The Scholarly Writer: A step-by-step guide to building your publishing pipeline

Create a regular (and enjoyable!) writing practice, write and edit efficiently and submit your manuscript with confidence.

So many academics avoid writing, waste hours staring at the computer or abandon their half-finished manuscripts and move on to new ones, resulting in a long list of unfinished papers and a lot of stress.

So how have I managed to help so many graduate students and academics create a regular writing practice so that they can submit and publish regularly?

Set realistic writing goals and actually hit them
Gain momentum on your writing projects
Have that sense of belonging that humans need to feel good!

The truth is …

There is a lot of bad advice out there about academic writing:

Get up at 5 am and do your writing then.
Write 1000 words a day and don’t worry if the writing is bad.
Don’t worry about writing regularly and only do it at bootcamps and retreats.

But after seeing so many people struggle, I recommend doing things differently.

The fact is, those ‘strategies’ don’t work, for a number of reasons:

Sleep is essential to function and most people aren’t getting enough as it is, without sacrificing even more to do a non-negotiable work task such as publishing.
Editing, especially your own work, and especially at the structural level, is really hard, and most academics haven’t been taught how to do this.
Bootcamps and writing retreats can be great, but relying on them means that you go for weeks or even months without touching your document. This means you spend too much time revisiting what you wrote before and not enough time finishing your draft.

So what’s the key to writing regularly and actually enjoying it?

I help my clients by focusing on these core principles:

Value yourself so that you make time to write
Get clear on your story, to banish writer’s block
See yourself as an expert, so that you can submit with confidence

And I can show you exactly how to write, submit and publish, too.

So are you ready to:

create a regular writing practice that you actually enjoy
write and edit your paper or thesis efficiently
finally submit and publish ASAP

… all without wasting time or feeling guilty?

Introducing, The Scholarly Writer:

THE SIMPLEST WAY to write, submit and publish

Join the waitlist to get everything you need for just A$500 (plus taxes)

Here’s what you’ll find inside The Scholarly Writer

(Hint: it’s everything you need to write, submit and publish your journal article, without the stress)

You'll create a regular writing practice. Because without time, even the best strategy won't help you. You'll look at how to make time to write, how to protect that time, how to value yourself so that you actually use that time for writing and then how to write efficiently using small bursts of time. Because let's face it, everyone is busy and no one has a 4-hour block free every week with nothing to do. Or if they do, they end up wasting most of it. The key to success is to be clear in what you're trying to say, in every paragraph. And, if you get an outline done within two weeks of starting the program, I'll look at it and give you feedback.

When most people hear the word 'editing' they think of moving commas around and changing the occasional word (and then changing it back again a week later)! But in this course, I'm going to take you through the four stages of editing: structural editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading. Once you know how to break down the editing process into these distinct steps, editing becomes a lot more straightforward. Once you have a draft, you can send it to me within 30 days of starting the program, and I will edit three paragraphs for you so that you can learn from what I've done and apply that to the rest of your document.

You'll learn how to manage feedback from your co-authors. This is a huge problem for a lot of academics because this is when papers go in a black hole, never to be seen again! I will teach you how to manage your co-author team so that you can get useful feedback in a timely manner. You will feel confident in submitting your paper to the journal and will have a process in place to deal with the feedback that comes back from the reviewers, good or bad.

I have had this course for 8 years, and I have been teaching the material at live workshops for 15, so I know that it works. However, I also know that it's easy to buy an online course and then not actually open it. Or open it but not finish it.

And I don't want that to happen to you!

So, I have added some motivational milestones:

If you write a short rationale for why you chose a particular journal within 7 days, I will help you work out if you have picked a suitable publication.
If you get your outline done within 14 days, I will review it and give you feedback.
If you get your draft done in 30 days, I will edit 3 paragraphs so that you can learn from my changes.

My goal is to help you finally create a regular writing practice. And I know that deadlines work, which is why I have included these here!

Bottom line:

After watching the first module, you’ll already understand why you have not been able to make progress with your writing until now.

And by the time you have followed my steps for writing and editing your paper, you will be ready to submit your paper to the journal, without the fear.

Join the waitlist!

But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what people who did the earlier version of this course are saying:

"Malini’s guidance enabled me to write effortlessly, by inspiring my confidence through this course. Her approach to writing is so simple it defies belief; I can’t believe that I have struggled with writing for so long! What I love is that I can keep going back to it for each paper to cement my learning. My biggest regret is that I didn't discover Malini 15 years ago, at the start of my research career, I could have written up our work with ease and we would be so much further ahead now.”

“After completing the first module of your course and attending two writing sessions last week, I have finished a draft of a paper that I have been wrestling with (and avoiding) for several months!! It's been reviewed by my supervisor and is going off to the coauthors tomorrow. I got so much clarity and direction from your webinar and the course.”

“When I took the e-course, I learned not to do too many things in one go. Instead, I did things bit by bit and just trusted the process and in the end, produced a paper in a 'calmer' fashion.”

If you landed on this page and are still reading, it’s probably because you know that you need to do something different in order to get a different result, which is to be writing, submitting and publishing regularly.

And I want you to know … I created The Scholarly Writer for you.

It’s for the person who’s tired of struggling with never getting to the computer. For the person who’s wasted hour after hour staring at the screen with writer’s block. For the person who knows they need to publish in order to progress their academic career. Or to just finally finish their PhD.

I’ve spent 30 years in or adjacent to academia. I did my PhD in the 1990s. I worked at universities and with academics for years after that. I have been a professional editor since 2004 and a coach since 2018. I know that most academics are not taught anything about editing and after often left to ‘work it out’ when it comes to writing.

I also know that imposter syndrome is a huge problem for academics and that it is often the reason that writing never gets done. Or if it gets done, it doesn’t get shared. Because the fear of feedback is real.

I’ve spent years constantly refining my content into this step-by-step process that you can go through in just a few weeks. Where you don’t have to worry about wasting time on countless drafts or writer’s block — you can simply follow the steps and finish your journal article or thesis chapter. And then you can re-use the content to create your next document.

This means you’re just 30 days away from creating a regular writing practice that you enjoy.

I'd love to help you get your writing done!

Join the waitlist now!