I am passionate about this topic because I have known far too many dedicated scholars who struggle to write and publish their work. When I ran into trouble writing my dissertation, I didn’t have any help. I was ashamed and embarrassed and found only a handful of books to guide me. That began a lifetime of exploring how and why academic writing can be so challenging for me and for so many others. Today there is much more advice available to struggling academics, in books and online, including individual (and usually too expensive!) writing coaching. But the challenge of actually getting writing done in a demanding and often unsupportive academic environment continues.
I love this book because it is wise, friendly, and full of practical advice on how to combine academic life with research, writing, and publication without getting distracted and bogged down while still “having a life.”
It is a classic and allowed me to finish my dissertation and have an academic career.
All academics need to write, but many struggle to finish their dissertations, articles, books, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. How can we write it all while still having a life?
In this second edition of his popular guidebook, Paul Silvia offers fresh advice to help you overcome barriers to writing and use your time more productively. After addressing some common excuses and bad habits, he provides practical strategies to motivate students, professors, researchers, and other academics to become better and more prolific writers. Silvia draws from his…
Yes, he may be a little OCD about scheduling, but this book shows the value of establishing routines that can support a scholarly writing practice across a lifetime.
He is especially helpful for those of us who have lots of ideas but struggle with getting multiple projects organized and completed. His advice on keeping possible future projects “fed” (by adding ideas and references long before you start writing) is golden.
For anyone who has blanched at the uphill prospect of finishing a long piece of writing, this book holds out something more practical than hope: it offers a plan. The Clockwork Muse is designed to help prospective authors develop a workable timetable for completing long and often formidable projects.
The idea of dashing off a manuscript in a fit of manic inspiration may be romantic, but it is not particularly practical. Instead, Eviatar Zerubavel, a prolific and successful author, describes how to set up a writing schedule and regular work habits that will take most of the anxiety and procrastination…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
This book is most helpful for scholars who worry that they “don’t know the rules” for scholarly writing. The fear of being a clueless newbie can stymie us, especially because there really are unspoken rules in academic writing.
The authors make the structure and norms of scholarly writing clear and accessible, so that hesitant newcomers can recognize them, and then learn how to use them in their own work.
Used and loved by millions of students for its lively and practical advice, this is the book that demystifies academic writing and shows how to engage with the views of others. Extensively revised in response to feedback from our community of adopters, this edition of "They Say / I Say" is an even more practical companion for students, featuring a new chapter on research, new exercises, expanded support for reading and an expanded chapter on Revising.
This book is an inspiring compendium of writing advice from successful academic writers, ones who have (apparently) found ways to mix academic writing with “having a life”; and have already created habits and routines that work; and have already learned the unwritten rules of academic prose.
That means that this book is best for the mid-career academic who wants to develop a more engaged or inspiring relationship with their writing process.
From the author of Stylish Academic Writing comes an essential new guide for writers aspiring to become more productive and take greater pleasure in their craft. Helen Sword interviewed one hundred academics worldwide about their writing background and practices. Relatively few were trained as writers, she found, and yet all have developed strategies to thrive in their publish-or-perish environment.
So how do these successful academics write, and where do they find the "air and light and time and space," in the words of poet Charles Bukowski, to get their writing done? What are their formative experiences, their daily routines, their…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
I recommend this classic because, even though it is designed for personal or imaginative writers rather than for academic types, she offers empathy, encouragement, and amusing takes on all forms of writing.
She offers warm and supportive guidance for what can often feel like a lonely, risky, and unrewarding venture.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).
“Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review
For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom…
My book helps scholars deal with a variety of writing challenges. It is based on my own writing struggles (as a tenured professor who published five books and many articles) and my experience advising faculty and graduate students.
In my book, I recommend having brief, frequent, low-stress, high-reward encounters with projects, as well as using a calendaring system and specific accountability options. I offer ways to work with the academic writing myths that keep us dreading, avoiding, or even abandoning writing projects. I address some of the most common content conundrums we face and end with suggestions on how to make the most of summers, breaks, and sabbaticals. An appendix describes the nature and value of writing about academic issues for the general public.
