Christine Tulley, President and Executive Writing Coach, explores the concept of maintaining an "origin story" for academic writing projects in the context of surveillance, power dynamics, and emerging technologies—the theme of the 2025 Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival. She examines how various stakeholders (universities, publishers, plagiarism detection software, AI tools, and tenure committees) have claims to or surveillance over faculty writing, raising questions about ownership and originality. Tulley offers four practical strategies for documenting the development of writing projects: maintaining dated drafts, using version control systems like GitHub, creating process documentation through blogs or social media, and sharing work-in-progress through conference presentations and public scholarship venues. She emphasizes the importance of tools like ORCID IDs for tracking authorship and highlights the Textbook and Academic Authors Association's upcoming webinar about claiming damages in the lawsuit against Anthropic for unauthorized use of academic work by AI tools, framing documentation of writing origins as both a protective measure and a meaningful way to capture the creative process.

Slides

The Big Rhetorical Podcast Past Carnival Episodes

• Episode 199: Civil and Collegial Scholarship
• Episode 138: AI and Scholarly Writing Support
• Episode 33: Scholarly Responsibility and Misinformation

Resources Mentioned:

• The Big Rhetorical Podcast
• Maintaining Writing Momentum in December (December 1st annual webinar)

Resources:

• HOLIDAY COACHING HOURS - All hours at lowest prices for the year
• Tuesday Toolbox - contact [email protected] for subscription information
• Set your writing goals with us! Try us out in a free consultation.
• Check out our current and past workshops at Eventbrite for writing support content. A FREE webinar is posted each month. Missed a workshop? Request a workshop or webinar recording from [email protected]
• Don't forget about the wonderful resources at Textbook and Academic Authors Association. The organization can be found at: https://www.taaonline.net
• New to TAA? Join for just $25 using discount code DP25! You will also receive a copy of the eBook, Guide to Making Time to Write: 100+ Time & Productivity Management Tips for Textbook and Academic Authors.