By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD
Do you want to feel good after a writing session? If so, here’s what you should do.
As writers, we should consider three essential writing practices: Write daily or regularly, write in short chunks of time, keep a writing log.
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.
By Angelica Ribeiro
Have you ever lost track of time at work or in leisure? If so, you were in flow, a feeling you should often experience. Let me explain.
In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi shares that “the best moments in [your life] are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable […]. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” You can experience these best moments when you are in flow. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
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.
By John Bond
Writing, to many, is solitary work. Research, as well, can connote time by yourself spent interpreting data, not to mention the time spent on the literature review. When it comes time to submit for publication, there are numerous hours of combing over your writing for accuracy and grammar. Then checking proofs prior to publication.
All of this adds up to time alone. Many academics, by nature, are solo people. Not all, but some. They understand the heavy lifting the individual has to do. Don’t get me wrong. I have met some big personalities in writing and publishing that love to talk. But they may not be, hmm, the rule.
Dr. Laura Markos, owner, writing coach, and editor at WrittenHouse, and founder of Sage’s Journal of Transformative Education, shares the following advice for stating the purpose of the study in a dissertation proposal:
“When crafting the dissertation proposal, it’s important to focus, focus, focus on the research question(s) as narrowly as appropriate, but also on the statement of the purpose of the study, which has implications for both theory and practice. It can be tempting to overstate the purpose, to make the study sound like a larger potential contribution than one discrete, doable study.
