Round up all those stampeding ideas

Do ideas flood your brain like a herd gone wild? Do you flail around, physically and metaphorically, trying to corral them and drive them into the barn? Are you going mad trying to figure out how to use them all?

I am almost constantly barraged by ideas for essays, stories, poems, novel slivers, quirky descriptions, and metaphoric pearls. Ideas surface everywhere: as I edit clients’ manuscripts, wash dishes, huff through workouts, wait on line, watch people, meditate, fall asleep, and even during tactful small talk at business dinners.

All the deluging ideas used to make me groan. Sometimes I’d even feel envious of writers who complained about their sparse fits of inspiration. I’d grouse internally that my ideas never seemed to stop. How would I ever get to them all, much less organize them or make something of them? Most would end up in a mass of ragged notes or on scraps stuffed under the scanner.

Put your dream of publication to the test

In his book, Put Your Dream to the Test, Dr. John C. Maxwell says, “Dreams are valuable commodities. They propel us forward. They give us energy. They make us enthusiastic. Everyone ought to have a dream.”

What is your dream? Do you have a dream of publishing a book or article, but don’t know where to start? Have you started, but lose momentum? Have you lost hope and set your dream aside?

Maxwell adds, “It’s one thing to have a dream. It’s another to do the things needed to achieve it.” To put your dream to the test, he outlines the following list of 10 questions to help you recognize your dream and seize it.

Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: January 1, 2021

As you turn the page on a new year today, reflect on your accomplishments in the year that was, dream of opportunities in the year ahead, and design a plan for action to move you forward each day. Take time to reflect, dream, and plan. Writing is a creative process that requires learning from what was in order to create what will be. In fact, Burton Rascoe once said, “A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.”

2020 – looking back, looking forward

Regardless of the plans you started the year 2020 with, it’s likely a safe assumption to say that things didn’t go as planned. But as we close out the year that was, we want to share with you some of the highlights from TAA that have kept us going strong and remaining optimistic for an even brighter future ahead with you in 2021.

Despite the unexpected events and disruptions the pandemic brought to the world around us, TAA has continued to serve the textbook and academic writing community by maintaining our long-standing tradition of quality programs and resources while finding new opportunities to adapt to the changing environment, offer more online services, and develop new membership benefits for the years ahead.

7 Time management strategies to begin, keep working on, and complete your projects

Procrastination is a term applied to putting things off until later, but what can we do about it? In a recent TAA webinar, “Seven Time Management Strategies to Begin, Keep Working On, and Complete Your Projects“, academic writing coach, editor, and author of How to Become an Academic Coach, Mary Beth Averill shared seven proven strategies for getting started, keeping at it, and finishing our projects.

While she did an excellent job providing practical advice on implementing each of the seven strategies – life management, seeing yourself as a writer, saying no, scheduling, getting started, following through, and finishing – she supported those strategies with insightful quotes from her faculty writers group that may provide bite-sized pearls of wisdom to help you begin, keep working on, and complete your projects.