2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 2): Strategies, environment, and lessons

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This second installment of the five-part series focuses on strategies for successful writing. We asked the authors to share their time management, productivity, pedagogical, and environmental approaches for success as well as what they learned in the writing process that they wish they had known before starting.

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Take your work on a date

What strategies do you use to make your writing enjoyable? In her TAA Conference presentation, “Creative Scheduling for Those Who Have ‘All the Time in the World’ and ‘No Time At All’”, Katy Peplin shared what it looks like to “take your work on a date”.

Before planning to crash your next romantic outing with your journal article, the following is meant to prepare for an exciting opportunity to grow closer to your work, not your soulmate. Peplin shares a five-step process for this productive writing strategy.

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2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 1): Purpose, timeline, and results

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This first installment of the five-part series focuses on why the authors decided to write their textbook, how long it took to complete the process, and the benefits and challenges of doing so.

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How to edit your work for proper format and quality presentation

Last week during TAA’s bi-weekly #AcWriChat TweetChat event on Twitter, we discussed how to edit your academic writing for proper format and quality presentation. Included in the discussion were the three common style guides (APA, MLA, and Chicago), common practices and mistakes, and the effect of poor formatting and presentation on credibility of the work. We also discussed how to evaluate flow and what elements of consistency should be evaluated during the editing process.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 24, 2020

In these times of uncertainty, it is common to experience confusion, seek knowledge, and wish for better days ahead, but as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”

This week’s collection of articles from around the web includes information on copyright and creative commons, online methods of research, social media streaming, finding a flow in a COVID infected world, building an academic community, and collecting qualitative data online. Perhaps one or more of these have been things you knew about or wished to learn more about.

But knowing and wishing is not enough. What you do with these and other ideas in our changing world is what determines the future you will create. Happy writing!

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