Rewards are motivating Given all the penalties the academic bureaucracy imposes for not writing, you’d think academics would have all the motivation they need to keep writing. This would be true if humans responded well over the long term to negative consequences. However, the threat of an often distant or uncertain consequence isn’t enough to make you step away from the Netflix when you’re feeling a bit rundown or to make you commit to getting up before your toddler to write for an hour in peace. We respond much better to definite, positive rewards. I know of a writer who lines up their favou ..read more

Most of us have heard about White Coat Syndrome (sufferers get anxious in medical situations), but what is Red Pen Syndrome (RPS)? RPS is a term for writers who are unnecessarily nervous about sending their work to a copy editor or proofreader. Sufferers tend to (wrongly) assume that editorial professionals will judge them personally or their work. In this post, I’m going to put those fears to rest. (For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use editor to refer to both proofreaders and copy editors.) Why is it sometimes stressful to send work to an editor? Whether you’re sending a short journal arti ..read more

Jolie Jensen. Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. If you’ve discussed writing with me lately, online or off, I’ve probably already recommended Jolie Jensen’s Write No Matter What (2017) to you. This is the best book about writing that I’ve read in a long time. Jensen is Hazel Rogers Professor of Communication and the director for the Henneke Faculty Writing Program at the University of Tulsa. She brings a wealth of experience to bear on her topic: her personal experience as an academic writer and her experience of helping other acad ..read more

If you’re looking for a reason to have more marmalade on your toast, look no further. This post details the history of marmalade–it was once seen as a medicine. Finds like this are why I love researching the history of medicine! Dr Alun Withey I must admit to a guilty pleasure – hot buttered toast with a (very!) thick covering of marmalade. Worse than that, I’m even fussy; it absolutely has to be a certain brand, and a particular type…none of your weedy shredless stuff for me! But it seems that I’m not alone. Marmalade has recently made something of a comeback. It’s now become a serious ..read more

I’m still working away on my novel, The Roar of Silence. It’s been a busy month—I was out of town for most of last week and there have been other disruptions to my schedule. Thus, I’m just over 10,000 words behind. I’ve done the maths, and I need to write at least 2700 words a day, every day, for the rest of the month to finish. I’ve had several 2700ish word sessions already this month, so I don’t expect it to be too difficult to complete. The main plot trajectory is what I expected it to be, but my characters had their own ideas about some of the history/back story I needed to include. While ..read more

The last full week of September brought an outpouring of anxiety to my social media feeds and groups (Twitter and Facebook) about Impostor Syndrome, which I wrote about here. This morning brought an explosion of worries over Perfectionism. Perfectionism is related to and can cause Impostor Syndrome. As I did before, I’m going to offer what advice I can to help those who are trying to overcome perfectionist tendencies so they can be happier, more productive writers. Please note that if you experience anxiety as a result of your perfectionism or see perfectionism causing problems in multiple are ..read more

The last full week of September brought an outpouring of anxiety to my social media feeds and groups (Twitter and Facebook) about Impostor Syndrome, which I wrote about here. This morning brought an explosion of worries over Perfectionism. Perfectionism is related to and can cause Impostor Syndrome. As I did before, I’m going to offer what advice I can to help those who are trying to overcome perfectionist tendencies so they can be happier, more productive writers. Please note that if you experience anxiety as a result of your perfectionism or see perfectionism causing problems in multiple are ..read more

When should you start revising for exams? a) A few days before. b) A couple of weeks before. c) After each lecture and seminar. The best answer is c, ‘After each lecture and seminar’. Of course you need to consolidate your learning in the days and weeks immediately before an exam, but you’ll be less stressed and better prepared if you revise as you go along. What might this regular revision look like? If you haven’t already done so, get out your module handbook (or pull it up on your module VLE—Moodle, Blackboard, etc.) and read it carefully. There’s a very good chance you find sections on th ..read more

This post explores the benefits of imagining your reader. It’s a good way to find out how your students think about their audience. For writers, it’s a good way to focus on your reader. What does your reader say when reading your text? Hook & Eye One of my colleagues, in a workshop for new graduate student teachers, suggested an in class exercise that I’d never heard of. Get your students to draw a picture of their ideal reader, he said, then get them to draw a speech bubble on that reader: ask them what the reader is saying to them about their writing. Students have so much trouble ..read more

I’ve been researching L. T. Meade and rereading stories by her for my ongoing research. Meade’s full name is Elizabeth Tomasina Meade. She published extensively in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Meade as a Professional Writer She was best known for her fiction for children and young women and her medical novels. However, she was also the second most prolific contributor to The Strand Magazine—second only to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My work on Meade thus far has focused on the short stories she wrote for The Strand. In her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Mead ..read more