When you think about your emotions as they relate to your writing, what is your first thought? Does your response gravitate to positive emotions of joy or happiness? Or does it immediately lean toward negative ones like stress and frustration?
Erin McTigue shares from her coaching perspective that “emotions are very important in the work we do because it can help gain awareness about why certain projects are being avoided – why certain things are so hard.”
Let me ask you a question – do you have publishing goals or do you have a plan for writing? Perhaps a trick question, as you may very well think to yourself, don’t I need both?!? However, what I want to clarify in this post is that goals are different than plans and one should hold greater weight than the other in your daily writing efforts.
So let’s start with identifying the difference between goal setting and plan making.
As textbook and academic authors, we often know where we want to go, perhaps have some idea of how to get there, but are often caught with feelings of ill-preparedness, lack of knowledge or resources, and a general sense of self-reliance to produce our results. From the outside looking in, we may appear to be working hard with nothing to show for the effort.
Yesterday, January 20, 2021, we witnessed the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States and of Vice-President Kamala Harris. The ceremony was filled with messages, constructed by words, shared by many people in positions of power – both in our national government and in the entertainment industry – through speech, recitation, song, and poetry. These messages and the effect of the words delivered throughout the event caused me to revisit a quote from Margaret Atwood who said, “A word after a word after a word is power.”
In this post, I want to highlight some of the words that resonated with me from yesterday’s event, other historical instances of the power of words, and advice for how you can ensure that the words you use in your writing exhibit the power of your message.
Ernest Hemingway once said, “As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.” In our academic writing, there are certainly a number of places where understanding is important.
Seen in this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we must understand how to develop a first draft, what questions we need to answer to move forward, what our research data tells us, what makes writing worthwhile, how to maintain a productive schedule, how to balance work with periods of rest, how to survive through crisis, and the general state of the publishing industry.
On one hand, with social isolation and no distractions from travel, concerts, theatre, or friends, it has been a productive year. I’ve completed three short books, and two more are in press. Writing has given me focus and kept me busy. (Alas, no sourdough…) On the other hand, it has been extraordinarily difficult.
My writing practice is centered on books and blogs. This year I discovered a big difference—besides the obvious one of length.
