How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing 1st (first) edition

by Paul J. Silvia

Genres: Writing

Paperback

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great motivation for academic writing (refers to psychology/APA, but I am sure 95% of the contents are relevant for academia in general). It was a quick read, straight to the point, nothing unnecessary or lengthy. Unlike some other writing books, this one fosters writing not procrastinating, which I appreciate. It was funny as well; this always helps.

[Sidra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, motivating, practical, AND funny? Highly recommend to my friends in academia (especially psych).

[V Massaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book for several reasons: It's practical - clear - humorous - short (Silvia calls out this irony) - motivating. As someone who struggles with writing, I find this book strangely feels like a silent writing partner. I will hold it close to me while writing.

Quotes:
One of my favorites: "Writing books is clean family fun without the fun or family (or even the cleanliness if you spill your coffee like I do."

“Writing time is for writing, not for checking e-mail, reading the news, or browsing the latest issues of journals. Sometimes I think it would be nice to download articles while writing, but I can do that at the office. The best kind of self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control.”

“Do you need to "find time to teach"? Of course not---you have a teaching schedule, and you never miss it. [...] Finding time is a destructive way of thinking about writing. Never say this again. Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write.”

“Novelists and poets are the landscape artists and portrait painters; academic writers are the people with big paint sprayers who repaint your basement.”

“Writing is more fun when you have a partner, so find friends who share your research interests. Two authors can write faster, can complement expertise, can help with hard decisions, and understand context of decisions made.”

“Put your "inner writer" back on its leash and give it a chew toy.”

“The goal of text generation is to throw confused, wide-eyed words on a page; the goal of text revision is to scrub the rods clean so that they sound nice and can go out in public.”

“Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend to them than inspiration.:

“Writing a book is like injecting anabolic steroids: it if doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger and hairier.”

“Collecting data is easy; writing about data is hard.”

“Want less and do more.”

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Some academics are so enamored of goals, initiatives, and strategic plans that they become deans and provosts."

"Psychologists like writing about the existing literature. Is there a nonexistent literature that I should be reading and referencing?"

I like some humor in my academic reading (see Silvia's quotes above). Silvia does a good job of getting some basic points across: set a schedule for your writing and stick to it, outline as part of your writing process, and write better with fewer big words. This book is aimed toward psychology academics, so if you're in another field, certain sections may not apply to you. However, I thought it was helpful overall, and I agree that setting a writing schedule has been great for me as a tenure-track professor with publishing obligations.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does its job and does it well.

This book will motivate you to write a lot. You can take this advice and apply it to any goal you have. The advice is simply: Do it-- whether you feel like it or not. Silvia's advice is to the point (an obvious fan of Zennisser, who is an obvious fan of E.B. White, who is obviously one of the great American writers). But it also does it with humor. Surprisingly, this book is hilarious at times.

Although I read this book to learn some advice to give my faculty, I learned a great deal.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Write as much or as little as you want to write. Although this book shows you how to write a lot, don't think that you ought to write a lot. A more accurate title for this book would be ‘How to Write More Productively During the Normal Work Week With Less Anxiety and Guilt’, but no one would buy that book.”

[lázaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

lo compré de segunda mano en una librería por casualidad... estaba ahí escondidillo en una estantería polvorienta... completely forgot about it for months... muy buen libro, genuinely useful and hilarious

[John Chancey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful book on how to write more. Completely dismantles many of the reasons for not writing. Just write!! I feel more confident as a scholar and writer after reading this book. I plan to build a consistent writing schedule as per the author's advice.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good look into academic writing and provided a lot of encouragement and perspective on why submitting to journals, etc. doesn’t have to be as daunting as we all think it is. The writing schedule method is something my advisor implements and I look forward to trying it!

[Dalaina Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good advice for anyone writing a book or a paper anything in general!

[Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

作者很幽默，妙趣横生的语言来让你把写作养成一个习惯。确实，没有人会觉得写作的过程完全没有痛苦，而且有很多backlogs的时候更痛苦。前面几章其实已经把整本书“定时定量写作”的中心思想说得很清楚了，后面group writing的建议没什么实践性，总体还是很有启发性的就是需要有实施力了。。。

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has the kind of advice my PhD used to give me (that I wouldn’t appreciate until much later). For a short read, it’s full of good tips about being a productive academic.