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.”
Registration is now open for the 2023 TAA Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring
Network with other textbook and academic authors and gain knowledge on writing and editing strategies, writing productivity, textbook contracts and royalties, and much more! You will leave inspired!
You’ll have the opportunity to participate in more than two dozen educational sessions, one-on-one mentoring sessions with veteran textbook and academic authors and industry professionals, and plenty of networking and information-sharing sessions.
TAA’s 35th Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference will be held online, June 9-10, 2023, on an interactive virtual conference platform.
Getting unstuck when your writing stalls out
Let’s acknowledge immediately that there are innumerable reasons why a writing project can get stalled: Maybe you took a break and lost momentum? Got irrevocably bored with the topic? Received critical feedback that you can’t get out of your mind? Therefore, we aren’t going to focus on the “why” part. Instead, regardless of why a project got cold, there are some common steps that help us get any project moving again. Today we will focus on steps addressing the underlying emotional and motivational issues. If we can clear those up, the rest will likely go smoothly.
How to write a confident-sounding CV
It’s important to present your academic self to the world with a confident-sounding CV, but CVs often don’t show all the effort and work that went into those achievements, just the end result, says Mary Beth Averill, academic writing coach, editor, and co-author of The Confident Academic: Overcoming the small fish, big pond experience… and other difficult matters.
“When you look at one person’s CV compared to another person’s CV, you really have no idea what those CVs are resting on,” she says. “What they’re resting on is probably a lot of tries, even a lot of failure.”
Five ways to increase your confidence as an academic
Many academics lack confidence in some aspect of their professional lives, and while some are open about this, for others, it’s a well-kept secret, says Mary Beth Averill, academic writing coach, editor, and co-author with Hillary Hutchinson of The Confident Academic: Overcoming the small fish, big pond experience… and other difficult matters.
“I’ve been working with academic writers for over 30 years, and one thing that comes up repeatedly in my work with clients is their lack of confidence,” she says. “Even people who look to me like they’re at the top of their field sometimes feel a lack of confidence in some areas of their professional life.”