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:

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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.



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Discover the 5 Cs of your optimal writing flow

Are you looking for a greater understanding of the mind-body connection in academic writing? Do you want to know how to get into the optimal writing flow and avoid writing blocks burnout while completing your writing project? In her 2023 TAA Conference session, “Discover the 5 Cs of Your Optimal Writing Flow,” Dr. Michelle Rivera-Clonch, Co-Founder of Writing in Depth: An Academic Writing Retreat, will pull from physiological psychology to help authors understand their brain/body reactions to experiencing adversity in the writing process. It will focus on identifying ways that invite us to work in an optimal writing flow by incorporating the 5Cs in your writing practice: Calm, Cool, Connected and Creative.

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TAA CDEI Committee to launch survey on DEI-related publishing issues

TAA’s CDEI Committee is launching a survey in late April to gather information on several DEI-related publishing issues in nine categories, including reviewer-related issues, editor competencies, positive representation, case studies, understanding bias, incorporating triggering sensitivities, inclusive scholarship, and language.

The goal of the survey is to learn more about how TAA can support its members and their publisher’s efforts to incorporate DEI topics in their writing.

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The similarities and differences between academic and textbook writing

What are similarities and differences between academic and textbook writing? Find out in the 2023 TAA Conference session, “Academic vs. Textbook Writing – Similarities and Differences”, presented by Kenneth L. Campbell, Professor of History at Monmouth University.

As an author of both textbooks and academic works, Campbell will explore the similarities and differences between these two types of writing. On the one hand, good writing is good writing, and it seems like many of the same principles should apply to both academic and textbook writing—and he believes they do.

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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.”

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