Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Do you need to be excellent? I have written before about “doing your best” being a distraction and instead encouraged you to focus on doing good work. In this post, I want to extend that argument using a recently published scholarly article as a jumping off point. (You can […]
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Early morning writing
The benefits of early morning writing can often seem like preachy, unattainable, eye-roll inducing positivity. But I have brought together some real examples of this life-changing process for your writing, just to give that eye-roll some evidence first… Rachael Herron has written eloquently about how crazy the idea of early morning writing sounds and how […]
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Being an academic in dystopian times: Making time for activism
Whether current events have prompted you to become more politically active for the first time, or increase the time and effort you put into your activism, you must account for that in your plans. Neither your activism nor your health and work will benefit from you burning out. These will be difficult choices even if the need for being more involved is incontrovertible. Whatever form your activism takes, take the time to decide what is not going to happen, or be done to a lower standard, to make space for it.
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And you keep writing …
This is another excerpt from the first book in my Short Guide Series: The Scholarly Writing Process (A Short Guide). This post includes the conclusion. I have argued that scholarly writing is more than merely the production of specific publications. The term “writing” refers to both the process of translating ideas in our heads into […]
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Writing an abstract to get unstuck
I’ve written before about how to write an abstract for something you haven’t written yet and how to write an abstract for a finished piece. Both of these situations are usually responding to some external need: a call for papers, or a requirement of the journal or book publisher. In those other two posts I used […]
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Writing as process and product
This is an excerpt from my book: The Scholarly Writing Process (A Short Guide). Designed to refer to whenever you get stuck, it breaks down the scholarly writing process into stages and provides both a description of that stage and writing prompts to help you get unstuck. Here’s the introduction and table of contents. Introduction […]
Read More »A peek at my writing process, and a new book
Today is the publication date of the first in a series of Short Guides: The Scholarly Writing Process. It seems appropriate to tell you a bit about my own writing process and how this particular guide came to be. Beginnings Last spring I read a review of Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic in Open Letters Monthly […]
Read More »Balancing writing and student demands
Recently someone in the Academic Writing Studio asked me for advice about the conflict she is feeling between working on her own writing and writing student reference letters, reviewing thesis proposals, and whatnot. This is something everyone struggles with. Your writing isn’t more important than your students. But nor are your students more important than your […]
Read More »You get a lot done
Your to-do list is long. It never seems to get any shorter does it? And many of the things on your list are long term projects with lots of sub-projects and tasks and whatnot. It seems like some of those things have been on your to do list forever. Some people will tell you to […]
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Experienced writers vs novice writers
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Experienced writers vs novice writers Inspired by a conversation on Twitter: I’m sure @ProfessMoravec is not alone. In fact on the same day another friend shared something similar on Facebook, about that stage of the writing process where you go back to the abstract you submitted to see how […]
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Introducing That Selfish Bastard
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Introducing That Selfish Bastard A couple of recent client conversations renewed my motivation to write more about managing the number of things you are juggling. Those conversations made me realize that you want to say yes to things. You value community, collaboration, and collegiality. There’s just a lot more going […]
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Sabbatical + book contract = overwhelm?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Sabbatical + book contract = Overwhelm? I received this query at the end of August 2016: “I’m writing you today because I’m looking for some coaching for writing my first academic book. I have a fall sabbatical and a book contract to write a book on the research that […]
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