Writer, Scholar and Award-winning Teacher Helen Sword has launched a Substack thread called ScholarStack to help LinkedIn academics who write on Substack or subscribe to the newsletters of fellow academics. ScholarStack is “compendium of newsletters by, for, and about academic writers and writing.” Learn more or subscribe
Egocentric Reading: Using Literature to Support Your Own Research
By Dave Harris
When we notice egocentrism, it is usually a bad thing: who likes the know-it-all who thinks only of themself? But lack of egocentrism is also bad: we need to know where we stand on issues; we need to trust our own knowledge enough to commit to projects and tasks, and to commit to words on the page. I want to emphasize the importance of egocentrism in reading as a crucial factor in using the research literature effectively, and how writing is an effective tool for building the right kind of egocentrism.
Three Strategies to Motivate Yourself to Write
By Angelica Ribeiro, PhD
To be happy involves feeling satisfied with the progress you are making toward your life goals. If you are a writer, completing writing projects is likely part of those goals. Therefore, you feel good when you sit down to write. However, I bet there are days when you don’t feel like writing, even if you know it will ultimately bring you joy. So, how can you motivate yourself on those days?
Here, I share three strategies that can motivate you to write, especially when you’re not feeling up to it.
Break down a big task into small tasks
TAA Launches New eBook on Academic Writing
TAA’s newest eBook, “Academic Journal Articles: Decoding Academic Writing,” contains helpful information tailored to the needs of scholarly journal article authors, from learning how to write for academic journals and organizing article content, to finding the right home for your journal.
Habit and the Love of Wisdom
By Dave Harris
As a writing coach, I focus on practice and the idea that, for any skilled activity, practice develops skill, and that no matter what our level of mastery, we always benefit from practicing the skill. In this context, “practice” means both small-scale, focused, repeatable, low-consequence activities to increase a skill that will serve their larger purpose (e.g., musicians practice scales to support their ability to play music, tennis players practicing serves to support their ability to compete effectively) or, at a larger scale, an entire career involving actual performance (e.g., a doctor’s medical practice, which has very real consequences for patients).
Curate Your Own Work
By Janet Salmons, Ph.D.
“The past is prologue.” – William Shakespeare in The Tempest
We know how to proof and edit without mercy. We are accustomed to having our writing reviewed by editors and peers. What happens when we take these processes to the next level and initiate a critical review with an eye to a radical update, synthesis, and new publication(s) based on the writing we’ve done throughout our careers? That is the project I am undertaking as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies. The concept grew out of a TAA conference session, so I look forward to sharing lessons learned and inviting you to consider curating your work.