Writing satisfaction is strongly linked to publishing productivity and, potentially, career success. Chris Smith reports on research investigating the tools and systems academics from all career stages use to keep writing and publishing. Age, experience, and having a sense of certainty about what sort of writing system suits you and your life are all important to productivity and overall satisfaction. […]
Category: writing help
The Materiality of Research: Creating a community of writing practice in the classroom
Despite most students being partly or wholly assessed on their writing, very few would consider themselves to be writers. Nonia Williams Korteling explores how students might be supported in feeling more confident about writing processes and practices in the classroom, focusing on two methods that can help students begin to see themselves as part of a community of writers: freewriting, […]
Writer’s block is not a struggle with your writing but with your thinking. Write your way out of it
Most graduate writers who are struggling with their writing are actually struggling with their thinking. It isn’t a psychological block, but rather the intellectual confusions endemic to the process of communicating sophisticated research. To Rachael Cayley, these confusions are real and can have deleterious consequences for writing, but when we treat these problems as conceptual problems in our thinking we […]
Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity
What’s the secret to a productive spell of writing? Chris Smith shares insights gleaned from interviews with a diverse group of academics, from which a number of common academic writing habits stood out. These range from the simple acts of scheduling and setting self-imposed deadlines, to both formal and informal accountability partnerships and the use of “freewriting” techniques which help […]