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

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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).

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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.

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Engaging Our Inner Critics

By Michelle Rivera-Clonch, PhD

We often hear about the hazards of an Unskilled Inner Critic and, like most things, there’s more to the story. Our Skilled Inner Critic, when called upon, promotes a writing flow that encourages us to be calm, cool, connected and creative. We have access to both Critics—it’s about the intensity and frequency that we rely upon each one to help us complete the writing project.

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Productivity and Confidence

By Dave Harris, PhD

The August 2024 TAA Conversation Circle on productivity reminded me of how much productivity depends on confidence. This insight can guide us: confidence can be built through practice. I offer some suggestions on building confidence, and thus productivity, through practice.

Degrees of self-confidence and behavior

Speaking generally, emotions shape our behavior: the optimist behaves as if things will work out, while the pessimist behaves as if things will not. Metaphorically speaking, the optimist will buy a lottery ticket, and the pessimist will not. The optimist submits a draft for publication, where the pessimist does not.

Self-confidence varies for each person, and, generally, the optimal degree of self-confidence lies between the extremes: too little self-confidence leads to paralysis; too much leads to arrogance and an inability to learn.  Ideally, a scholar has enough self-confidence to move forward with their projects and to present their work to others while also remaining open to correction when errors arise.

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