Take A Little Time Off From Writing! Refuting Your ‘Mountain of Reasons’ Why You Don’t

Especially as holidays approach, instead of editing your manuscript, you may be dreaming of sitting on the sofa with your feet up, watching the leaves swirling outside (or your current tv binge). Do you feel on the edge of burnout? Are you sighing, staring into the distance, wishing you could let yourself just stop?

Maybe, like companies that close temporarily for renovation or universities that close for a holiday break, you need to shut down your writing shop for some needed renewal.

In our age of doing, doing (and overdoing), and the pressures, expectations, and inexplicable righteousness to keep doing, it’s hard to think of quitting, much less do it. A mountain of “reasons” loom.

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More Archival Topics From TAA’s Print Newsletter with Commentary From Long-Time Member Phil Wankat

Long-time TAA Member Phil Wankat has dug back into his TAA print newsletter archive, this time into the black-and-white early issues published between 1994 and 2010, finding more gold to share with you along with his brief commentary of the value of each article.

We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” along with the other articles he shared from the TAA Report, over the next few months. The articles are organized into 12 categories, including Authors Needed, Bios, Contracts and Legal Comments, Diversity, Managing and Planning, Money, Production, Publishing first book, Recognition and Rewards, Teaching, Textbook Scholarship and Textbooks in Promotion Cases, and Writing and Writer’s Block.
The first set of articles we are sharing, in the Authors Needed category, include:

“Co-authoring a book originally written by another,” by Frank Silverman. “Look for a book that has an author who is retired, or close to retirement or, well, deceased,” says Wankat.

“Authors uneasy over Pearson deal.” “Big mergers ‘reduce the opportunities for new authors and even close the door on experienced authors,'” says Wankat.

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The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process (Part 3)

Hello fellow TAA members, thank you for reading this third post of “The Psychology Behind Writing.” With monthly offerings, we’ll get into some of the psychological processes that support our academic writing as well as the ones that derail our writing. And, we will definitely explore strategies for amplifying the positive and mitigating the negative. Read the first post in this series, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process, and second post, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process..

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Want to Finish? Make Your Dissertation Your Priority

As you probably already know, writing a dissertation is different from anything you’ve ever done. This undertaking requires you to adjust, if not radically change, your lifestyle. If you ever really want to complete the dissertation, and in a timely manner (if that isn’t an oxymoron), you need to rethink your priorities.

You may have been used to putting family first (possibly after your full-time job). But rethink this priority. Heartless and psychologically suspect as this statement may sound, you can make it up to your family in many other ways—later (that’s another article). Or you may say “yes” to all kinds of non-school activities. Learn to say “not now” (also another article).

At this point in your graduate school life, you’re supposed to make the dissertation your major priority. In my longtime dissertation coaching of struggling doctoral candidates and dissertation writers, I’ve learned several techniques and related perspectives that will nudge you into making your dissertation a priority.

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TAA Member Phil Wankat: Notable Cartoons from the ‘TAA Report’

The second installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Cartoons, is now available.

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. The first installment was Authors Needed.

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12/7 TAA Webinar – Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?

Join us Thursday, December 7 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?”. Presenters Dr. Tasha Egalite, a newly minted PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in TESOL at New Mexico State University, and Dr. Kristin Kew, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Administration at New Mexico State University, will share and reflect on their own doctoral journeys, the critical issues they encountered, and the hoops they jumped through while completing their dissertations. Some of the themes discovered during their research on the dissertation process and obtaining a doctorate were sustaining momentum, maintaining purpose, and creating meaningful works while furthering their learning in the fields of education and educational leadership. Advice will be provided on how to determine whether to apply for a doctoral program and how to navigate some of the pitfalls and rabbit holes of the academic arena.

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