Writing takes work. Whether starting a PhD or working on another published book or manuscript, academic authoring is work and should be treated as a professional endeavor. Margaret Laurence once said, “When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.” Our writing must receive focus and time for us to be successful.

In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we have advice on early career authoring, building an impact and brand, and current trends in publishing. As you embark on the week ahead, give your writing the focus it deserves. After all, everything else is just odd jobs. Happy writing!

Beginning the #phd – start writing at the start

During the PhD – and in any scholarly work – we write all the time. Not to publish. Not to send the text anywhere. We write to help us make sense of things. We make notes continually. We summarise and synthesise, compare and contrast what other people have said and written. We shape and craft our interpretations of texts into something that speaks with our particular research project. We make tables, codes, images, doodles, graphs, maps and diagrammes. We have piles of files of ideas, tentative explorations of data, emerging analysis, experimentation with theory. These writings help us to sort out what we might mean, can mean, can say and not say.

Getting beyond bias to make the career impact you desire: An interview with Scismic’s Elizabeth Wu and Danika Khong

In an ideal working environment, your abilities would be the major factor determining the success of your career trajectory. However, systemic review of predictors for successful careers has shown that success is not defined by just your abilities. In addition to one’s professional competence, true success is more readily defined through other significant factors.

How to create a comfortable study space in your apartment

Do you want to create a study space in your apartment? Do you want to make use of your vacant time in between classes to study? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions, this article can help. There are several ways to create a study space in your apartment, and they’re very easy to do.

Work is never done

One of my main insights of the past years, and sometimes causes for stress, is the understanding that as a professor, work is never done. I don’t recall a day in the last ten years, when I closed my computer at the end of the day knowing that I simply had nothing else left to do.

3 Things authors should know about publishing

Taking the leap from writer to published author is a huge accomplishment—and often the end goal for writers who complete NaNoWriMo. We all write for different reasons. We’re motivated by different life experiences, and we pursue a wide variety of genres and plotlines, but once the writing is finished, we generally all want the same thing: to share our work with others. So if you’re considering publication for your writing, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Ask the community (and Chefs): How can we achieve equitable participation in open research?

Two years ago we asked the Chefs and our broader community the question: How can we achieve equitable participation in Open Research? There were too many responses to include in one post! While two years have gone by, there is still much work to be done to improve equity in research. So this month, in support of Open Access Week, we asked the same question again. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is now available as well.

Building a creative business brand with Pamela Wilson

How do you build a creative business that you love — and makes you money? Pamela Wilson talks about her non-fiction business model, how to choose a niche, plus how to pivot your brand over time.

A few of my favorite author marketing tools

Considering the year that you’ve come through, my how to, practical, and have a little fun side is colliding and wanting to come out all at once. In a recent survey of my author community, heading the “wants” list was marketing and social media tips. I decided that I could do a combo of all and share some of the tools on an ongoing basis.

Q&A: Detail in planning of tasks

Following a post of yours, I started using Todoist, and I’m finding it very useful to keep track of recurrent tasks and everyday tasks. However, I’m still struggling with finding an efficient work flow for research projects, as a PhD student. For example, now I’m reviewing a manuscript for resubmission, which involves redoing some data analysis, editing the main manuscript, compiling answers for reviewers, read literature… so I have been struggling with these intermingled tasks and was wondering if you also use Todoist at this level, or how do you suggest could be a way to organize such workflows?

COVID-19, copyright and the creative economy

What lessons does COVID-19 present for publishing? How does copyright hold its own in a world of “open”? Where might innovative business models emerge?

Are publishers learning from their mistakes?

At the STM Association Annual Meeting in “virtual Frankfurt” last week, much of the focus was on how scholarly publishers are responding to the COVID crisis. Publishing executives reported how they have accelerated their editorial and peer review processes for COVID submissions, rightly taking pride in the contributions they have made to fighting the pandemic. They also emphasized again and again that they want to be more trusted. This is a formidable challenge in light of some recent failures. To achieve their objectives, publishers need to become more comfortable talking about their mistakes to prove convincingly that they are learning from them.

AcWriMo webinar: What do publishing trends mean for academic writers?

From scholarly article to practical guides, from textbooks to media, from weighty tomes to tweets, researchers and academic writers have many options today. But what should we choose, and how should we approach different kinds of writing? Register now for a lively conversation of strategies and examples with Rebecca Bayeck, Eric Schmieder, and Sharon Zumbrunn. The webinar fits with a monthlong AcWriMo series of original posts, interviews, and resources.