Consider Creating a ‘Commonplace Book’ to Inspire, Remind, and Refresh You and Your Writing

A Commonplace Book is a way to compile knowledge important to you. It can become a valued snapshot of you and your interests as you grow in your life and career. I was keeping a Commonplace Book for decades and didn’t realize I was doing it!

Commonplace Books might include quotations, connections to important literature or sources, meaningful articles, key data, journals (personal or professional), your curriculum vitae, and any other centralized information. They are often informal and may sit on your desktop, in the cloud, in your notes program, or maybe even in your In Box.

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Busy TAA People: TAA Member Margarita Huerta’s Work Reaches the 1,000 Mark for Citations

TAA member Margarita Huerta, PhD, writer and Founder of Real Academics, reached the 1,000 mark for citations on her Google Scholar profile on August 25, 2023.

Her top three most cited articles (out of 20 articles tracked by Google) include:

  • “Graduate students as academic writers: writing anxiety, self-efficacy and emotional intelligence” (2017), M Huerta, P Goodson, M Beigi, D Chlup, Higher Education Research & Development, 36 (4), 716-729. (205 citations)
  • “The effect of an instructional intervention on middle school English learners’ science and English reading achievement” (2012), R Lara‐Alecio, F Tong, BJ Irby, C Guerrero, M Huerta, Y Fan, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49 (8), 987-1011. (184 citations)
  • “Connecting literacy and science to increase achievement for English language learners” (2010), M Huerta, J Jackson, Early Childhood Education Journal, 38, 205-211. (62 citations)

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Command Your Pet Words

Pets can be wonderful—I loved my orange and white cat. But when I received an editorial critique before publication of my short story “Casey,” I was horrified to learn it sheltered a whole menagerie of unwanted editorial pets —words, phrases, and grammatical constructions.

“Casey” is a story about a middle-school boy who feels like an outcast and later discovers he has healing powers. When I received the acceptance email, I was elated. Then the editor emailed me again: “Every author has pet words and phrases. Part of my job is to point them out so you can get rid of them.” She attached the manuscript and highlighted a herd of my pet words and phrases, in oxblood.

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Do Proliferating Ideas Threaten to Overtake You?

Do ideas flood your brain like a herd gone wild? Are you flailing around, physically and metaphorically, trying to corral them and drive them into the barn? Going mad trying to figure out how to use them all?

I am almost constantly barraged by ideas for essays, stories, poems, novel slivers, quirky descriptions, and metaphoric pearls. Ideas surface everywhere: as I work on the current creative piece, edit clients’ manuscripts, wash dishes, huff through workouts, wait on line, watch people, meditate, fall asleep, and even at business dinners.

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Friendship and writing desire: both last

Always craving more writing time (aside from the procrastination), I’ve chosen to keep up or reconnect with only a very few friends. And I realize an essential characteristic of real friendship: time doesn’t matter. However long the moments, weeks, or years between contacts, real friendship knows no steel-banded boundaries of time, distance, erratic mobile phone connections, or sporadic emails.

I recall a friend of twenty years ago, and I still cherish our many calls and visits. When we both moved, our interests diverged and contact ended.

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