Write. Revise. Repeat. A cycle of productivity for all academic authors, but when does it end? When is the project complete? And, what happens next?

In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we find advice about making decisions about your writing, what to do after the draft, and how much revising is required. We also have resources on mid-career scholarship and collaboration efforts. Finally, we have some industry news on Creative Commons licensing and the book supply chain.

There’s also the philosophy of Saul Bellow who said, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” So, I suppose that’s one way to increase productivity and avoid the need to revise. Happy writing!

Making Decisions about your writing

There are different kinds of decisions you need to make about writing. One is about prioritizing time for writing. I’ve dealt with that elsewhere in You need a writing practice and in my book Finding Time for your Scholarly Writing (A Short Guide). The decision here is about the relationship between writing and other aspects of your job.

Done with Your Draft—What Next?

If you’ve recently finished writing the first draft to your first book, congratulations! If you’re getting there, applying many of these tips in this list are going to help you get that draft into great shape.

My supervisor expects me to keep revising – why?

I often hear doctoral researchers asking this question. They’ve sent their supervisor some writing. It’s come back with feedback and suggestions and maybe actual corrections. The doc. researcher has attended to all of these and sent the revised text back to the supervisor. And then it comes back again with yet more feedback and suggestions and maybe actual corrections.

Episode 123: “A Completely Different Scholar”: Transformation Even in Mid-Career with Ronnie Olesker

Are you closer to the middle of your academic career than the beginning? Do you ever feel stuck in some ruts as it relates to your writing, publishing, and academic work? It can be so hard to find new ways of approaching your writing and publishing once you hit mid-career, but you are not without any hope! There can be big shifts and changes made even when you’re not new in the world of academia.

Working in a Collaborative Environment

Megan Lloyd returns to the podcast to talk us through the process of creating something in a collaborative environment, whether it’s a pair of authors working together, or a dozen people working to write, storyboard, and animate a television series.

Q: Can You Revoke a Creative Commons License? A: No. Er… Sort Of? Maybe?

This is the story of a surprisingly difficult journey: my attempt to understand* whether it’s possible for a copyright holder, once having made her work available under a Creative Commons (CC) license, to revoke the license and then distribute the work under different terms (or halt its distribution altogether).

Book Supply Chain Check-Up

Dwindling paper supplies, skilled labor shortages, limited printing capacity, and heightened awareness of environmental impact have all contributed to the supply chain nightmare for publishers.