Reddit reviews How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (2018 New Edition)

Books: How to Write a Lot was recently updated. It's a small book by helpful. I think my favorite recommendation in the book was "You probably don't skip class, you don't find excuses to not do your teaching obligations, so why are you often postponing writing?" From that, I blocked out an hour a day to write. That could mean reading papers, but I would also work on summarizing a paper.

When I started to get really critical of my writing, I noted papers that I enjoyed reading. There aren't many of them, so what set them apart? Taking time to just sit and think about what makes a good sentence, paragraph, or section can help improve your writing. For example, when does varying sentence length help or hurt your writing?

Another HUGE impact was co-writing with someone. I told my adviser I wasn't confident in my writing. He had me send my drafts to him, and he would edit with track changes. I critically looked and how and why he moved my sentences around. What did he add that I had excluded? The next round, I tried to emulate that style.

Another good book is The Scientist's Guide to Writing. As a bonus, Dr. Heard provides a syllabus for how he structures his classes around the book.

I hated people who told me to read more to write better. Reading more helped me learn how to phrase things in my field, but the papers were rarely a pleasure to read. Focusing on the English basics and an English writing course can actually help. If you can take a creative writing class, I would recommend it. You get to play with structure and style and work to convey a story in a less rigid way than writing science. Plus, as you develop those skills, they will translate into effective grant writing.