Three Strategies to Motivate Yourself to Write

By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD

To be happy involves feeling satisfied with the progress you are making toward your life goals. If you are a writer, completing writing projects is likely part of those goals. Therefore, you feel good when you sit down to write. However, I bet there are days when you don’t feel like writing, even if you know it will ultimately bring you joy. So, how can you motivate yourself on those days?

Here, I share three strategies that can motivate you to write, especially when you’re not feeling up to it.

Break down a big task into small tasks

Cengage Group Announces First Half Fiscal Year 2025 Results

Cengage Group, a leading global education and technology company, reported its financial results for the second quarter and first half of Fiscal Year 2025, ended September 30, 2024.

Adjusted Cash Revenue for the first half of Fiscal Year 2025 was $841 million, flat against a high comparative which benefitted from earlier ordering and favorable timing of several large deals. Adjusted Cash EBITDA for the first half of Fiscal Year 2025 was $323 million, an increase of 8 percent over the first half of Fiscal Year 2024. Operating cash flow was $128 million, more than double the $60 million in the prior period.

Welcome to TAA’s Newest Column: Dear Dr. Noelle

By Noelle Sterne, PhD

Welcome to Dear Dr. Noelle!

Unashamedly, I have modeled this column on the popular “Dear Abby” advice column but aimed at us more evolved intellectuals. The column is for you graduate students, new academic doctors, and professors who have questions that burn in your minds even when you’re binging on a Netflix series.

Fair game: anything pertaining to a dissertation, article, monograph, or book: intellectual, expressional, procedural, psychological, emotional, relational, maddening.

Publishers Join with Worldwide Coalition to Condemn the Theft of Creative and Intellectual Authorship by Tech Companies for Generative AI Training

On October 22, 2024, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) joined forces with more than 10,000 creators and coalition partners, including authors, musicians, actors, artists, and photographers, to condemn the theft of creative and intellectual authorship by big tech companies for use in their Generative AI models. The AAP released the following statement and are calling on authors and authoring organizations to sign it:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.” 

Finding a Freelance Editor You Click With

by Hannah de Keijzer

Thousands of freelance editors are poised to work on your manuscript. But whether or not the editorial process elevates your book and enlivens you as a writer hinges in large part on the person you pick. You need someone who can deliver edits to professional standards, of course, on time and within your budget.

But you also deserve to work with a communicative editor whose method fits your brain and preferred ways of working. Look for someone who gives you confidence in yourself and in your manuscript as it develops. That’s a matter of process and feelings fit as much as one of professional skill.