Three Strategies to Motivate Yourself to Write

By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD

To be happy involves feeling satisfied with the progress you are making toward your life goals. If you are a writer, completing writing projects is likely part of those goals. Therefore, you feel good when you sit down to write. However, I bet there are days when you don’t feel like writing, even if you know it will ultimately bring you joy. So, how can you motivate yourself on those days?

Here, I share three strategies that can motivate you to write, especially when you’re not feeling up to it.

Break down a big task into small tasks

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Curate Your Own Work

By Janet Salmons, Ph.D.

“The past is prologue.” – William Shakespeare in The Tempest

We know how to proof and edit without mercy. We are accustomed to having our writing reviewed by editors and peers. What happens when we take these processes to the next level and initiate a critical review with an eye to a radical update, synthesis, and new publication(s) based on the writing we’ve done throughout our careers? That is the project I am undertaking as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies. The concept grew out of a TAA conference session, so I look forward to sharing lessons learned and inviting you to consider curating your work.

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2025 TAA Conference Bookstore Featured Book: ‘Becoming the Writer You Already Are’

Why is writing so terrifying? Dr. Michelle R. Boyd’s Becoming the Writer You Already Are explains why being afraid of writing is neither strange nor shameful. And introduces the Writing Metaphor, a tool that illuminates what you already know about overcoming writing challenges. Becoming shows you how to consult, trust, and follow that process. So you can live a pleasurable, productive, satisfying writing life.

Purchase in the 2025 TAA Conference Bookstore

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For Your Most Productive Writing Sessions, Nine Questions

By Noelle Sterne, PhD

When we’re in the middle of a writing project, scholarly or otherwise, it’s hard enough to start, much less continue. I’ve found that asking ourselves some important questions and acting on the answers helps us more easily sneak up on the current project and get started or continue, and even finish.

The questions and answers are completely between you and you, and you have the best and only answers. Whatever other advice you may have read or heard, or however loudly others swear theirs is the only way, it’s your own answers that matter.

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Want to Write a Column? Admonitions and Advantages

By Noelle Sterne, PhD

At barbecues with friends or departmental parties with people you want to impress, you love tossing off, eyes modestly lowered, “Oh, I’m a regular columnist for Extreme Anachronisms.” But if you’ve been invited or want to start a column (or regular blog) and continue basking in such glory, realize what you’ve taken on.

A quality column takes consistent effort, thought, faithfulness, and rewriting. Experienced column writers know this. From my experience writing several columns and the advice of several column writers I interviewed, here are ten of the most challenging and important considerations.

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