Sometimes you just need a little inspiration to help you jump-start your creativity or break your writer’s block. Here are some writing inspirations. To view more, visit TAA’s Pinterest board, Writer’s Inspiration. Share your writing inspirational quotes in the comments section, or email them to Kim.Pawlak@TAAonline.net
5 Tips for sprinting past writer’s block
For most writers, whether they need to start a new project or pick one up that’s been left on the back burner for a while, their biggest writing challenge tends to center around getting started, says Margarita Huerta, Assistant Professor of English Language Learning/Early Childhood Education, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Huerta, who will be presenting a 30-minute webinar entitled, “Writing With POWER” for TAA’s September Virtual Dissertation Writing Boot Camp, shares her strategies for getting past the “block”:
11 Bookish quotes for book lovers
11 Bookish quotes from Text and Academic Authors Association
The three biggest mistakes academic writers make
I grew up in an academic family. When we would gather around the table at holidays, everyone but my bipolar aunt had a Ph.D. My ex-husband once told me he felt I needed to get a Ph.D. to be considered a grown-up by my family. So I know the culture. I am fluent in tenure and promotion, refereed articles and revise-and-resubmit, and the heaven and hell of the sabbatical and adjunct worlds.
As a creative writer and scholar who specializes in teaching mindfulness and writing as ways of dealing with chronic stress and healing from trauma, I bring my expertise in stress-reduction together with my personal experience of what it means to “be an academic.” I want to share with you some insights about the three biggest mistakes I see academic writers making.
Academic writing tips from an author of 300+ articles and books
Veteran author Kenneth Henson has spent a career learning how to write grants, articles and books. He has published more than 300 national and international publications, including 56 books. He presents workshops on grant writing and writing for publication at campuses nationwide.
The following are two tips from Henson’s new academic and grant writing tips page on Facebook & LinkedIn:
How to Write a Sophisticated, Dynamic Scholarly Argument
It is incumbent upon early-career academics to distinguish their research as mature scholarship, not student work. So as an editor who often works with junior faculty and recent PhDs, I’m always on the lookout for hallmarks of amateur writing that scholars can identify and excise.
Perhaps most academics can name some of the tics that unfortunately characterize graduate-student writing: overqualification, hedging, extensive literature review, and a high ratio of quotation to original material are just a few.