Publish Not Perish

Jenn McClearen, PhD

Publish Not Perish is the podcast for scholars who want to write more—without burning out. Host Dr. Jenn McClearen shares practical tips, honest reflections, and real stories to help you make steady, meaningful progress on your writing with more ease, clarity, and joy. www.publishnotperish.net

  1. The Hidden Curriculum of Academic Book Writing Part 1 | Ep. 44

    6d ago

    The Hidden Curriculum of Academic Book Writing Part 1 | Ep. 44

    There is a moment in many academic book projects when the writer realizes: I don’t actually know what game I’m playing. You know your field, your archive, your argument. You’ve written a dissertation. You may have published articles and given conference papers and mentored students. And then someone says, “You should send a proposal to a press”—and suddenly a whole new set of questions opens up that no one ever taught you how to answer. In this episode, I dig into the hidden curriculum of academic book writing: some of the professional knowledge scholars are expected to have, even though it is rarely taught directly. I focus on the front end of the process, starting with why a book is not simply a bigger dissertation, moving through how to think about press selection as a question of fit rather than just prestige, and arriving at what a book proposal actually needs to do. This episode also makes an argument I care about: that not knowing any of this already does not mean you have done anything wrong. The hidden curriculum is not hidden equally from everyone, and turning uneven access to professional knowledge into a private story about your own inadequacy is one of the most predictable and most damaging effects of a system that relies on knowledge it does not consistently teach. Next week in Part 2, I turn to what happens once the book enters the publishing system: peer review, revision, and timelines that shape how academic books are received and evaluated. The hidden curriculum does not end when an editor expresses interest. In some ways, that is when the next layer begins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    16 min

  2. Jun 11

    The Consistent Writer Is Not the One Who Never Gets Sidetracked | Ep. 42

    Most of us are carrying around a definition of consistency that is quietly working against us. The image that forms when I say the word to the academics I coach is almost always the same: the writer who rises at 5am, never misses a session, has color-coded their calendar down to the fifteen-minute block, and produces words every single day through sheer discipline. It’s the ideal image of the productive scholar. In this episode, I want to gently dismantle that image, because I don’t think it is consistency at all. I think it is a fantasy. And I think most of us have spent a significant amount of time feeling like failures in relation to a standard that was never real to begin with. My definition of consistency, arrived at after years of coaching writers and also after years of being a writer who has stared at a blank document wondering how I ended up there again, is this: Consistency is not sticking to a writing routine perfectly and never getting off track. It is the commitment to return as soon as you can. That distinction matters more than it might seem at first. I spend time in this episode on the difference between avoidance disguised as busyness and genuine overwhelm that requires triage, because those two things feel different from the inside, even when they look similar from the outside. I also return to a metaphor I find myself coming back to again and again with clients: the meditation analogy. A meditation practice is not about achieving uninterrupted focus. It is about noticing when your mind has wandered and bringing it back, without drama, without self-flagellation. Writing consistency works the same way. Returning to your desk after three weeks away carrying a backpack full of shame is not actually productive. The punishment is just another obstacle between you and the sentence. What I most want you to take from this episode is permission to come back without the accumulated weight of the time you were away. The practices and the structure still matter. And the interruption is not a failure; it is just an interruption. Regardless of the detour, the destination was always there. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    9 min
  3. Peer Review Is Not a Verdict | Ep. 41

    Jun 4

    Peer Review Is Not a Verdict | Ep. 41

    There is a version of peer review preparation that looks more like fortification. You revise and revise, patch every gap you can anticipate, and submit hoping that reviewers will find nothing to critique. And, believe me, I understand that impulse completely. When your book is bound up with tenure, promotion, years of accumulated work, and your sense of whether you actually belong in this field, critique can stop feeling like feedback and start feeling like a verdict. But peer review was never designed to tell you whether you are a real scholar or whether your project deserved to exist. It is diagnostic. It shows what is working, what has not yet come clear on the page, and what the project might need in order to become what it is trying to be. In this episode, I also get into something harder: how to work with feedback that feels frustrating, unfair, or even hostile, without either collapsing under it or dismissing it out of hand. Not every reviewer is right. Not every suggestion should be followed. But even a poorly framed or seemingly off-base comment can sometimes be pointing at something real—a problem of scope, audience, framing, or significance that the reviewer couldn’t quite name, but you, once you stop wincing, might be able to see. The approach I want to emphasize here is about treating reviewer feedback as information rather than punishment, so you can sort through it with more steadiness and judgment than the first raw read usually allows. In the end, the goal of peer review is to come through it with a clearer, stronger, more intentional book—and with a little more trust in your own capacity to receive hard things and keep writing anyway. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    17 min
  4. Why Your Book's “So What” Feels So Vulnerable | Ep. 40

    May 28

    Why Your Book's “So What” Feels So Vulnerable | Ep. 40

    Most of us know our work needs a strong significance claim, but actually writing one can feel surprisingly difficult. I doubt that’s simply because writers don’t understand their projects. Often, it’s because we’ve been trained as scholars to be careful, qualified, and intellectually humble, while the “so what” asks us to do something much more exposed: to say, clearly and confidently, that our work matters. In today’s episode, I’ll walk through why significance often crystallizes late in the writing process, why vagueness can feel protective, and how to think about the “so what” as something your book makes possible rather than just a gap it fills. My hope is that this episode helps you stop treating an elusive significance claim as evidence that something is wrong with your project. Sometimes the "so what" is already there, threaded through the work, waiting for you to see it clearly enough to name it and feel confident enough to claim it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    8 min
  5. What Lifting Heavy Things Taught Me About Writing | Ep. 39

    May 14

    What Lifting Heavy Things Taught Me About Writing | Ep. 39

    In today’s episode, I’m reflecting on what a year of lifting heavy weights has taught me about writing. When I first started working with genuinely heavy weights, I realized that the hard part was not only physical. My brain often told me to stop before my body had actually reached its limit. That experience in the gym has an uncanny resemblance to the moment in writing when an argument gets difficult, the structure will not quite settle, and suddenly email, footnotes, or “just a little more reading” starts to look very appealing. I talk about the difference between real rest and avoidance and why both matter for academic writers. Rest is essential and it is part of how growth happens. But sometimes what looks like rest is actually a retreat from the intellectual discomfort that makes our work stronger. I also reflect on consistency, not as writing every day or meeting some punishing productivity standard, but as the practice of returning to the gym, to the page, and to the hard thing that slowly builds progress over time. All of this is to say that you can do hard things, and it is the act of doing those hard things that makes the magic happen. Related Content https://www.publishnotperish.net/p/writing-should-be-hard?utm_source=publication-search https://www.publishnotperish.net/p/sticking-with-your-writing-when-the?utm_source=publication-search This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    11 min
  6. You Don’t Have to Start with an Outline Either | Ep. 38

    May 7

    You Don’t Have to Start with an Outline Either | Ep. 38

    In my newsletter this week, I explained why I almost never start any sort of writing project with an outline. It’s simply because I’m much more of an explorer-writer than an architect-writer: I usually need to move through the material before I can see the structure. Architect-writers begin with the blueprint, the chapter map, and the planned sequence of ideas. Explorer-writers need to write fragments, follow associations, talk through examples, or spend time with one part of the project before the larger argument becomes visible. You can read more about the distinctions I’m making here: If you’re an explorer-writer too, common academic writing advice can make you feel like you’re doing everything wrong, especially when that advice begins and ends with “make an outline.” But struggling to outline at the beginning doesn’t necessarily mean you’re avoiding the work, lacking structure, or failing as a writer. It may mean that writing is how you discover the argument before you can organize it. In this episode, I discuss a method for still producing structured academic prose without beginning with an outline. Academic writing still needs to become generous to the reader. Your reader needs a path through the problem, the evidence, the intervention, and the stakes. But the process that helps you find the argument is not always the same as the structure that helps someone else follow it. So, I walk through a more useful process for explorer-writers: start where there is traction, write to discover, harvest what appears, cluster before sequencing, name the emerging argument, build the reader’s path, and use a reverse outline to refine the structure. You don’t have to begin as the architect. You can instead begin as the explorer, learning the shape of the terrain as you go. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    15 min
  7. Why Saying No Still Feels Impossible After Tenure | Ep. 37

    Apr 30

    Why Saying No Still Feels Impossible After Tenure | Ep. 37

    Over the last two weeks, I’ve been interrogating the hustle culture embedded in the sprint toward tenure and the broader culture of busyness in academia. You can access those posts here: Today’s episode asks what happens after the tenure sprint is supposedly over. The promise of tenure is that the pressure will ease, the finish line will hold, and a more spacious academic life will finally become possible. But for many scholars, the habits formed during the pre-tenure years do not simply disappear. When you spend years working inside ambiguity, trying to discern what will count as “enough,” overproduction can start to feel like the safest answer. Saying yes becomes more than a habit; it becomes part of how you prove you are serious, generous, collegial, and deserving. I also look at why advice about “just saying no” often misses the deeper problem. Not everyone has the same freedom to set boundaries without being judged, penalized, or read as insufficiently committed. Service, mentoring, diversity work, and emotional labor often fall unevenly on scholars whose belonging has already been made conditional. I want to hold both truths together: individual strategies for saying no can matter, especially as acts of self-preservation, but they are not enough on their own. The deeper work is building departments and institutions where labor is transparent, shared, and recognized and where exhaustion is no longer mistaken for commitment. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    17 min
  8. Rethinking the Academic Conclusion | Ep. 36

    Apr 23

    Rethinking the Academic Conclusion | Ep. 36

    In today’s episode, I talk about why academic conclusions so often feel flat to write and what shifts when we stop treating them as simple summaries. For a long time, I thought the conclusion’s job was just to restate what I had already said, and that made it feel tedious and lifeless. Here, I offer a different way of thinking about it: a strong conclusion doesn’t just summarize the manuscript. It synthesizes the argument, helps the reader see what the pieces add up to, and makes the stakes of the work clearer. I also explore how a conclusion can open outward without becoming inflated or vague. That might mean showing what your analysis lets us understand differently, clarifying the broader implications of your argument, or pointing toward questions that emerge from the work in an organic and grounded way. I share how writing the coda to my book helped me see conclusions differently, not as administrative cleanup, but as a genuine space for reflection, interpretation, and extension. If conclusions have felt dull, frustrating, or difficult to pin down, I hope this episode gives you a more interesting and more useful frame. Get the Support You Need to Write, Publish, and Flourish If you’re craving more support with your writing, here are a few ways we can work together: Writing Coaching—For scholars who want structure, accountability, and a sustainable writing practice that actually works in real life. https://www.jennmcclearen.com/coaching Developmental Editing—When you need an expert pair of eyes on the argument, structure, or clarity of your manuscript. https://www.jennmcclearen.com/editing Book Coaching—Six months of coaching + developmental editing to help you make meaningful progress on your manuscript. https://www.jennmcclearen.com/bookcoaching  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.publishnotperish.net

    10 min
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About

Publish Not Perish is the podcast for scholars who want to write more—without burning out. Host Dr. Jenn McClearen shares practical tips, honest reflections, and real stories to help you make steady, meaningful progress on your writing with more ease, clarity, and joy. www.publishnotperish.net

Information

  • Creator
    Jenn McClearen, PhD
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    44
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Jenn McClearen
  • Show Website
    Publish Not Perish

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