Category: Practice

Self-Knowledge is a Practice, Not an End

We never go down to the same stream twice (Heraclitus).
We never go down to the same stream twice. (Helen Wilkinson / Stream / CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stream_-_geograph.org.uk_-_501130.jpg)

About 25 centuries ago, the motto “Know Thyself” (Greek: Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnōthi seauton) was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece. It is advice that has retained its value. Indeed, in a world in which we are bombarded by different media voices telling us that we should want this or that, the ability to know the self becomes more difficult.

Working on understanding myself

I continue to work on understanding myself. In service of that aim, I explore my own perspective on development of self-knowledge through writing, which I share with you here.

Focusing inward; temporarily ignoring external voices

Others have explored the idea of self-knowledge before me, but I want to look inside myself for my answers. I don’t want to be swayed by other voices, even though I have been shaped by them, and their ideas will likely come to mind, even if I mistake them for my own.

Although self-knowledge can grow by listening to others (indeed, the ideas of others are invaluable), until we look for answers inside ourselves, we have only the competing voices of others, each claiming a truth that we may or may not understand.

We want to find our own truth, even though our own truth is likely to change over time.

Self-knowledge is valuable

Self-knowledge supports good decisions. Self-knowledge protects you from the manipulations of others. Self-knowledge, though sometimes challenging, also supports mental health. At least, that is the view of existential psychology like that expressed by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning.

But the Delphic Oracle’s recommendation already implies the value of self-knowledge, so I don’t want to expend my effort arguing for it. I’m more interested in the process.

Self-knowledge is complex

We are all complex. We have many traits and many desires. We live in complex contexts, creating a variety of different identities: the person we are with our mother is not the person we are with our boss, our school friend, our casual acquaintance, or our pet.

This complexity cannot be encompassed in any single moment. Even in a single role, we are complex: in trying to explain ourselves to our mother, we see a variety of traits and attitudes. In conversations with our mother, we might explore our self-confidence, our ethical and moral values, and our desires. None of those are simple.

And in different roles, we see bigger changes. The intelligence and confidence we feel, and which is “true” to us, when speaking with our mother may be replaced by self-criticism when speaking with a supervisor (or vice versa).

We always change

If we change, then our self-knowledge changes, too. Heraclitus famously said “No one ever steps into the same river twice,” implying not only the constant change in the river, but the constant change in the person who steps into the river.

People change constantly. We learn. We experience. We feel. And our experience changes how we respond to things. We learn to like things that seemed unpleasant (coffee, for example); we get bored with things that were once exciting; we learn to appreciate that which we disdained, and vice versa. As a writer, my work constantly challenges my understanding of the world: every new sentence offers new perspectives.

The practice

Because there is no final destination in the search for self-knowledge, we cannot complete the process of knowing ourselves. What we can do is keep working at it; we can practice self-knowledge.

Many practices involve self-knowledge. Yoga and meditation may not be centered on self-knowledge, but they demand it. Regular prayer is often a practice in understanding hopes and fears, things for which we are grateful and things that upset us. Athletic practices require understanding of one’s body and abilities. To excel in any area, self-knowledge is necessary to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for and means of improvement.

Gentle practice

Because there is no final destination, there is no need to rush. We don’t need a difficult or punitive practice; we need a practice that we continue to practice. As long as we continue, we continue to grow and learn, and our ability increases.

With a gentle practice, it’s easier to develop a positive relationship with the practice. Instead of pushing yourself to the point of pain or frustration, you go in looking for the enjoyment and keep on only as long as it feels good.

If you develop your practice gently, you will likely find that you come to enjoy the challenges. “No pain, no gain,” is vastly different in gentle practice because the motivations and experiences are positive, so some discomfort and frustration are welcomed for the benefit that accompanies them.

We are neurophysiological beings

Practice alters our neurophysiology. When we repeat things, they become easier, more familiar, more comfortable. Repetition builds neurophysiological circuits. The more we think about any subject, including ourselves, the more neurophysiology we have to support thinking, in general, and specifically. If you have an insight about yourself and you explore that insight, neural circuits develop.

Writing exercises

As a writer and writing coach, I like written exercises, especially easy ones that can be fun or calming. This story, like many that I write, was itself an exercise in self-knowledge.

Practices like a gratitude journal, to-do lists, or lists of hopes/desires can all be done easily: we just jot down a few words. I write all the time, and all writing offers a chance at self-exploration, so I don’t use these different exercises all the time. But whenever I don’t have a writing goal in mind, I do one of these. My gratitude journal is just a list of “I’m thankful for [something]. To-do lists and lists of goals are even simpler: just bullet points, often single words.

All of these practices can help me calm myself: rather than my thoughts racing and building anxiety, the focus on a list, especially a list of good things or potential good things, settles me, and allows me to take care of small steps that move me towards my larger goals.

Do you have any practices that build self-knowledge? What small steps can you take to build self-knowledge through practice?

Sailing into the Wind, or Writing against Resistance

The Fastest Route Forward is not Necessarily the Most Direct

The boat in the foreground is tacking into the wind. The boat in the background left is sailing downwind using a spinnaker. (image: Johann-Nikolaus Andreae [https://www.flickr.com/photos/jnandreae/] from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:420er_003.jpg)

Sailboats can’t sail directly into the wind. To sail upwind, they tack — they sail at angles to the wind, zigzagging back and forth, moving far off the direct course they wish to set, so that they can make progress in the face of the wind’s resistance. It’s not the shortest route in terms of distance traveled, but it will get you there. Sailing directly into the wind won’t.

image: author

What’s the quickest route to a complete draft? Will you complete a draft more quickly by writing only the draft? Or can you speed completion of the draft by doing writing exercises that aren’t included in the draft?

Last Thursday, while talking with a writer who spoke of hitting a variety of points of resistance. In response, I suggested a handful of different exercises, and recommended approaching the exercises as standing outside the book they’re writing: “Don’t worry about fitting it into your manuscript,” I said. “Just explore and understand the concern that’s interrupting your flow.” This suggestion worried them: “I’m trying to write a book; these exercises don’t advance my manuscript” (paraphrase).
But the fastest route to a complete first draft manuscript may not be through an unrelenting focus on the manuscript.

Complete first drafts are good

If you want to write something, it’s great to hammer out a first draft that gives you a sense of the overall scope of the work, even if that first draft is low quality.. If you are making good progress towards such a draft, then keep at it. But what if you’re getting stuck on that first draft?

Measuring the distance to a first draft

When we’re writing a draft, there are basically to ways to measure how long it takes: the amount of time it takes, and the number of words we write to get the complete draft done. Most people are consciously more concerned with the first: “Of course I want to get it done as soon as possible.” But the second measure often comes into play unconsciously: “Writing more words takes longer; writing an exercise delays progress on the draft.”

But writing more words doesn’t necessarily take longer. It depends on the relative pace of writing.

What’s your writing speed?

At the small scale — in the course of a single writing session — most of us write at a variable pace: sometimes, things flow quickly; other times, we struggle over a single word.

Whether you’re the kind of person who writes a page each day or ten pages, you will have moments when the words are flowing smoothly and others when you’re sticking.

When you’re getting stuck, an exercise that gets your words flowing more quickly can be worth the time it takes. If you write 1,000 words on a good day, and you’re currently getting bogged down on individual sentences, then n exercise that lets you write more quickly might be worth the effort.

Exercises to get around points of resistance

If you’re making great progress on your manuscript, maybe there’s no need for you to do any exercises.

But if you’re feeling stuck for some reason, a writing exercise to explore that feelings and ideas where resistance arises.

Exercises increase in value as the emotional weight of the resistance increases. If you’re sinking into despair looking at your manuscript, an exercise is an opportunity to step away from the larger project and explore possibilities for a single sentence or passage.

Lexical Resistance

One concern expressed by this writer was uncertainty about use of certain terms: “I’m using words X, Y, and Z because they’re common in the literature in my field, but I have some reservations about their use.”

I differentiate this from resistance to jargon: resistance to jargon is a stylistic consideration (“This term will be hard to read for many”), while the lexical resistance to which I refer here is a theoretical concern (“This term has connotations that are problematic”).

Uncertainty Resistance

Another concern expressed by this writer was the desire to do more reading to strengthen their understanding of the academic discourse in which they are participating.

As a general matter, I encourage people to write on the basis of what they already know and have already read, because so many academics get stuck with the feeling that they don’t know enough, even when they have lots of knowledge already.

But it’s not good to fight through resistance too much, either: the practice of research benefits from positive emotional states. In this kind of situation, the exercise I recommend is to take a few minutes before reading to write briefly about why you want to read a specific source, what you’re looking for in it, and how that source relates to other sources that you have read or might want to read in the future. By giving yourself permission to read, you reduce emotional resistance to writing. By writing about what you want to read and why, you’re focusing your own ideas and developing your own vision of both a larger theoretical discourse and the place of a specific work in that discourse.

Stylistic resistance

I’ve worked with other writers who would get stuck on stylistic issues. “I don’t like my use of jargon here,” or “I don’t like the sentence structure,” could often become harrowing dives into the depths of frustration and despair about her ability as a writer.

Exercises like rewriting a sentence several times with different structure and different words may not feel like a direct contribution to the manuscript — “I’m going to throw away most of what I write in the exercise” — but if you find one good version of the sentence, isn’t that worth the effort that went into writing the versions you don’t use?

Exercises can interrupt the flow of big ideas

When we write, what really matters is the big picture we’re trying to create. As we write, we want to be focused on the big picture, so that each individual sentence contributes meaningfully to that big picture. 
If the big ideas are flowing, it’s good to stay with them and to try to step around resistance by just moving on to the next big point. I wouldn’t recommend breaking the flow to work on an exercise. But if resistance is keeping you out of the flow, then it’s time for exercises.

Exercises give you insight into your writing project. They don’t need to contribute directly to help you make progress. If you’re facing resistance, exercises allow you to approach the resistance at an angle, like the sailor, who makes progress zigzagging from side to side, rather than trying to advance directly into the resistance.

Interesting? Helpful? Buy me a coffee!

Originally posted at https://medium.com/@thoughtclearing/sailing-into-the-wind-or-writing-against-resistance-772a82d121df

The Project Pipeline and Interruptions in the Writing Process

Maintaining a Regular Practice

War emergency pipeline from Longview, Texas to Norris City, Illinois. Pipeline approaching canal. Wooden plug in end of pipe will keep dirt and animals out. (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8d09020/)

It’s good to focus on a single project, but most projects hit periods when it’s inefficient to work on them. At those times, it’s good to have other projects to which you can profitably turn your attention.

The pipeline

In academia, it’s pretty common to talk about the “pipeline” of projects, a set of projects in different stages of maturity: some you’re just beginning; some you’re developing as a project proposal; some you’re actively writing/creating; some you’re editing; some are in the hands of other people and you’re waiting to hear back. Maybe you don’t have all of these at once, but having multiple projects keeps the overall writing process smoother for writers, whether academic or not.

Natural interruptions

There are good reasons to put aside a project for a time. If you just completed a draft, it’s useful to set it aside for at least a few days before diving into revision. If you’re collaborating with others, hiring an editor, seeking publication, or in the publication process, then there are periods when working on your manuscript may be inefficient, for example if you decide to change something that someone else liked, or you fine-tune something that needs major revision. And sometimes we just get frustrated with a project, and would benefit from taking a break from it.

Continuity of practice

Many writers have a regular writing practice. They write every day or almost every day. Their writing time is built into their calendar. This regularity of practice is a huge benefit to the writer, not only because it keeps the writing space in your schedule occupied, but because it keeps your neurophysiology in a more consistent rhythm: you’re used to writing, which helps you turn your attention to writing and away from other distractions.

When an interruption arises, whatever the cause, if you have other projects, then you can keep working without an interruption to your writing practice.

Switching focus from one project to another has some difficulties: you may need to remind yourself of what you were doing with a project that hasn’t gotten attention for days or weeks. In such moments, distractions have an easier time grabbing your attention, and the continuity of practice helps manage the switch between projects without the practice being interrupted.

Emotional stability

Interruptions can be frustrating and emotionally challenging. Waiting to hear back about a submission can be stressful. Waiting for colleagues to respond can be frustrating. There are also times when the frustrations within a project also motivate taking a break. Whatever the cause of the interruption, your other projects offer a chance to work on something that interests and motivates you. (Hopefully you have some projects that do interest you and motivate you; if you don’t that’s a different problem.)

Since a good emotional state facilitates writing, having these other projects present will help prevent frustration. To be sure, there are times when it’s important to work through frustration, and I’m not suggesting switching projects every time you get frustrated, it’s easier to work through the specific frustrations of one project when you have a good relationship with writing and you don’t feel trapped by your project.

Projects, big and small

The bigger the project, the more likely there will be an interruption. The smaller the project, the more often you need to start a new one. Often it can be nice to have some of both in your pipeline. The big ones let you go deep; the small ones fill the cracks. A combination of big and small projects will commonly arise for professional writers and academics. There are books, articles, requests (e.g., query letters, applications for grants/fellowships), presentations, and possibly blogs and social media.

Satisfaction and a flowing pipeline

Getting projects out into the world, whether small or big, helps me feel like I’m making progress. It helps me feel like my efforts are more than spinning my wheels. I mostly write to help other writers, and when I do help others, that provides positive feedback. (I consider writing editorial feedback to an author to be one of the forms of writing on which I work. I don’t limit my view of writing to only material for publication.) You may have other motivations — to entertain, educate, express yourself, etc. — whatever the motivation, if your pipeline is producing stuff, or at least moving toward production, that feels good. And, again, a good mental state facilitates writing.

So keep your pipeline flowing. Yes, focus on one project when that project is moving. And yes, start new projects, or work on others, when you come to an interruption.

How many projects do you have in your pipeline at present?

Originally posted on Medium: https://thoughtclearing.medium.com/the-project-pipeline-and-interruptions-in-the-writing-process-40a59fcd8de7

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How to Become a Better Writer

Daybreak

Effective Writing Practice

Writing is an invaluable tool with a range of uses, from informal texting with friends to carefully crafted social media posts to career-shaping communications. Writing is also hard. Many struggle to write, especially as the stakes increase. Texting your best friend is probably easy. Writing a novel as a hobby is a lot harder. And writing is even harder in more formal settings like school and work.

For the past 20 years, I’ve been working as a writing coach for graduate students and professors. In the course of that work, I’ve thought, read, and written extensively about how to write more effectively. In 2007, I started my first blog on blogspot. Since then, there’s a second blog on my website, an academic book co-authored with my dissertation advisor, a self-published dissertation-writing book, and an academic guide to writing literature reviews that is (as of March 2026) featured on the UC Berkeley library website.

In this, my first article on Medium, I invite you to join me as I explore the question of how to become a better writer.

What is a Good Writer?

How would you answer this question? The most common answer, I imagine, is that a good writer is someone who produces good writing. This answer leads to the question: what is good writing? But I want to pursue a different idea of being a good writer, one that isn’t as common.

The idea I want to pursue is that a good writer is someone who gets more out of the process than they have to put in: their benefits outweigh their costs. A related description is that a good writer is someone who gets what they want from writing. That answer focuses only on the desired goal.

If that’s our view, then to answer this question, we have to know why we’re writing and what we hope to get out of writing. The better you understand what you want to do, the easier it is to achieve that goal, and therefore the easier it is for your benefits to outweigh your costs.

Know Your Purposes

Why do you write? Do you write for work? For school? For pleasure? Are you writing to entertain? To inform or educate? To heal yourself? For a good writing exercise, write out the reasons you want to write.

Human motivation is complex. Different needs and desires drive each of us. We want success; we want to shape our social position; we want to get our professor or boss off our back. The child may write a thank-you note for a birthday present because their parents told them to, or because they’re really grateful and excited to write their thanks. The scholar might write because they want a job or tenure, because they’re excited to share interesting ideas, because they want to teach and help others grow, or because they want to solve some social problem. The novelist might write because they want to express themselves, audience be damned, or because they want to entertain. These are the kinds of motivations that first come to mind when we talk about purposes.

Another set of purposes that are less often considered are in how the writing is used. All the purposes discussed in the previous paragraph are for some sort of social outcome — one centered on writing as a tool for communication. But writing is not always for communication: two valuable roles for writing are to support memory and to support development of new ideas. By recognizing these various purposes, writers can more effectively apply their efforts.

Effective Writing Practice

Every writer is different, so precise details about what makes an effective writing practice will vary. But we’re all human, so we also share a great deal, too. Especially, we all share the potential for learning and growth; indeed growth and change are inevitable. This constant change means that our purposes change too.

With this in mind, I like to focus on the question of “effective writing practice,” to highlight both the immediate moments and the long-term picture. The idea of effective research practice invites both the question of how to use the next minute effectively and how to use the next year or decade effectively.

Please come check out my Medium account (https://thoughtclearing.medium.com), where this was originally posted.

Conservation of Momentum

In physics, “conservation of momentum” refers to the basic principle that energy (like momentum) moves around within a system, but is never actually lost. In writing, momentum is a much more personal, emotional thing and it can be all too easily lost, especially for writers who struggle with anxiety-related writing blocks. Writing momentum is valuable in that your whole neurophysiology begins to resonate with the project on which you’re working. If you have worked on your project every day, or at least worked with some degree of productivity, the ideas about what to do and where to go and different options and different issues are much more clear and present in mind than they are if you have spent the last week focusing on seeing tourist attractions while on vacation.

For a writer who has been writing successfully for a long time, there’s a lot of momentum built up.  The body and mind of such a writer have deeply worn patterns of behavior that are relatively easy to reactivate after some time off.  For a writer who struggles with anxiety and who is prone to writer’s block—me, among others—breaks in momentum can be very difficult.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been writing about dealing with anxiety blocks—about how to get past anxiety to engage with writing in the first place. That’s a subject with which I have extensive personal experience, having struggled with anxiety-related writing blocks multiple times in my life. Indeed, this spring, I suffered some minor health problems—just enough to derail me for a time, and I stopped writing.  And then, having lost my momentum, and struggling with anxiety, I found it difficult to get back into it. I have been rebuilding momentum, though, and I hope to get my writing levels and consistency back up. It can be hard to get momentum, but once you’ve got it, it eases the process. It is good to conserve momentum.

What does momentum feel like?

In my experience, momentum feels good. Momentum is characterized by recent progress on a project, when both the project feels good and the progress I’ve made feels like progress (i.e., I don’t feel like I’m just spinning my wheels, even if I have just decided to throw away a weak draft). When you have momentum, you think about your project in the spare moments. If you’re running errands, having momentum means that you may have some idea about your project while standing on line at the store, or while waiting for the gas tank to fill, or while riding public transit. If you have momentum, you might have dreams related to your project—even dreams that offer some insight. If you have momentum, you can focus more quickly and precisely on a specific project and zero-in on the details and concerns of that individual project. 

By contrast, if you don’t have momentum, it’s more likely that you will scan a wide range of possible projects, and even if you pick one project as the one to work on, you will be thinking generally about the project, rather than focusing in on specific issues.  To be sure, thinking generally about a project is a good thing, and is an important part of the writing process—you need to have a big vision—but when you’re making progress—when you have momentum—that big vision is implicit and your other concerns can flow naturally from that driving force. 

Momentum feels confident, at least on the small scale: the confidence to take some action to move the project forward. This is a confidence built out of regular process and practice: if you have consistently made steps that move the project forward, it’s easy to feel that you can take yet one more step.

Momentum is neurophysiological activity

When you do the same thing repeatedly, your body gets used to doing it. If you spend a lot of your time thinking about one specific project or subject, then, not surprisingly, you’re more likely to think about that subject given a free moment.  In idle moments, your thoughts are likely to turn to something that has recently been on your mind.  This is especially valuable, I think, if it is a good thing and something you feel good about, because then you build confidence and comfort. By contrast, feeling bad about your project is a way to build negative momentum: if you force yourself to suffer through work, that is likely to build aversion that reduces motivation and ultimately reduces momentum.

Ideally, you can approach your project with enthusiasm, and then work on it regularly and build good momentum.  Lots of people do this. If you have ever talked with someone who is genuinely excited about their work, then there’s a good chance you’re talking with someone that has developed good project momentum. If all you ever think about is your work, you may be boring at parties, but it makes writing easier. 

Momentum does not require obsession, however. Momentum requires a good balance—enough work to keep re-activating the appropriate neurophysiology, but also enough rest to allow those physiological systems to rest and regenerate.  For many writers, good writing momentum is something that involves three or four hours of writing a day.  Writing is not generally a work-all-day task. It is, indeed, only one part of the responsibilities of an academic or a professional writers in other fields.

Conserve your momentum

It takes effort to get momentum going: the first steps of getting started are the most difficult.  Starting a project can be hard because you’re not sure where to go. You may have the enthusiasm that goes with new projects, but you have to battle with making many many decisions about the direction for the work to take. That takes a lot of effort. Having made those decisions, and having the whole train of reasoning relatively fresh in your mind is a large part of the momentum you gather. If you don’t take action to keep that momentum—namely working on your project every day or almost every day—you will lose the momentum and have to invest the extra effort to get started again.

Restarting a project, too, takes extra effort. If you’ve left a project aside for a while, you may need to refamiliarize yourself with it. You may need to reconstruct or refresh your vision of what you want to accomplish and how you plan on accomplishing it. Again, once you get moving, a lot of the questions become clearer when they are freshly considered.  

I want to acknowledge that there are good times to set aside a project for a little while, despite the loss of momentum, but those spots should be picked carefully.  In particular, it is often good to take a little time away from a project after completing a draft.  Stepping away from a draft for a time can give you a new perspective, which is useful. The momentum that I have been describing does encompass a perspective and focus that helps you produce work. But when it comes time to criticize that work, it is good to shift perspective—to see the work with fresh eyes, as the expression goes. That’s a break in momentum, but it’s less problematic because it occurs at a natural break in the process, so it’s less disruptive than dropping a project in its midst. It’s easier to regain momentum at such break points because taking a break is part of the plan. Still, even at those break points, it’s pretty important not to let too much time elapse before you get back to work.

Building Momentum

Building momentum takes effort, but it need not be some grueling torture. If you are currently stuck and have no current momentum, every little step you takes helps build it.  You’re writing nothing? Write an e-mail to a friend.  That helps build momentum. You can write social media posts but not your work? Write some social media posts and remind yourself that it is writing, too. And then try to write a sentence or two about your work. There are two keys to build good, sustainable momentum: (1) do something; make some effort; if yesterday was unproductive, try to do just a little today; if yesterday was productive, try to keep that level of productivity going; and (2) do it gently, so that it is a process that may be difficult but is not painful.

If you’ve lost your momentum, you can build it again with patience and persistence. And if you have it, value it and build on it. Writing momentum helps you write, but it takes effort to maintain it. Conserve your writing momentum by writing regularly.

Book review: Write More, Publish More, Stress Less!

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice.
Dannelle D. Stevens
Stylus Publishing, 2019

I have often considered doing book reviews on my blog, or book recommendations on my website, but have not done so because I have trouble giving positive reviews. I’m critical. Even those books that I like best are limited enough that I can’t give a review without discussing negative stuff.  In addition to being critical, I also want to respect the work of others: I don’t want to give someone a low score, so I generally don’t do reviews. (But if you the reader would be interested in seeing me review something, let me know!)  In this case, however, I like this book so much that it’s very easy to recommend to scholars who are struggling to write.

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice. shares many of the ideas I think crucial, and uses them and does a great job of developing them into guidance for scholars. 

Just starting with the title, I was excited about this book. The subtitle’s phrase—“sustainable scholarly practice”—is one that I have used often in my own writing. A quick review of almost anything I have written about writing will show the importance I place on the view of writing as a practice. I usually talk about “healthy” and “positive” practice, but often use “sustainable,” too.  More recently, I have been writing about dealing with anxiety-induced writing blocks, so the main title’s “Stress Less!” is also in line with my current interests. The idea that a scholarly practice is “creative” is also an idea I have discussed recently in this blog. 

The book’s five key principles are:

  • Know yourself as a writer
  • Understand the genre of academic writing
  • Be strategic to build a sustainable writing practice
  • Be social
  • Explore creative elements in academic writing

Each principle was accompanied with excellent, detailed practical suggestions that present scholarly writing as a practice that encompasses a wide range of different but related activities.

To single out one aspect among the many that I like: Stevens talks about scholarship as a conversation, which is a central perspective of my recent book, Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice. She repeatedly cites another book that frames scholarly writing as a conversation—They Say/I Say by Graff and Birkenstein—which  I also like.

Following the five main principles, the book dedicates several chapters to different kinds of writing projects—personal research journal, book reviews, conference proposals and presentations, journal articles, and books—all of which offer good advice. After those chapters is one of the chapters I like best: the chapter on handling a revise-and-resubmit (with first author Micki M. Caskey). Using feedback well is a crucial part of scholarly writing, but it’s also an area where emotions run high, and many people struggle. A harsh comment can trigger paralysis. Caskey and Stevens provide good perspectives on how to approach feedback, and excellent detailed suggestions for analyzing the feedback and planning a response. This is the best advice on using feedback I have seen, including what I have written on the subject in this blog and in my books.

This is an excellent book, and probably can help almost any scholar trying to get their writing going in the face of pressure to publish. It offers a detailed view into the many activities that scholars pursue in order to succeed in academia—a real sense of the fabric of a productive academic writing practice—which makes it an excellent long-term resource for graduate students thinking about academic careers. 

Having said all that, I will offer a word of caution. I would hesitate to give this to someone struggling with anxiety. For some, I think it could be overwhelming. For me, at least, I would have found it overwhelming earlier in my career, and even now it triggers the social anxiety that was the main cause of my leaving academic institutions to work privately (with a relatively small number of people). There is great advice in here that, if followed, would definitely would lead to less stress in the long run, but if I were giving this to someone struggling with anxiety, I would be cautious to frame it as a toolbox—something from which to draw ideas when needed, without necessarily trying to use everything in it at once—to guard against getting overwhelmed by all the different suggestions.