Structural Issues in Academia
From the outside, academia seems like a rarefied space that supports the life of the mind. The reality on the inside is more complex. This disconnect isn’t new or unique […]
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Self-Care and Community Care in Academia
We’re written quite a bit about self-care over the last year. It underlies many of our discussions of writing, motivation, craft, and editing. But good advice that doesn’t define its […]
“Yes, but How?”: Mindfulness and Writing
We often offer tips, tricks, tools, and discussions of basic decency and kindness to help writers. This helps some people, but not others. Depending on who’s reading, any given tool […]
The Plain Language Ideal
This week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released their plain-language standard for written communication. This marks the first internationally accepted statement of what clear communication means. The movement towards […]
Working with “Ugh”
We want writers to live happy and productive lives, for several reasons. Among these, it’s just good to be happy and engaged with writing. But also, it means more writing […]
Our Clients’ Voices are Inviolable
There’s a common attitude that editors aim to standardize a writer’s words so they sound like everyone else’s. We don’t do this. Most editors don’t. Our main goal as editors […]
Practical Nudges for Attention while Writing
This week, we’re applying the framework we’ve been developing around attention to writing tips. We think it’s at least a little helpful to use unfamiliar terminology to describe very familiar […]
An Editor Goes to a Writing Retreat
One of us (Alex) is currently on a writing retreat for academics. Here’s the setup: we have a room full of early-, mid- and late-career academics, we’re all on a […]
On Being a Writer and Draft -2
Clients sometimes tell us that they are “not writers”. What they usually mean is that they’re not looking for suggestion on how to take their writing to the next level—they […]
How to Write Better with LLMs (Part 2)
As mentioned before, there’s a series shaping up in our minds about Large Language Models (LLMs) and writing! We don’t pretend to have the answers for how writers should adjust […]