Home > Author > Paul J. Silvia
1 " Writing involves many [acts] tasks, not just generating text "
― Paul J. Silvia , How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing
2 " 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. "
3 " You don't need special traits, special genes, or special motivation to write a lot. You don't need to want to write--people rarely feel like doing unpleasant tasks that lack deadlines--so don't wait until you feel like it. Productive writing comes from harnessing the power of habit, and habits come from repetition p.129 "
4 " Never reward writing with not writing. Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette. "
5 " Revising while you generate text is like drinking decaffeinated coffee in the early morning: noble idea, wrong time. "
6 " 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. "
7 " 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. "
8 " Binge writers spend more time feeling guilty and anxious about not writing than schedule followers spend writing. "
9 " Remember, you’re allocating time to write, not finding time to write. "
10 " Equipment will never help you write a lot; only making a schedule and sticking to it will make you a productive writer. "
11 " Academic writers are bad writers for three reasons. First, they want to sound smart. “If the water is dark,” goes a German aphorism, “the lake must be deep.” Instead of using good words like smart, they choose sophisticated or erudite. "
12 " Reading an endless litany of study after study-one article found this, and another experiment found this, and another study found this-is like watching laundry spinning in a dryer, except that something good eventually comes out of a dryer! "
― Paul J. Silvia
13 " Novelists and poets are the landscape artists and portrait painters; academic writers are the people with big paint sprayers who repaint your basement. "
14 " The best kind of self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control "
15 " 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. "
16 " Decide what you want to do," wrote William Zinsser. "Then decide to do it. Then do it" (Zinsser, 2001, p. 285). "
17 " Writing is more than typing words: Any action that is instrumental in completing a writing project counts as writing. "
18 " (I used to hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my office door, but people interpreted this as “His door is closed, but he wants me to know he’s in there. I’ll knock.”) Be "
19 " When confronted with their fruitless ways, binge writers often proffer a self-defeating dispositional attribution: "I'm just not the kind of person who's good at making a schedule and sticking to it." This is nonsense, of course. People like dispositional explanations when they don't want to change [...] "
20 " Writing a journal article combines all the elements that deter motivation: The probability of success is low; the likelihood of criticism and rejection is high; and the outcome, even if successful, isn’t always rewarding. "
