How to edit book manuscript final proofs
So How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble has just arrived in the publisher’s warehouse, which means it’s nearly ready to send out into the world! (Want
So How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble has just arrived in the publisher’s warehouse, which means it’s nearly ready to send out into the world! (Want
It will be no surprise to anyone that I hear a lot of writing advice—some good, some less helpful. But some of it is just literally untrue, and yet the myths are so pervasive that people believe they are terrible writers because they are not following that advice.
Draft chapters include a lot of ‘pins’–phrases that help us keep the chapters connected to one another and to our main argument while we are still constructing the book. ‘As we argued in the previous section’ or ‘see Chapter 2 for more on this’ are pins that hold different parts of the book together. But in the final version, you only need to signpost if your writing is changing direction or coming to a stop. Then it’s time to take the pins out.
This is a reflection on the form of a writing genre and what that means. I started thinking about it about a year ago, on
Writing has technical aspects, sure. You need skills, and training. And you need to be organised and disciplined about keeping up with deadlines and juggling projects. And writing has physical challenges, you have to sit and use your back and wrists and neck and eyes. But, you also bring your weird, inner, non-rational self to the desk when you write. The inner self that has views about what music you can listen to, or that you need to enact your writing rituals before typing a word. There are good reasons why you might like what you like, but a lot of it just is personal preference, and that is totally a great reason to take it seriously.
There is no one ideal posture that you should take and maintain for the full working day. Instead, the best posture is actually a series of different positions. At home, you already have a range of furniture and spaces available to you, so it’s easier to switch it up. Changing how you sit every so often, even if it’s just moving chairs every few hours, can make a huge different to your comfort and mobility. Move from the desk to the sofa and back again, or out to the balcony. Stand at the breakfast bar, or use that treadmill or stationary bike in the living room.
By the time your academic writing is ready to be published, it’s a tough nut, a rose hip, a thick-skinned firm grapefruit. It’s ready to
In the post back in January about ‘Not forgetting everything you did last year’ I talked about a new done notebook strategy. Four months later, this is a quick update on how I’m using it right now.
There are no right answers here, but the true answer to the question ‘how many drafts should I expect to write’ is ‘probably more than
I have a lot of issues with TurnItIn and it’s researcher version Authenticate. (There is also a moral argument, which is very valid! but I’m just talking here about the fact that, as tools, they don’t really work). So it’s not surprising that TurnItIn is wrong about plagiarism’s past too.
