Product Description
All students and professors need to write, a lot of fighting to the end of their trial stalled, articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work, and may be difficult to wedge in the frenetic academic schedule. In a practical, happy and encouraging book, Paul J. Silvia explains productively writing that does not require special skills or special innate qualities, but the tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational barriers and become prolific without waiving evenings, weekends and holidays. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives specific advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise and resubmit articles, how to improve the quality of writing and how to write and publish academic work.
Product Features
I love this book! (1) It is well-written. (2) It is concise. Yes, the advice is to make a schedule & stick to it–something most of us do not do. The book points out the common traps all of us fall into, and points out how silly they really are. Common sense? Yes. Do most of us need it pointed out to us? Absolutely. It also makes practical suggestions for prioritization of writing projects.
One reviewer makes the inane comment that the book is only for psych, therefore it isn’t useful to others. Nonsense! Anywhere Paul says ‘psychology,’ substitute your field. It works beautifully with ‘political science.’
I suppose it’s not the author’s fault that there needs to be a book on how to write a lot, but it’s a disappointing thought.
I would prefer a book on how to *think* like a writer, not a book on how to *write* like a (prolific) writer. Writing like a writer comes more naturally when you can think like a writer.
Excessively long papers are generally long either because there’s a senseless word count requirement or because the author is trying to argue a point ad nauseam.
Of course, driving home a point ad nauseam is sometimes an effective way of encouraging good habits, which I suppose is why this book spends a good part of 150 pages reiterating basic work ethic principles that you’ve probably heard about sometime in your 15+ years in school.
But academic writing really shouldn’t be about habits or rhetoric. Productivity is one thing; mental diarrhea is another. Forcing text out of your fingers on a strict schedule regardless of whether or not you have anything worth sharing might help you work your way through university, but you’d be sacrificing the integrity of your field of study in the process.
I love this book. I’m only half way through it and I couldn’t wait to write a review (my first ever!). I have laughed out loud, laughed until it hurt, numerous times in the first two chapters. Silva gently and precisely demolishes the myths and other falsehoods that stand in our way as we try to write what we have to say. His writing is very clear and compelling, but also conversational plain english – an excellent model for what he advocates. If you’ve been struggling to write “a lot”, this book will help!
This book is an no-nonsense and insightful guide to productivity for academic authors. It is written with a light touch and hits home on all the key issues relevant to producing scholarship in an academic environment. The author makes the point very effiectively that this issue is not one that needs deep over-analysis; simple practical steps can make a substantial difference to productivity. Especially helpful for academic authors of journal articles, academic books or reviews, or graduate students completing dissertations.
Thomas Edison said that Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. In academic research & writing, we’d like to believe it involves a little more inspiration than than, but as I learned in grad school, and Paul J. Silvia reminds us in this book, much of academic success is about getting your butt in the seat, and staying there focused on work long enough to get something done.
I am a former academic and teacher, now a professional writer. I love writing, unlike Silvia, but having just finished the sprint to the finish line to write my latest book, I landed in a rut, burned out and having trouble focusing and getting started again. Silvia’s basic advice is excellent: set a writing schedule, and stick to it whether you feel like it or not. His slim book is a valuable kick in the pants, and is backed up by Silvia’s experience in academia and psychological research. It’s actually liberating to realize that you don’t always have to like, it, you just have to do it. Put in the work and the inspiration will come.
I wish Silvia had included more detailed information about writing books. For more on that I recommend Writing Nonfiction, 4th Edition: Turning Thoughts into Books by Dan Poynter. His “New Book Model” for writing nonfiction works, and could apply to academic writing.
So get “How to Write a Lot,” and get to work! I am jump-starting my summer writing, and I’ll see how much I am able to get done. Thanks to Dr. Paul Silvia for his useful and informative guide. It’s a simple presentation of a powerful idea, advice that could greatly improve your productivity.
For those still in grad school, you can do it–just keep your butt in the seat and put in the work. Even though I have made a career as an author, with two books published and a third in the early stages, researching and writing my Ph. D. thesis was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If you can do that, you can do almost anything!
Amy Tiemann, Ph. D., author of “Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family” and “High Water”