Organizations
National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. An independent professional development, training, and mentoring community for graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members to help them improve writing and research productivity and life/work balance. Webinars and multi-week courses include How to Craft and Submit a Winning Book Proposal, How to Work with Academic Editors, Writing Science: How to Write Papers that Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded, and Building a Publishing Pipeline. Duke is an institutional member of NCFDD. To claim your membership, Duke users should go to http://advancefaculty.duke.edu/mentoring/ncfdd and click on “Activate Your Membership."
Consultations
To schedule an individual consultation on your writing project, discuss creating and sustaining writing groups, or plan a workshop or writing retreat for your university, department or program, contact Jennifer Ahern-Dodson at jahern@duke.edu.
To work with Monique Dufour, visit moniquedufour.com or email msdufour@vt.edu.
Recommendations
Writing, General
- Belcher, Wendy, Writing Your Journal Article in 12 weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success
- DeSalvo, Louise, The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity
- Elbow, Peter, Writing With Power
- Hjortshoj, Keith, Understanding Writing Blocks
- Lamott, Anne, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life
- Rockquemore, Kerry, and Tracey Laszloffy, The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure–Without Losing Your Soul
- Inside Higher Ed columns by Kerry Rockquemore
- Silvia, Paul, How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing
- Williams, Joseph, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace
Productivity
- Pomodoro Method: A useful timed technique for structuring writing sessions and productivity.
- http://750words.com/: An online tool to help promote the daily habit of writing. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day. . . 750 Words is the online, future-ified, fun-ified translation of this exercise.
- The Professor is In: UNSTUCK: The Art of Productivity. A self-directed online course devoted to changing writing habits and getting work from stalled to submitted.
Organization
- Scrivener: a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.
- See also: Everything Scrivener
Community
- Theprofessorisin.com: Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate school, job market, careers.
- Writers on Writing: A New York Times series that features writers exploring literary themes. The archive is available at the New York Times website.