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Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Volume 39, Number 1, October 2007,

pp. 351-355 (Review)

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DOI: 10.1353/scp.2007.0030

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/scp/summary/v039/39.1donovan.html

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 Reviews 351

non-specialists to seek out a salutary first-hand encounter with these

works as well.
Each book contains an extensive bibliography. The page design of
The Scientific Literature would have benefited from a clearer
visual distinction between the selections and their accompanying
commentary. One aspect of scientific writing that is not examined in
either of these works is the long history of patronage seeking from
monarchs, wealthy merchants, religious authorities, and, more
recently, government agencies and private foundations. It would
be interesting to learn how the need to obtain favour or funding has
contributed to the rhetorical choices that scientists have employed
over time.

LISA RICHMOND is the director of the library at Wheaton

College (Illinois).

***

Paul J. Silvia. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive

Academic Writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association, 2007. Pp. xii, 149. Paper: ISBN-13 987-1-59147-743-3,
US$14.95.

Reviewed by Stephen K. Donovan

My path to reading this book demonstrates that I did so for pleasure,

not through necessity. With a paper in need of completion to meet a
deadline for the end of the month, I took two days off from work.
This got me out of the office and into my study, enabling me to
concentrate on the job at hand without distractions. I surprised
myself by completing the task with ease on the first day, writing the
discussion and adding well over 1200 words. My reward for such
productivity was a morning off on the second day, browsing in some
of my favourite bookshops in Amsterdam, where I bought How to
Write a Lot. Virtue rewarded, indeed.
So, how do you write a lot? The secret is to write a lot. Silvia the
conjuror pulls off a fine sleight of hand in telling those who don’t
write a lot that if they would only write a lot then they would write a
 352 Journal of Scholarly Publishing

lot. Simple, eh? And this only takes 132 pages of text. Much longer,
and the book would be too obvious. Silvia won’t make friends with
those who are looking for a magic formula that generates maximum
output from minimal effort, but introducing them to reality is surely
good, too.
But there is much more to How to Write a Lot than is suggested by
my glib assessment. Silvia is right, I’m sure, when he postulates that
‘many people never learned the nuts and bolts of submitting papers
to journals, revising manuscripts for resubmission, or working with
coauthors’ (xi). I am certain from my own experience as an editor
that this is part of the trouble, but such ignorance is not the main
problem. As Silvia notes, many academics do not arrange their
schedules to include regular time for writing. Writing takes time, and
it benefits from an absence of distractions. How do people expect to
write if they don’t make time for it? At the simplest level, Silvia
recommends that any writer needs to close the door, take the phone
off the hook, ignore the e-mail, and get on with the job. Regular
writing periods are essential; ‘making a schedule and sticking to it is
the only way’ (17). Further, I would argue that, once ineffective
academics metamorphose into productive authors, they will find
that writing expands outside the scheduled times because they need
to get on paper the ideas that keep popping into their heads.
To give a personal example, I bought How to Write a Lot on
Tuesday, finished reading it on Thursday, and wrote the first three
paragraphs of this review on Friday over a coffee in McDonald’s,
where I took my son for a treat after school finished at noon. He ate
and watched cartoons while Dad scribbled in his notebook; we enjoy
each other’s company and silence. Saturday was a family day. I got
up at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, typed my draft notes, and had stretched
my draft review to almost 1000 words while the family slept on.
Not quite Silvia’s idea of regular scheduling, but my gung-ho, grab-
time-when-I-can approach fits well with a busy family life and my
own style of writing. Like Silvia (13), I try to write for two hours
per day (or more, if I am lucky), at least five days per week,
but I move it around to fit in with family and my job. An hour before
6:30 a.m. and another hour later in the day works for me.
One thing that writing academics might consider is not using the
word processor all the time. I always carry a notebook in my pocket
for scribbling down ideas, phrases, and so on, and I still write,
 Reviews 353

instead of typing, new ideas and observations as the mood takes me.
My laptop, which I love, is no longer standard kit for research trips
abroad; instead, I take a pad of paper and a selection of favourite
pens. The change of habit was engendered by a trip late in 2006,
when I forgot to take my laptop yet found that I made much more
progress with a collaborative research project than I had on previous
visits to the same institution, during which I had laboriously entered
every thought and observation into the word processor. Writing,
rather than typing, keeps up with my thought processes more
efficiently. Notes can be typed and embellished later.
More than any other part of How to Write a Lot, chapter 2,
‘Specious Barriers to Writing a Lot,’ will be painful reading for those
with more excuses than time for writing. Silvia takes the standard
arguments wheeled out by academics as to why they can’t make time
for writing and grinds them into the dust whence they came. ‘I can’t
find time to write,’ ‘I need to read a few more articles,’ ‘I’m waiting
until I feel like it,’ and their ilk all march across the page, and all are
slapped down by Silvia’s persuasive, in places vitriolic, prose. He
rightly introduces his subject with a stiff dose of tongue-in-cheek
reality: ‘Writing is a grim business, much like repairing a sewer or
running a mortuary’ (11). Grim, but I know which of the three
can become fun.
Silvia also makes short work of how to maintain momentum and
follow the schedule day after day (chapter 3). Recognizing priorities
is important, and setting goals enable the writer to distinguish the
forest from the trees. I do this in my head now, but previous
experience confirms that the suggestion to have a written list is
good. The suggestion to keep a daily record of writing progress on a
spreadsheet is probably good, too; my own method, slightly differ-
ent, is to keep a tally of total words written at the end of a document
with the date last modified. This doesn’t produce a daily record per
se, but it does allow me to see the progress of current projects.
And Silvia gives writer’s block all the respect it deserves, that is, none
at all: ‘Saying that you can’t write because of writer’s block is merely
saying that you can’t write because you aren’t writing. It’s trivial.
The cure . . . is writing’ (46). Amen.
The suggestion to form a writers’ group among close colleagues
who monitor their attainment of goals is interesting (chapter 5).
I haven’t tried it, and wouldn’t want to now, but there are those for
 354 Journal of Scholarly Publishing

whom it would provide support, such as graduate students and

junior faculty pursuing tenure. A brief diversion into style and
writing – ‘our academic journals radiate bad writing’ (59) – brought
this reader to what I had been eagerly anticipating: Silvia’s thoughts
on writing for academic journals (chapter 6) and writing books
(chapter 7). Both chapters are full of meat. I concur with almost
everything Silvia has to say about writing research papers. What he
calls writing an outline is what I do when I pull together the skeleton
of my next paper on the laptop. Subheadings and other details
may change as the paper evolves, but main headings guide the
writing process. ‘As a reviewer,’ Silvia notes, ‘I see a lot of sloppy
reference sections’ (89); as an editor, I recognize that these are the
norm, not the exception. New authors should pay particular
attention to the simple message ‘be careful whom you write with’
(102); the world is full of time wasters seeking co-authorship of
your next paper.
I do question whether ‘all journals have high rejection rates’ (94).
For example, with perhaps more than 10,000 peer-reviewed science
journals in various specialties, I’m sure that there is a home
somewhere for every scientific research paper; I presume that a
similar number of outlets is available in the humanities. Send your
very best papers to the very best journals, but send other papers,
slightly less than your best effort, to those journals that will publish
them. Silvia’s portrait of life as a process of collecting rejection letters
with an occasional acceptance to light the way seems excessively
gloomy. Letting editors publish the papers that they’ve always
wanted to publish is a far more constructive methodology.
I congratulate Paul Silvia for writing such an entertaining
and readable book about the toughest thing any academic
needs to learn – how to write and get published. His book is written
with a quirky style and is excellent value. His simple message –
‘making a schedule and sticking to it is the only way’ (17) – should
become a mantra for all prospective scientific authors. Although
How to Write a Lot is nominally aimed at psychologists, there
isn’t an active academic who wouldn’t benefit from reading it.
Its principles are universal, and few examples are parochial.
And remember, ‘Productive writers don’t have special gifts or
special traits – they just spend more time writing and use this
time more efficiently’ (4).
 Reviews 355

STEPHEN K. DONOVAN is a researcher at the Nationaal

Natuurhistorisch Museum, Leiden, The Netherlands. He is managing
editor of the museum’s geological journal, Scripta Geologica, a
member of the editorial board of the Geological Journal, and book
review editor of Ichnos.