Many business scholars struggle with the notion of seeing themselves as writers. They may excel in research, teaching, and mentoring, but when it comes to writing, they often feel out of their depth. This blog emphasizes the need to change one’s self-perception from researcher to research writer, and the role of courses in faculty writing development for scholars.

The question, “What is impactful research?” was opened to a panel discussion at ACR Asia Pacific 2024. Marketing academics from different universities and business schools tried to first define impact and talk about it in their own work, while discussing some impacts. The takeaway for me? If people don’t understand what you write, how can it have any impact? Academic writing is the currency of academia, so unless we write to be understood by a broader audience, how can we ever hope to be read and understood, let alone “have an impact”?

Citation phobia is real. It's the fear and dread of citing correctly, adequately, frequently, and comprehensively, in the right style and without offending anyone by leaving them out. This fear has been so deeply ingrained in researchers that they often don’t realise how stressed out they are about it.

I hope this article helps you relax that muscle in the pit of your stomach as you write this morning.

“I didn’t realize that I would be writing so much,” said a doctoral student in marketing to me years ago as we discussed his thesis. We might shake our heads and wonder what his supervisor was doing, but I have heard the same statements from early career ...

An article based on 20+ years of experience in the field, dealing with the damage of broken professional dreams all because nobody thought to train them to write.

Want to shorten your academic article to meet the word count limit? Here are three tips (plus 1 bonus tip for qual papers) I use to shorten my clients’ works to make the journal’s word count. Works every time!

This workshop will help you live a life of intent. It will help you find a clear path to your deepest desires, and help you live a year that is lead by your truest wishes.

Examine the year that we just left behind, take the lessons learnt into the next year, identify areas of your life that need your attention and care, uncover your desires, and lead with intent for the next year so that you can achieve what you set out to have.

This kind of safe creative space, away from the prying hyper-critical laser-sharp eyes of peers and colleagues and even co-authors, makes my clients feel a level of support with their writing and thinking that they have often never experienced. This kind of partnership with author and editor is a rare and precious thing in academia.

Research shows that experts are made, not born. Deliberate practice is the key, and deliberate practice requires an investment of time. Twenty years should do it? I have been an editor for 20 years. So what does that bring you? What can I do that someone who has been editing for, say, five years wouldn’t be able to?

For the past 20 years, I've worked alone at home. The lifestyle is great, but it can be really hard to work alone. It’s lonely. So how do we motivate ourselves to work? How do we find the energy to not only get started, but to keep going?

In academia, the managerial notion of time is brought to bear on academics through the idea of "publish or perish". It catalyses anxiety and fears about thinking, experimenting and writing against a ticking clock. But academics are not managers and don’t need to use managerial time. They’re artisans, and need to work on artisanal time.

As the new year approaches, you will be tempted to make resolutions about writing. But when mid-February rocks up, we all know that “writing” will be relegated to the bottom of the to-do list. Join us in our “Finish That Paper!” Workshop: We’ve put together a workshop that starts in the New Year and helps you realise your New Year writing resolutions and more.

Why is academic writing so hard? After editing for 20 years, I might have an idea or two about this sore topic. Well, four ideas for today, to be precise. Five seemed too blog-y. I may have more later.

So if the last post resonated with you, and you suspect you might need to procure a developmental editor for your manuscript, you can read on to get a sense of what it’s like to work with a developmental editor, what the process may look like for you, and how much it might cost [not as much as you might think].

Every request for editing I get asks me for a copy edit. And yet, when I start reading the paper, I see that what it needs is not a fix for its writing issues but a fix for its thinking issues. The paper actually needs a developmental edit. What does your paper need?

I’m just rounding up a year in Lyon, France before my move back to Singapore. And a move is a time for reflection. Looking back, I’d say: it’s been a GREAT year. And the main reason for that? My two-hour workday lunches.

Paper rejections can be deeply unsettling, especially for junior academics. Healing the wounds of a rejection takes time. It involves going through several phases, including acknowledging the upsetting and frustrating dimensions of a paper rejection early on.

Although rejection is an incredibly common event for academics, it remains a taboo subject in academia. This invisibility of failure creates false expectations of immediate successes for early career researchers on the one hand, leading to a complete lack of confidence. On the other hand, seasoned academics used to receiving rejections may continue having great difficulty with rejections, the cumulative force of multiple rejections acting as a battering ram to their ability to function normally.

Chefs practice mise en place—the key culinary technique we covered in our previous post—whereas most PhD students are expected to learn how and what to write on their own! This lack of training is a paradox, especially considering the importance of writing skills to academic success.

So, you want to finish a piece of writing you have been working on. Or you are attending a writing boot camp. Will you waste precious hours writing, deleting, writing and then eventually surfing the internet? Or will you create something of good and promising value?

I started using the Pomodoro technique last year when the pandemic hit and the kids stayed at home to study, and it’s the best thing to ever happen to me.