12 Steps to becoming a more prolific scholar

These notes are from a writing workshop by Tara Gray called “Publish and Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar,” presented at the 2006 Text and Academic Authors convention.

What I’ve done  is to extract the key points and snippets of some of them, but you’ll want to go the TAA website for the full article, for sure. Great content. Here goes…

The myth persists that prolific scholars are born, not made, but research suggests otherwise. Much is known about how to become more prolific — and any scholar can. These steps will show you how.

Step 1. Write daily for 15 to 30 minutes. Many scholars believe that writing requires big blocks of time. They’re wrong. Research shows that scholars who write daily publish far more than those who write in big blocks of time. The problem with big blocks of time is that they’re hard to find. And once you find one, you’re faced with a major task, and it’s hard to “get started.” In contrast, when you write daily, you start writing immediately because you remember what you were writing about the day before. This leads to impressive production. Here’s what Robert Boice found in Advice to New Faculty: participants who wrote daily wrote only twice as many hours as those who wrote occasionally in big blocks of time but wrote or revised ten times as many pages.

Step 2. Record time spent writing daily, share records weekly. …Here’s what Robert Boice found in his research paper, “Procrastination, Busyness and Bingeing.” … Participants were divided into three groups and followed after the workshop: (a) The first group (“controls”) …write occasionally in big blocks of time; in 1 year they wrote an average of 17 pages; (b) the second group wrote daily and kept a daily record; their annual average was 64 pages; (c) the third group wrote daily, kept a daily record, and held themselves accountable to someone weekly; this group’s annual average was 157 pages.

Step 3. Write from the first day of your research project. Write from the first day of your project — as soon as you have a research idea — and keep writing throughout the project. Don’t finish the research first; research as you write, and write as you research. …

Step 4. Post your thesis [ed: the key hypotheses of your dissertation] on the wall, then write to it. When you sit down to write, take a stab at describing what you are going to write about. Don’t make this difficult by trying to write the perfect sentence. Just jot down a word or a phrase; you can develop it later. Treat this as a working thesis: You can and should change it later. …

Step 5. Organize around key sentences. Readers expect nonfiction to have one point per paragraph. The point of the paragraph should be contained in a key or topic sentence, located early in the paragraph and supported by the rest of the paragraph. … To test this idea, ask yourself the (key) question: “Is the rest of the paragraph about the idea in the key sentence?” …

Step 6. Use key sentences as an after-the-fact outline. To examine the organization of your writing, list the key sentences — and headings — to see an after-the-fact outline, an approach advocated by Booth, Colomb and Williams in The Craft of Research. Now, read the list and question yourself about the purpose and organization of the writing:

• How could the key sentences better communicate the purpose (thesis) of the paper to the intended audience?
• How could the key sentences be better organized? More logical? More coherent?

…begin each writing session by viewing only the headings and key sentences of the section you worked on the previous day.

Step 7. Share early drafts with non-experts. The biggest communication problem is overestimating what your readers know. … Prod these non-experts to think about clarity and organization: “What passages were hardest to understand?” “Where did you feel unsure about where you were going?” Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no,” such as “Is the paper clear?”

Step 8. Share later drafts with little-e experts and Capital-E Experts.  Little-e experts include anyone trained in your discipline; Capital-E Experts include the biggest experts in your discipline or your sub-discipline. Share middle drafts with experts who can help you in some of the ways that non-experts can help you — as well as some of the ways that Capital-E Experts can help you. …Strive to get about half your feedback from experts.

Step 9. Learn how to listen. Remember, when it comes to clarity, the reader is always right. … “If the reader thinks something you write is unclear, then it is, by definition. Quit arguing” says Deirdre McCloskey in her book, Economical Writing, p. 12.

Step 10. Respond to each criticism. The paper is usually read by several reviewers. Don’t expect reviewers — or other readers — to make identical comments. … If you make changes in response to each of these reviewers, you will improve the paper and reduce the chance that other readers will find fault with the manuscript. Think of each specific concern as a hole in your rhetorical “dam:” the more holes you plug, the better your argument will “hold water.”

Step 11. Read your prose out loud. To polish your prose, read it out loud to someone, or have someone read it out loud to you. You can hear when the prose is awkward and least conversational. … If you can’t find someone to help you, read it out loud to yourself.

Step 12. Kick it out the door and make ‘em say “No.” You are almost ready to send your paper out, but two obstacles remain: perfectionism and fear of rejection. …And, keep your perfectionism in check. You may say that your paper is not really done. It could be better. That’s true today, and it will be true 10 years from now. It’s tough to know when “enough is enough.” As a writer, you must find the balance between “making it better and getting it done” as Howard Becker puts it in Writing for Social Scientists, p. 122. …

If you’re in the midst of dissertation writing, all these elements apply, some more than others, but just substitute “committee” for “reviewers”, “submission” for “sending” (in the full article).

And remember the first 2 points as the most important in getting writing happening at all:

1. Write daily for 15-30 minutes.
2. Record how much total time you spent writing every day.
   
3. Share those records weekly with someone.
   

 Carry on! (There’s a 12-step program for Everything, eh? )