How to have a writing room of your own

My writing buddy’s face turned dark pink as she shouted over her latté. “No one can do anything worthwhile without a private writing place!” She thrust her face into mine. “It’s gotta be your own!”

I was as adamant. “Oh, come on. All you need is the desire and will and your stone tablet and sharp tool. It doesn’t matter where you write!”

Our little debate embodies two often-discussed viewpoints about writing. Despite my vehement response to my friend, I have long puzzled about the most effective place to write. If you too are in a quandary, or lament you have no writing spot to call your own, I’d like to help you enlarge your perceptions about your own physical and mental writing places, spaces, and times.

New 2015 TAA Fall Webinars – Improve Your Skills

Summer is rapidly coming to a close, meaning fall and classes are just around the corner. Now is the perfect time to start thinking about and planning your fall writing projects. Whether you are interested in learning the steps for developing a textbook, creating an online presence to build your academic brand, educating yourself on textbook royalty audits or publishing agreements, or how to write clearer academic pose, TAA’s fall webinar series for textbook and academic authors has you covered. Join us as various industry experts share their expertise on academic and textbook writing topics.

Hunger, home and history: Our legacies as academics

My Irish ancestors who came to America in the late 19th century called July “the hungry month” because the stored food from the year before was used up and the new crops were not yet in. I remember during summers as a child how my mother, a philosophy professor, would eat chips by the pool and say, “I don’t know why I’m always so hungry in the summer.”

I grew up to become an academic and writer and when I researched this history, I was able to make connections between my family history and our globe’s larger, collective histories.