Interesting thoughts on self-reflection are shared in this piece by Raul Pacheco-Vega. (This piece has been very popular among the academic Twitter community.)

Academics have found a way to access insanely expensive research papers—for free
So, apparently this is happening…