Highlights §
- running a mortuary. Although I’ve never dressed a corpse, I’m sure that it’s easier to embalm the dead than to write an article about it. Writing is hard, which is why so many of us do so little of (Location 122)
- Finding time is a destructive way of thinking about writing. Never say this again. (Location 138)
- When you follow a schedule, you no longer worry about not writing, complain about not finding time to write, or indulge in fantasies about how much you’ll write over the summer. Instead, you write during your allotted times and then forget about it. We have better things to worry about than writing. (Location 154)
- The people who grumble and whine are the unproductive writers. Don’t get dragged into their bad habits. Second, the people who are happy to intrude on your writing time would never ask to intrude on your teaching time, your time that you spend with your family, or your sleeping time. They simply see your writing time as less important. (Location 177)
- Beware, however, of the temptation to usurp your writing schedule with windfall writing. It doesn’t matter how much you wrote over spring break—you committed to your scheduled time, and you’re going to stick to it. (Location 186)
- This is another reason why scheduling time to write is the only way to write a lot. Professional writing involves a lot of components: extensive literature reviews, careful analyses, and precisely worded descriptions of research methods. We will never “find the time” to retrieve and read all of the necessary articles, just as we’ll never “find the time” to write a review of those articles. Use your scheduled writing time to do it. You’ll no longer feel stressed about finding time to read those papers or do those analyses, because you know when you’ll do it. (Location 209)
- The best kind of self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control. (Location 238)
- Successful professional writers, regardless of whether they’re writing novels, nonfiction, poetry, or drama, are prolific because they write regularly, usually every day. They reject the idea that they must be in the mood to write. As Keyes (2003) put it, “Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend to them than inspiration” (p. 49). One might say that they make a schedule and stick to it. (Location 280)
- The third step is to set a concrete goal for each day of writing. When you sit down during your writing time to work toward a project goal, you need to break the goal into smaller units. (Location 316)
- Get in the habit of setting specific, focused, concrete goals for each writing day. They’ll prevent confusion about what to do and how to do it. (Location 329)
- If you think you have nothing to write, spend a writing period making a new set of project goals. (Location 381)
- “I’ve been reading some books about how to be a better writer, and one of them suggested wandering into your office and asking if I could get involved in some writing projects. If you have any manuscripts that need work or some data that need to be submitted, I’d like to help out.” (Location 385)
- Another way you can deal with not having anything to write is to use your scheduled writing time for your professional development. (Location 389)
- Writing’s rewards are delayed—it takes months to hear from journal editors and grant panels—so immediate self-rewards will sustain your motivation. (Location 428)
- Academic writers cannot get writer’s block. Don’t confuse yourself with your friends teaching creative writing in the fine arts department. You’re not crafting a deep narrative or composing metaphors that expose mysteries of the human heart. The subtlety of your analysis of variance will not move readers to tears, although the tediousness of it might. (Location 435)
- This chapter has described motivational tools that will make you a more productive writer. After you’ve committed to a writing schedule, you need to make a list of your project goals and write them down. When you sit down to write, spend a minute thinking about what you want to do that day. Setting priorities among your project goals will take the stress out of managing several projects at once. And monitoring your writing will keep you focused on your goals, motivate you not to miss a day, inform you about how well you’re doing, and give you hard facts that you can show to your binge-writing colleagues who are doubters and unbelievers. Anyone who combines the tips in this chapter with a regular schedule will write a lot. (Location 451)
- Delete very, quite, basically, actually, virtually, extremely, remarkably, completely, at all, and so forth. (Location 608)
- semicolons. Semicolons must connect independent clauses; each part of the sentence must be able to stand alone. (Location 637)
- To revive enervated sentences, negate with verbs instead of with not. (Location 695)
- Delete all to be _____ive of phrases by rewriting the verb: (Location 703)
- Move however into the first joint of the sentence: Before: However, recent findings challenge dual-process theories of persuasion. After: Recent findings, however, challenge dual-process theories of persuasion. (Location 717)
- Generating text and revising text are distinct parts of writing—don’t do both at once. The goal of text generation is to throw confused, wide-eyed words on a page; the goal of text revision is to scrub the words clean so that they sound nice and make sense. (Location 733)
- The paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing. (Location 738)
- Writing a journal article combines all the elements that deter motivation: The probability of success is low; the likelihood of criticism and rejection is high; and the outcome, even if successful, isn’t always rewarding. Doing research is fun; writing about the research is not. (Location 750)
- Outlining and Prewriting (Location 764)
- words. To refine your inner audience, make a rough list of the journals that you would want to publish your paper. (Location 781)
- Most readers who come across your article will see only the title and abstract, so make them good. (Location 786)
- Include all the search keywords in your abstract that you want to yield your article. (Location 790)
- I asked some friends who have edited major journals about their preferences. They unanimously preferred a simple letter with the essential boilerplate: the name of the manuscript, the author’s mailing and electronic addresses, and the standard assurances that the manuscript isn’t under review elsewhere and that the data were collected according to the field’s ethical standards. (Location 890)
- My informal survey of journal editors found unanimous support for lengthy, detailed resubmission letters. (Location 935)
- long, detailed letters make the authors look constructive and sincere. (Location 941)
- Tackle each action point with a three-part system. First, summarize the comment or criticism. Second, describe what you did in response to this comment; cite specific page numbers in your manuscript whenever possible. Third, discuss how this resolves the comment. (Location 952)
- To write a lot, you should rethink your mental models of rejection and publication. Rejections are like a sales tax on publications: The more papers you publish, the more rejections you receive. Following the tips in this book will make you the most rejected writer in your department. (Location 995)
- You don’t need special traits, special genes, or special motivation to write a lot. You don’t need to want to write—people rarely feel like doing unpleasant tasks that lack deadlines—so don’t wait until you feel like it. (Location 1249)