“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.
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.
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.
It’s important to present your academic self to the world with a confident-sounding CV, but CVs often don’t show all the effort and work that went into those achievements, just the end result, says Mary Beth Averill, academic writing coach, editor, and co-author of The Confident Academic: Overcoming the small fish, big pond experience… and other difficult matters.
“When you look at one person’s CV compared to another person’s CV, you really have no idea what those CVs are resting on,” she says. “What they’re resting on is probably a lot of tries, even a lot of failure.”
Many academics lack confidence in some aspect of their professional lives, and while some are open about this, for others, it’s a well-kept secret, says Mary Beth Averill, academic writing coach, editor, and co-author with Hillary Hutchinson of The Confident Academic: Overcoming the small fish, big pond experience… and other difficult matters.
“I’ve been working with academic writers for over 30 years, and one thing that comes up repeatedly in my work with clients is their lack of confidence,” she says. “Even people who look to me like they’re at the top of their field sometimes feel a lack of confidence in some areas of their professional life.”
Holidays can be welcome respites from our daily routines and the seemingly relentless pressures to produce. But at holiday gatherings we also risk what are often inevitable and often embarrassing questions from well-meaning relatives and friends. Whether you’re writing your dissertation or, post-dissertation, sweating through the first article from it, a book chapter, or an entire book, at least one person asks those questions that make you squirm. They’re right up there with the personal in-your-face ones: “How come you’re still single?” or “When are you going to have kids?”
To help you field the equivalent questions about your academic project, maintain your self-respect, and even jab a little in return, here are several of the most common questions and suggested replies I’ve collected from my academic coaching clients who are agonizing through working on their scholarly projects. Clients report, I’m glad to say, that these suggested responses have worked well—meaning they’ve shut the other guy up. Tailor your responses as appropriate, but curb your impulse to throw a punch.
