Helpful Resources
Writing Routine
This Chronicle of Higher Education article offers advice on how to develop a successful writing routine. The author advocates planning every step of the writing process, from preparation to actual writing. She offers tips for each of these phases based on her experience and three principles about brain functioning.
Time Management and Writing
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Rebeca Schuman, an academic writing specialist answers questions on time management and writing productivity. She addressed the urge to make last minute changes, doubts about significance of contributions, and how to manage the demands of pandemic teaching, and find time for writing.
Continuing to write
In another Chronicle of Higher Education article, Rebecca Schuman answers more questions about writing, including when to step away from making revisions, continuing to write despite overwhelming demands during the pandemic, and what to do when you’re stuck.
Writing and revising
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Rebecca Schulman once again answers readers’ questions; this time the focus is on how to stop overworking a manuscript or avoiding one.
Where To Do Best Writing
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, the author, a prolific writer, examines the connection between writing place and writing productively. He advocates for writing in a place where you have been productive in the past or finding new place that is purely for writing and separate from other work and life obligations.
Pitfalls in Writing Book Proposals
This Chronicle of Higher Education article describes six types of book proposals that don’t lead to contracts. She goes on to explain how to avoid these pitfalls and write a pitch that will get a positive response from a scholarly publisher.
Reversing Defeatist Habits in Writing
The writer, in a Chronicle of Higher Education article, describes her philosophy of writing: how she changed from seeing it as a test to seeing it as a gift. She then elaborates on the effects this reframing has had for her and her writing.
Writing a Book in 30 Days
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, the author describes how she wrote a book in 30 days. Her strategies include the following steps: (a) Set a word goal. Commit to writing a certain number of words per day. (b) Create a writing schedule. Make it fit your life but do whatever it takes to get words on the page on a schedule that is reasonable and achievable for you and stick to it. (c) Make an outline. This step is crucial, and you can count writing the outline as part of your daily goal. (d) Realize that not everything will make it into the final draft. Output, getting something down, is important. No time spent writing is wasted. (e) Don’t stop writing to do more research. Filling gaps is easy. Use shortcuts to remind yourself to go back to update passages or fill in missing information. (f) Try not to be overly ambitious. You don’t want to exhaust yourself; you need to maintain a consistent pace so you have the energy to complete a draft, no matter how rough. (g) After you’ve met your writing goal for the day, reward yourself. Take time to relax, do something fun. It is important to follow concerted effort with rest.
Using ChatGPT in Academic Writing
The author reviewed the ethical issues, including fairness and transparency, related to the use of ChatGPT in academic writing. Although several academic journals and publishers have updated their submission guidelines to explicitly ban researchers from listing ChatGPT as a co-author or using text copied from a ChatGPT response, some academics have criticized these bans as resistant to technological change. The author discussed some of these arguments and concluded that transparency about the use of artificial intelligence is crucial to have “informed and reasoned discussions about what norms and rules should govern academic writing in the future”.
How to Cope with Presentation Anxiety
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Dr. James Lang listed three strategies to use at the beginning of a presentation, all of which “emerge from the same simple idea: Build a pause into the initial minutes of a presentation, so that you can stop and catch your breath … a substantive pause in which you are able to stop speaking — for at least 30 seconds — because you have given your audience something to view, think about, or discuss.” His first technique involves beginning by posing a discussion question that will make the audience stop and think. His second technique involves beginning with an intriguing image, asking the audience to study it, and then posing questions about it and asking audience members for their thoughts. His third technique involves showing a short video clip to raise a compelling question or invite audience observations. According to Dr. Lang, another advantage of these short pauses is to engage audiences in an active learning experience, which deepens their learning.