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Summary:
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, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul J. Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice 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.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
One piece of advice spread over a whole book
Customer Rating:
This book contains really only one piece of advice: Make a writing schedule and stick to it no matter what. The advice is not bad, but I would expect a few more ideas from a book.
Solid, Practical Advice
Customer Rating:
Paul J. Silvia's How to Write a Lot is a great practical guide that provides academics with a wealth of advice. Silvia's main point is that writing productivity is a skill that comes from planning; it is not an innate gift. Silvia states that becoming a productive writer is about forcing yourself to adopt the right behaviors (i.e., sitting down to write) as opposed to discovering some abstract philosophy on how to write.
According to Silvia, the basic process for improving one's writing is simple: 1) make a schedule (how many days per week and how many hours per day), 2) set goals for each day, 3) keep track of whether you meet your long- and short-term goals, and 4) reward yourself for reaching your major goals.
Silvia has a great, breezy style. He includes a few quips that keep the tone light. For instance, in a discussion of why academics should never claim that they have writer's block, he writes: "Novelists and poets are the landscape artists and portrait painters; academic writers are the people with big paint guns who repaint your basement" (page 45).
How to Write a Lot does bog down after the first three chapters. The other chapters are not bad, but they contain information that readers have probably seen elsewhere (e.g., write in the active voice). The chapters on scheduling, however, are terrific. I recommend How to Write a Lot based on those three chapters.
Nice advices and easy to read
Customer Rating:
I'm in my PhD thesis writing process, even when I'm a sciences student I found this book encouraging and very useful. You can quickly read it in your free time -- if you have some -- in less than a week and you will certainly find nice ideas to practice your daily writing. Specially useful if you always give you excuses when not writing everyday.
Funny & Helpful
Customer Rating:
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.'
Quantity over quality in academic papers -- a sign of the times?
Customer Rating:
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.
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