How to write a lot_Paul Silvia

Shoot! The message in the book really hit home for me.

Oh, by the way, he is a professor teaching and researching at UNCG. Interesting to see his website as well. ww

It is easier said than done. The reason I'm recording this book as a blog post is to remind myself to confront the truth and recommit to my goals. As a Kinesiology student and physical education teacher, I had to learn and teach how important and useful setting specific goals and sticking to them are. Scholars and writers often emphasize the importance of forming small habits and how they can boost productivity in various activities, from writing to studying English and working out. Be positive and let's do it from now on again. You don't want to regret or complain about your behavior when you finish the course.

Schedule time for our ignominious work instead of making fiendishly compelling excuses.

Specious barriers to writing a lot (and what to do)

1. "I can't find time to write," aka, "I would write more if I could just find big blocks of time."
   - Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write.
   - Think of writing as a class that you teach. Just choose regular times, chisel them into the granite of your weekly calendar, and write during those times. Be a schedule-follower than a binge writer. 

2. "I need to do some more analyses first," aka, "I need to read a few more articles/books/letters/epigraphs/scrolls."
  - Writing is more than typing words.
  - The bad habits that keep them from getting down to writing also keep them from doing the prewriting – the reading, planning, and number-crunching necessary for typing words.

3. "To write a lot, I need a new computer" (see also "fancy productivity software," "a nice office chair," "a better desk," "a home office").
  - hahaha stop talking about that shit. Indeed, scholars wrote lots of books before digital productivity tools were invented.

4. "I'm waiting until I feel like it," aka, "I write best when I'm inspired to write."
  - We needn't wait for inspiration to do good work. We want our writing to be as good as it can be, but we'll settle for "be" if we can't get "good." Routine is a better friend than inspiration. 

5. "I should clear the decks before getting down to writing," aka, "I'll write even faster later on if I wrap up all this other stuff first." 
  - "Clearing the decks" is mental alchemy: We transmute the lead of procrastination into the gold of efficiency. 

Bonobos and orangutans just sit around and groom each other when they don't want to work on their dissertation, but humans will throw themselves into reading, grading, and learning new citation software.