Reddit reviews How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (First Edition, 2017)
We found 16 Reddit comments about How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (First Edition, 2017). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Really, right now, just that it's my job. The fact that it sometimes sucks isn't an excuse. Neither is the fact that I don't feel inspired to excellence every day.
I sit down for two hours every morning and write. It's the habit that keeps me going, especially when writing feels like the horrible chore that it often is.
That sounds bleak, I suppose, but I've actually started to feel a lot better about my work and progress since adopting this perspective. It means that I'm not failing at being a grad student just for not "feeling the love" or whatever. It means that I make incremental (sometimes infinitesimal) progress every day.
This book sort of articulates that perspective. It's a book about writing, on the surface, but I've found that it's also a great "how to cope with this shit you got yourself into" manual (at least, if the size of the task combined with the overwhelming pile of other stuff you need to do is what ails you).
Read this book. It's short, practical, and doesn't get into any of that 'spirit of writing' snake oil. It's just about how to maximize your output and quality simultaneously. It was written by a Psych. guy, and he cites various studies to back up everything he says. You can read it in an hour or less, and it works well for sciences or humanities.
How to write a lot
In my research (with data) I believe you can write at least 3 paragraphs when starting any project.
These will change (maybe not data), but they at least get you started and writing. Highly recommend the book "How to Write a Lot" (https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433)
I think everyone in academia could find useful tools in this book. Not to sound like a late night infomercial but I went from low productivity to publishing way more than my colleagues using some of the principles covered here. It's essentially just CBT for writing. How to Write A Lot
How to write a lot. Ironically, the book is quite short!
Read a lot and practice writing have already been mentioned, and those are great and necessary practices that should continue throughout your academic career. Getting external feedback is also great advice. I'll add the following: Writing and editing your writing are two different jobs, so don't edit and write at the same time.
A few books I recommend regularly to Ph.D. students in the social sciences: How To Write A Lot has some tips and tricks about writing routines of academics. If you're writing ethnographic works: Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes and Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography are worth reading.
I'm working on my MA right now, and this term I've taken a writing seminar for academic publishing.
This class has changed my life.
This book and this book were required for the class, and they have been really, REALLY helpful to me.
If you get the books, just ignore the parts that aren't relevant for you. "How to Write a Lot" is specifically about academic publication in the field of Psychology, but it is written in a way that is clear, makes sense, and relates way more to building better work/study habits than it deals specifically with publication. It's worth getting just for the parts that will be relevant to you.
Belcher's work-book is less relevant, but it has a lot of great advice on how to write better papers, and it covers pretty much every discipline.
You should seriously spend the $10 on "How to Write a Lot," you won't regret it. In case you don't...
How to Stop Procrastinating and Study More
For me, the problem was "writer's block." For you it's procrastination. They are two different names for the same thing. The solution to them sounds extremely unpleasant... until you try it.
You have to study every day. Yes, every day.
Currently, if you are like how I have been for about the last 20 years, you wait until a few days before your test or class or whatever, and then you spend hours upon hours studying until you are exhausted and pretty much hate whatever you were studying, right? If you get around to studying at all?
Stop doing that.
You know what kind of person you are, morning person, night owl, whatever.
Want to make it easier on yourself? Spend the next week recording everything you do over the course of every day- every hour should be accounted for. You don't have to share this with anyone, so if you spent an hour jerking it... well... that's fine, but it's probably time better spent studying.
When you do this, you will find that you are not as busy as you feel like you are. You probably have one hour from every day that you could use to do something more productive.
Even if you only use half an hour every day for studying, doing it EVERY DAY is what is essential. You have to turn the process of binge-studying and procrastination into a daily habit.
If you are like me, this sounds absurd, and you are probably thinking you aren't going to do this because it sounds stupid and won't work.
That was what I thought, until I did it.
I thought, "but I can't just MAKE myself write (study), I have to be in the mood for it."
No, you don't. If you do it every day you will find out it's actually really easy to pick things up and put them back down again, once you know it will happen every day.
It ceases to be some stressful thing you have to actively think of and remember to do.
If you KNOW that from 3pm to 4pm every weekday, you will be studying, then it becomes completely natural to pick up your books, work at things for a while, and then put them away at the end of it and move on to whatever else you want to do for the day.
"But I won't remember what I was working on."
Yes, you will. You don't remember what you study from your marathon sessions because you can't process that much shit at once.
If you spend about an hour every day on it, it becomes much more easy and natural to recall what you were studying. In fact, you will probably find yourself thinking about it more often than you ever would have expected of yourself.
"But people interrupt me."
Of course they do, people interrupt everything. But you don't say "I'm too busy to go to work/class," because that's absurd. It's an obligation, so you do it.
You need to jealously guard your study time. I'm not saying you can't be flexible and shift things around to be most convenient for you, but if you have your dedicated "study time" blocked off and a friend wants to go party, tell them you can't, but in an hour you'll be free.
Your friends are horrible influences. They WILL try to get you to do fun things instead. Mine did, and most of the time I listened to them.
Now, I don't. I get my shit done, and I feel immensely less stressed because of it. The time I invest on writing rarely ever actually interferes with plans I have made, or even spur-of-the-moment stuff that comes up.
"But I'm busy every Saturday/sunday/Whatever."
That's fine. Take a day off, have a day where you just enjoy yourself and don't study, but make sure that you develop a schedule for studying, and stick to it. Make it a time you know works well for you.
Lastly, your "study time" doesn't have to be strictly you, cramming from books, day after day. Use this time to work on homework, to organize your notes, to work on all of the shit that is related to studying that you need to work on, including studying itself. Studying is the act of studying, sure, but "studying" also includes working on homework, emailing professors, contacting peers you study with, organizing notes; whatever you can think of that is tied into the process of studying, this is your dedicated time to do that stuff.
Some days, you just won't feel up to cracking open the books, and that's fine. Use that day to organize your notes, or email your teacher that question you've been wondering about, or whatever. What, specifically, you do, is less important than blocking off the time so you can work on what you need to work on. Some days WILL be less productive than others, and that's okay, because you will be studying again tomorrow, and you can make up for it tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever; the point is, since you aren't procrastinating and binging on studying all at once, you KNOW that you will have regularly scheduled time to work on things.
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As far as how to actually study better, being organized and breaking tasks into groups of things that need to be done helps, but ultimately the best way to do this is read up about different things people do, different strategies/techniques, and try them out. Some will work for you, some won't. I'm a visual/tactile learner, if I write something down it tends to stick; if I hear it and don't write it down, it's gone.
I'm at work right now, but I'll be heading home soon, if you are interested I can put some of the material from the book up here for you, so let me know if you'd like that.
How to Write A Lot
https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433
The advice about scheduling writing time is good. The book "How to write a lot" goes through several "myths" of non-productivity and suggests setting a schedule and sticking to it will help you overcome these difficulties. I wish I had read through this short work earlier: http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334677315&sr=8-1
Nearly all PhD students face this as they come to the final years of their degrees. Coursework, reading groups, and teaching are often (sometimes artificial) ways to give structure to your life and allow you to escape the reality of confronting the hard work that needs to be done on your dissertation. Realizing that you're totally alone to structure your time and organize your research can be daunting.
When it comes to difficult knowledge work, don't feel too bad and realize that you will go through spurts. Many people only get a few (2-4) hours of genuine writing done a day: this isn't something you can crank out for eight hours a day continually for a few months like experiments or coding.
I read a book "how to write a lot," and found it helpful in accomplishing this:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433
Real talk:
How to Write A Lot
There's a great book called How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, which I found to be immensely helpful while working on my thesis.
It's geared towards academics, but much of the advice and strategies in the book can be applied to any kind of writing.
Hope that helps.
Check out this book http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433
It helped for academic writing in grad school, but many of the lessons carry over: How to Write a Lot. https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433
It is a thin book though: https://www.amazon.de/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive/dp/1591477433