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!

Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: January 29, 2021

There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.” Whether advancing our field of research or honing our craft as an academic author, the goal for each of us should be one of continuous learning and advancement. This may involve learning new skills, changing our perspective, revisiting things that have worked in the past, or exploring challenges and setbacks as opportunities.

In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we find advice on all of these aspects of advancement.

2020 Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) is coming soon!

Every November, the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) joins with academic authors around the world to recognize and promote the month-long academic write-a-thon event, Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo). Started in 2011, this event encourages academic authors to focus on daily writing habits that move their projects closer to completion.

For the past three years, TAA has expanded their bi-weekly discussions to host weekly TweetChat events at the Twitter hashtag, #AcWriChat during the month of November. 

Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: August 14, 2020

This week’s collection of articles from around the web contains a variety of topics common to academic and textbook authors. Specifically, how to go from idea to completion, dealing with writer’s burnout along the way, essay writing in 2020, research contributions beyond publication, Digital First textbooks, the ‘later on’ PhD pursuit, and responding to R&R decisions.

The common thread through the collection is finding a way to finish what we start. Jim Ryun once said, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: July 31, 2020

This week’s collection of articles from around the web contains many strategies for writing that can make your writing process more effective and your results more powerful.

We begin our collection with misconceptions about being a writer, tips for reaching your writing goals, and being a trustworthy researcher. We continue with advice on writing what you want to know, writing imperfectly, organizing your writing, improving your essays, and reading to improve your writing. Finally, we explore revision strategies, tone, writing with a busy schedule, blogging, and fostering racial empathy through your reading and writing practices.

Academic writing styles: Critical academic writing

Academic writing is far from a one-size-fits-all genre. Applicable to the broad variety of academic disciplines and their unique approaches to conducting and documenting research efforts in the field, one might find it challenging to identify clearly what constitutes academic writing.

In our latest series of #AcWriChat TweetChat events on Twitter, we explored four commonly accepted academic writing styles: descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical. This article focuses on the discussion about the last of those four styles – critical academic writing.