2023 TAA Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring opens mentoring sign up: Limited space available

Gain valuable advice and insight, get your questions answered, or just make a connection for when you need help in the future by signing up to meet with a mentor at the 2023 TAA Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring, which will be held online June 9-10, 2023.

The deadline for signing up for mentoring is May 15. Limited slots are available and are offered on a first come, first-served basis, so don’t delay, register for the conference today!

Choose from nine different mentors for up to two 15-minute one-on-one discussions:

Confronting the anxiety of academic writing: Reconceptualizing writing to clarify your ideas

The first article in this series, based on Rachael Cayley’s October 19, 2022, TAA webinar, “Confronting the Anxiety of Academic Writing,” considered the importance of taking academic writing anxiety seriously. The second discussed Cayley’s suggestions for tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties associated with writing.

In this third article, we delve into the first of Cayley’s three principles for reconceptualizing writing: using writing to clarify your own thinking. In subsequent posts, will discuss the other two principles: committing to extensive revision and understanding the needs of the reader.



Confronting the anxiety of academic writing: Tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties

The first article in this series, based on Rachael Cayley’s October 19, 2022 TAA webinar, “Confronting the Anxiety of Academic Writing”, covered the concerns of writing product and writing process and how they are so deeply rooted that they start to feel inevitable.

In this second article, we discuss some of the ways that Cayley suggests tackling the intellectual and practical difficulties associated with writing. To tackle the intellectual difficulties, she says, you need to reconceptualize writing: “Writing is not a simple matter of writing up something that has already been created. Prior to writing, for most of us, there’s not much there. And that creative process—the process of getting words out of our inchoate minds and on to the page—is an intensely difficult one. No matter how much underlying research, or note taking, or outlining, or thinking you may have done.”

Want to feel more joyful when writing? This 2023 TAA Conference session is for you

“I want to feel more joyful through the process of my writing.” If this statement resonates, you will not want to miss the 2023 TAA Conference session, Empowering Joyful Writing, by Dr. Tracy Hodges, Owner and Chief Creative Officer of The Empowering Advocate LLC.

The stressors of current life are pushing more and more people to seek joy in their work. Writing is one task that may not spark joy for many of us— it is challenging, vulnerable, and time-consuming.

Registration is now open for the 2023 TAA Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring

Network with other textbook and academic authors and gain knowledge on writing and editing strategies, writing productivity, textbook contracts and royalties, and much more! You will leave inspired!

You’ll have the opportunity to participate in more than two dozen educational sessions, one-on-one mentoring sessions with veteran textbook and academic authors and industry professionals, and plenty of networking and information-sharing sessions.

TAA’s 35th Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference will be held online, June 9-10, 2023, on an interactive virtual conference platform.

Why start a writing journal?

If you’re having trouble getting serious about writing in the new year after all the holiday time away, consider a writing journal. It’s an almost painless way to sneak back into writing and a longstanding writer’s tool to record and develop ideas, work out projects and plots, and save meaningful aphorisms and perfect overheard phrases. Whether you’ve kept a journal for decades, or have never started one, a journal not only can help you write more but also make your writing more effective.