Ray Bradbury once said, “Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”

The type of career you make for yourself as an academic author is made up of many factors. In our collection of articles from around the web this week, we find posts addressing several of those affecting today’s academic writers including: finding your motivation, establishing an ideal writing space, managing your time, building community, and the future of conferences.

No matter where you are in your career as an academic author, know that you are not a failure as long as you keep working toward your goals. Happy writing!

Nonfiction Writers: Find Your External and Internal Why

When I ask my clients why they want to write a book, they will often start by giving a simple answer: “I want to share what I have learned” or “I don’t want other people to suffer like I did.” These answers are part of the truth, but they often shield deeper reasons. These reasons, this deeper why, form the core of your motivation and momentum; you’ll draw on these reasons when you feel despair or imposter syndrome.

How to Make our Writing Space Perfect for You

A good writing space is essential. You’ll probably spend a lot of time there, and if you’re not spending a lot of time there, you’re spending deeply focused time. It needs to be special, inspirational, and fit all your writing needs. Here are four steps to help you get there.

Top 10 Time Management Tips for Writers

People don’t talk about what a difficult task writing is. It is often chalked off to talent, and hard work and technique take the back seat. But writing is an obsessive occupation, we writers know that. In such a hazardous occupation, time management is key. In addition to actually boosting your productivity, it also enhances your creativity. So, to help you out, we’ve done some research and compiled some tips on how you could be a more productive writer.

Everyday annotation

Last week I stumbled across the book Annotation, written by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia. As the title suggests, the book is all about the history and practices of annotating texts. And probably because the book is from the MIT Press, the authors don’t stop at books and papers – they also tackle how digital technologies offer new possibilities for annotation. They consider how annotation might be used in the interests of open scholarship and open government.

Building community for ECRs

This post addresses Early Career Researchers but what’s discussed is applicable to most researcher cohorts (e.g. higher degree by research students, mid-career researchers) and, hopefully, provides insight for senior research leaders who want to encourage research culture-building and develop environments that are supportive of these kinds of initiatives.

Preprints, Retractions & The Scientific Record

A peer-reviewed article published this month in PLOS ONE has examined what happens in the scientific record when journal-published versions of articles are retracted in cases of research previously available on preprint servers.

Hybrid Versus In-person: What Will Be the Future of Academic Conferences?

This post was triggered by a recent Scholarly Kitchen article concerning what many call “back to normal” for academic conferences (in this case, primarily the 2022 Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) conference). The contributors to the post are enthusiastic about the return to in-person meetings. Zoom fatigue was mentioned by several, although some also have concerns, for example, about the risks for vulnerable colleagues.