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Showing posts from September, 2009

Forming the Daily Writing Habit

Are you in the habit of writing daily? In our experience of working with over 1700 people in the Academic Writing Club over a number of years - writing daily is the one habit that is most likely to ensure your success in completing your writing projects. Daily writing also increases creativity and makes you enjoy the writing more (or in many cases, hate it less). Habits, at least good ones, aren't created overnight. It takes time and persistence to create a new habit. Read on for some tips to forming a daily writing habit, compliments of our very own Academic Writing Club Coach , Rene Hadjigeorgalis. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forming the Daily Writing Habit by Rene Hadjigeorgalis, Academic Writing Club Coach ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. Start small. Habit formation is most effective when you start small and build up over time. Most habits that we have were formed gradually over time - we didn't even realize that we were establishing them in the first place. For example, at one point in time, I

"Clarity" -- great insights from a Writing Club member.

Today, I found out that my book needs to be done for my third-year/mid-career review, 11 months from now. “As close to being done as possible” is an option there in the wings, but if I want to take my place in this department, it needs to be done and to represent the very, very best work I can do. THEN the senior faculty put a jaw-dropping amount of time and intellectual engagement and discussion and writing into critiquing what I’ve given them (my book, as best I can conceive it), and THEN I write a better book. This knowledge, while terrifying, has brought with it an amazing amount of clarity: My book needs me. It needs my heart and mind and time. It literally will not exist without me. And I want more than anything for it to exist. This is not a game. I can play games on myself all the live-long day, but not with the writing, not with the book. I have worked long and hard for this, given many years, garnered the investments of many brilliant people. It’s not time to toy with this; i

The First Annual "Inspirational Quotes for Writers Contest!"

I'd like to thank my readers for the great response we received on the quotes that we shared in our last newsletter. Many of you told us how much you enjoyed the quotes, and how they inspired you to get writing. A few of you even shared you printed them off to post on your wall. And one amazing reader wrote me from Ireland to tell me she had created a poster of the quotes, which she was happy to share with others. You might like to have a copy yourself, so just click here to get your own copy of this lovely, inspiring poster. This strong response got us to thinking… wouldn’t it be great to create a huge list of inspirational quotes for writing? If the few quotes we shared with you made such a difference to so many, then a bigger list of them would provide that much more inspiration and motivation to keep on writing. So I hereby announce the first annual (well, we'll see if there's ever a second one) "Inspirational Quotes for Writers Contest!" In order to enter, a