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.
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.”
Want to feel more joyful when writing? This 2023 TAA Conference session is for you
“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.
Why start a writing journal?
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.
Use your inner mentor for your academic project predicaments
Most of us probably had mentors in graduate school and may still keep in touch with them. But they may not be available every time we need their advice or guidance. Did you know? We have a mentor that’s always available, night and day, every season and semester, for every situation and circumstance.
The IM
This is your Inner Mentor (IM), also called your inner guide, self, voice, spirit, higher power, soul, subconscious, guidance system, intuition, even your heart or gut. It has more power than the dean of your school, your department or committee chair, or even the guy who issues your annual parking sticker.
Tips for anxious writers: Accept uncertainty; trust your practice
Anxiety and uncertainty often go hand in hand. If you’re certain that you’re right, you feel confident; if you have doubts, you feel anxiety. If you’re sure everything will turn out well, you feel confident; if you think you might not succeed, you feel anxiety. Research and research writing are fraught with unavoidable uncertainty that can trigger anxiety and drain confidence. Because uncertainty is unavoidable, it is necessary to be able to act despite uncertainty. In this post, I want to discuss different kinds of uncertainty, why so much uncertainty is inevitable, and how it is sometimes possible to decouple uncertainty and anxiety.