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How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, by Paul J. Silvia is truly a practical guide to productive academic writing. It provides its readers with useful techniques and tools on how to increase writing productivity. This book covers the gamut of academic writing by helping its readers understand the importance of scheduling time to write and sticking to it. To do so, Sylvia provides strategies on how to set goals in writing, how to manage multiple writing projects, and how to manage progress. He also offers suggestions on building and embracing writing support groups and the usefulness of these support groups as a means of co-authoring. Of course one cannot approach the concept of how to write a lot, without discussing writing styles. Thus, Sylvia provides valuable information on basic writing principles, strategies for writing well, and tips regarding the writing of articles, manuscripts, books, grant proposals and cover letters. Tips on how to work with co-authors and publishers are also offered throughout this book along with the discussion of the common issues faced during journal submittal and re-submittals. Using a very candid approach, the author provides us with the most common barriers to writing a lot and describes simple ways to overcome them. The author feels that scheduling time to write is the only way to increase writing productivity and stresses it throughout the book. The next step, he says, is sticking to the schedule and he strongly feels that people who write a lot should also plan a lot. The importance of setting goals, setting priorities, and monitoring progress are necessary to achieve writing goals, according to this author’s insight. Sylvia clearly understands the relationship between motivation and writing productivity as demonstrated in his encouragement to readers of this book to reward themselves as incentives to stay motivated while waiting to hear from submittals. In my opinion, one of the many strengths of this book is that the author also approaches how to improve the quality of your writing. He supports this by discussing how to choose good words, write strong sentences, and avoid limp and wordy phrases in the passive voice, thus encouraging clean, crisp writing. He even goes so far as to offer the reader a list of other books that are useful to improve the quality and the ease of writing. What I found most intriguing is that, though the author provides ways to improve writing productivity, the author also understands and stresses balancing your writing with a healthy lifestyle as a means to guarantee writing productivity improvements. I recommend this book for all academicians, particularly those struggling with meeting writing deadlines as a means of increasing their writing productivity. This book is an easy read and approaches the barriers of academic writing from a realistic point of view. The strategies and techniques detailed in this book, if implemented as suggested, should surely increase writing productivity for many academicians for years to come, without adding extra work to an already busy lifestyle. ----------------------------
Dr. Virginia Cook Tickles is a Visiting Professor at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology with a 25 year career as a practicing engineer. She obtained a BS Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tuskegee Institute in 1985, a MS Degree in Systems Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama Campus in 1999, and a PhD in Urban Higher Education at Jackson State University, in Jackson, Mississippi in 2006. With a keen interest in African American women in STEM, her dissertation, “The Career Success of African American Women with Doctorates in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics” documents and frames the attitudes and behaviors needed for successful STEM achievement. Virginia was featured on the front cover of the “Black Ph. D, Ed. D. Magazine, 2008 Special Edition” as a Trailblazer, is a member of Sisters of the Academy, an organization designed to facilitate the success of Black Women in the Academy, and is the mother of 6 beautiful daughters.
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Reviewed by Dr. Virginia Cook Tickles
