How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing | Paul J. Silvia

How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing | Paul J. Silvia | A Revelation and Absolute Necessity

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How to Write a Lot...

	How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing Paul J. Silvia American Psychological Association (APA), 2007 - 149 pages average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, lighthearted and encouraging book, Paul J Silvia explains that writing productively doesnot require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field: psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends and vactions. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives advise from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles: how to improve writing quality; and how to write and publish academic work.

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1500 words per day

I read this book in early May. On May 7, I began writing my dissertation proposal. On June 6 (today), I turned it in; it is 106 pages (including several figures and tables) and contains over 25,000 words.

On the days I wrote, I averaged over 1500 words per day. On the days I didn't write, I still had Writing Hours, and worked on the figures, tables, references, etc. Without this book, I would not have had Writing Hours and I would not have written as high quality a prospectus as I did.

Contributing to the quality of my prospectus is the section in this book that includes grammatical information. This section is critical. You want to write a lot of good words, not just a lot of words.

If you know someone who likes things, this book would make a great gift.

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A Revelation and Absolute Necessity

This is the best investment a graduate student or academic can make. It would be worthwhile at $500, let alone a mere $10. While other books may encourage some of the same behaviors prescribed by Paul Silvia, *no* other how-to guide so brutally, convincingly, and entertainingly demolishes the excuses that you tell yourself when you're procrastinating. Other how-to's merely give advice, while this book positively demands productivity from you.

As a result of Silvia's work, I went from being a "bingewriter"--which I previously didn't know I was--to a writer of 1,000+ words per day. While I wasn't unhappy with my productivity before reading this book, I have never enjoyed being a professor as much as I do now that I've read it.

I only hope that one day this book is made known to all graduate students and all professors in all fields. It would improve academic discourse on numerous counts. Finally, please note that I am *not* in the field of psychology. This book is equally useful for all fields of social, physical, and natural science.

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Insightful and Realistic

This book was great. It's full of useful and realistic information. Nothing touchy-feelie or New Age here. I wasn't asked to "get centered" or in touch with my chakras. Just practical information and guidance. This book is written for academics -- which I am not -- but I still find it helpful for my own creative writing needs.

Pragmatic and simple as the truth

Doing my dissertation time by time I read these kind of books to motivate myself more than to get advice from them. This book is different, because it does not try to analyze all these psychological barriers why it is so difficulty to do an dissertation or to write academic texts. It simply is telling you the truth about writing processes. The good news is: it is simple and you can learn it, bad news is: writing will loose some of its glorious nimbus. But exactly that is the way it goes: you have to get routine day by day, month by month and so on. Why can I say that Silvia is telling the right things? Because I had to learn it by my own over the last few years. Unfortunately I did not read the book at the very beginning when I started to write my thesis. I really can recommend it and forget all the digging for the psychological barriers...

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Very encouraging!

I've been feeling bad since my papers got rejected. This book makes me feel much better when I read the "blistering rejction" included in the book as an example.
I totally agree with the author that "the world is unfaire (p

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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