Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 8, 2022

Where are you starting with your writing? Anne Lamott says, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” Whether you are starting as a graduate student, a post-doc defining your research agenda, a new writing project, or a more extensive writing career, your new “first” effort will be a start (perhaps terrible) but not the end.

In this collection of articles from around the web, we find advice on academic authoring in the first person, writer’s block, research agendas, and protecting your ideas. We also find content on achieving goals as young writers, making writing a career, and considering University Presses for your next publication.

Whatever you are writing, start where you are and move forward. Happy writing!

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Five surprising business lessons for writers

Like most writers, I keep bumping up against, and avoiding, articles on how to treat my writing more like a business. I know I should pay more attention to the articles, but they always seem to interrupt precious writing time. In an infrequent browse through an older business publication, though, I stumbled on an article that didn’t give me administrative agita. Even deep in creative bliss, a writer can hardly resist the title: “Ten Traits That Make You Filthy-Rich” by Jeffrey Strain (TheStreet.com, February 1, 2008).

The five points here from Strain’s evergreen article remind us what we need to do not only to become rich (yes, it’s possible) but to stay true to our writing potential, creativity, and drive.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 1, 2022

Jane Yolen once said, “Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing… the rest will follow.” As authors, hopefully we all “love the writing”, but that doesn’t mean that writing is easy or that the things needed to support our writing efforts come naturally.

In this collection of articles from around the web, we found advice on common essay writing mistakes, time management processes, and tackling writer’s block. We also found a review of open data in research over the past decade and funding advice for using kickstarter as authors. Finally, we found marketing tips for assessing the competition on Kindle and examples of quality book trailers.

As you write this week (or support your writing with other authoring tasks), love what you do! Happy writing!

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Collaborating across differences: Reflect on writing habits in co-author processes

Most research and academic writers today produce publications within co-author relationships—making collaborative writing a key feature of our professional lives. In their recent study of team science, Barry Bozeman and Jan Youtie determined that more than 90% of sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) publications are co-authored (Strength in Numbers 2020). Even in historically single-author fields like mine, writing studies, co-authorship is on the rise.

This revolution in co-production of publications means that individual writers must both learn the craft of writing but also the art of writing in relationship with others.

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Working on K-12 curriculum and instructional materials? A new copyright licensing solution enables use of high-quality published content

Teachers, schools, and districts are increasingly demanding higher quality curriculum and instructional materials to meet the needs of their students and remain compliant with state and local standards.

High-quality published content that is current, personalized, local, diverse, equitable, and inclusive is vital for creating these materials. Unfortunately, securing copyright permissions for such content brings licensing challenges, especially when attempting to secure these permissions on an individual basis at scale.

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