How to be a more productive writer

Grading is piling up, you need to prepare for next week’s lectures and your research is demanding more of your focus every day. Meanwhile, finding time to write up your findings, your next book chapter and a grant proposal that’s due in several weeks? Those tasks keep getting pushed back into the ether of tomorrow.

Unless you buckle down to it, writing pressure only accumulates as your research progresses, says Paul Silvia, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of "How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing" (APA, 2018). "People develop these big backlogs [of research data]," he says. "It creates a lot of pressure."

Silvia says he first became interested in writing productivity when he arrived at UNC Greensboro more than 15 years ago and found that the senior professors there were "so fatalistic about it," as he recalls. "They said, ‘Writing is impossible. It’s a constant crisis.’"

While writing is no doubt difficult for many academics, he says, better habits can be developed over time and with persistence. And those habits will lead to an academic payoff that will become inherently motivational.

As you write more, you’ll find that your work will be accepted with fewer revisions and that those publications will lead to speaking engagements and grants that will enable you to exert a greater influence on your field of study, says Tara Gray, PhD, director of the Teaching Academy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and author of "Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar."

An added bonus, Gray says, is that the writing itself will become less painful. "There’s a flow you get into from writing every day," she says. "Just like a runner’s high, there’s a writer’s high."

Silvia, Gray and other prolific writers share the following tips for meeting your academic writing goals:

1. Develop a regular schedule
Particularly given the constant demands many researchers face during the academic year, there’s a temptation to keep pushing back one’s writing until a long weekend or the next summer break, says Andres De Los Reyes, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland at College Park. But cramming doesn’t usually produce the best writing. "All of us know what it’s like to cram for an exam, and we don’t do very well when we cram," he says.

Instead, pick a time window that’s feasible every day or at least several times each week, and treat that time like a class that can’t be missed, says De Los Reyes, who teaches continuing-education courses on writing productivity through APA and has offered webinars and conference workshops on the topic at research conferences such as the Future Directions Forum (www.jccapfuturedirectionsforum.weebly.comopens in new window).

If you can’t find a specific time, identify a range of hours—say, commit to finding half an hour between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to write each day, he says. Then revisit your writing schedule periodically to see if that time is working.

De Los Reyes fell into the benefits of scheduled writing sessions during his internship year in Chicago, when he discovered that his hourlong train commute was an ideal time window to write his dissertation. More recently, during a shorter 20-minute subway commute three times weekly to his office in Maryland, he’s written a book about how early career academics can develop a research program, which he’s now shopping to publishers.

"It doesn’t have to be a lot of time," he says. "The more you do it, the more you make it a part of your work."

2. Embrace mini-sessions
Shorter, more frequent writing sessions also help break down a project into less-daunting chunks, says Gray, who estimates that she’s taught writing productivity to roughly 10,000 academics over the last couple of decades at New Mexico State University and seminars elsewhere. Start small, perhaps writing just 15 minutes daily, and you might find that you’re still writing after 30 minutes or longer as you settle into the mental groove, she says.

For academics, Silvia suggests that a reasonable goal is to commit to three to four hours of writing each week. Location also matters, he stresses. The cute coffee shop next to campus might not be the best choice if you keep running into chatty colleagues there, particularly if you don’t have much time to write.

Some people work best in a spot with background chatter or music, while others focus better in a more Spartan setting, Silvia says. "I think people need to be really honest with themselves. Is this a place where they can be productive as a writer?"

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3. Stay accountable
Ask someone to be your writing coach, Gray suggests, and send them a brief daily email reporting how many minutes of writing you’ve completed. It could be as brief as putting the number of minutes in the subject line, and nothing else. If you write "0" in the subject line, Gray advises including a brief explanation in the email, such as "Child sick" or "Ran to school, never got back to it." (Gray says her own records show that last year she averaged 70 minutes per day, six days a week.) Gathering that kind of data can help you identify patterns of what pulls you away from writing, she says.

Habits developed and pursued over time can become strongly engrained, Silvia says. "We know this because we mostly are thinking about the bad ones," he says. "Really, we tend not to notice how adaptive and functional our positive habits are."

4. Prune distractions
Susan White, PhD, an autism researcher, professor and endowed chair in the department of psychology at the University of Alabama, says that she prefers to get her writing done first thing in the morning after exercising and getting her two sons off to school. At that point, she says, "I have to shut everything else off." She closes her office door, doesn’t answer the phone and tries to avoid email. If she does peek at her emails, she’ll flag urgent ones to respond to after she’s wrapped up her writing.

When focused on a big project, Silvia writes in what he calls "cave modeopens in new window," long stretches of time when he’s more likely to turn down other writing or manuscript review invitations and warns people via his website that he might be slower to respond to email. (When he does respond, he’s more likely to work through emails in batches toward day’s end.) At the end of his email signature, Silvia provides a link to a frequently circulated articleopens in new window from a few years back titled "Do You Want to Be Known for Your Writing, or for Your Swift Email Responses?"

5. Write now, edit later
Your productivity can hit a wall when you haven’t done enough prep work and need to pursue more research, thinking or outlining, Silvia says. He’s also seen younger writers, particularly graduate students, become paralyzed over the mechanics of writing, including style and grammar. One book he particularly likes to recommend to them is William Zinsser’s "On Writing Well."

Still, try to get some words down to start working with, Silvia says. As much as you can, Gray adds, let the ideas and information flow. Guard against the temptation to stop to pull a citation from the internet or to take a break to read further. Mark the areas where you want to come back to add a statistic, a quotation or an opposing point of view, she says.

These short sessions of free writing can be extremely productive even for those who aren’t that far along in their research, says Gray. Jotting down your initial research impressions can help you to better focus moving forward. "So that you find out what you need to know earlier than you otherwise would," she says.

6. Minimize the startup pain
Barry Schwartz, PhD, emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, says that he learned the hard way early in his career to stop writing before he had reached a natural resting point, such as the end of a section or a chapter. Otherwise he was sabotaging himself, he says. "It’s really easy to put off sitting back down at your desk when you don’t exactly know what comes next," says Schwartz, author of numerous books, including "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less." "The time to stop writing is when you know what the next page is going to be."

Another strategy, which Gray recommends, is to write a note to oneself at the end of each session that spells out what you’ll tackle next time. It could be a question or just a short summary of where you are, she says, and it will allow you to get right back to work during your next writing session. "Some people report that they spend 15 minutes thinking before they get into the writing. That’s a mistake if you only have 15 to 30 minutes to write."

7. Prioritize your projects
When juggling multiple writing assignments, identify the one or two that will best help you achieve your next professional goal, and make sure they don’t get sidelined by more immediate deadlines, De Los Reyes says. "Keep those perpetually on your list," he says. "Don’t let them fall off."

Silvia says he personally continues to struggle with competing writing priorities. Writers in academia, he notes, might have a grant to finish, several journal articles in various stages, along with a book in progress. "These all exist on different timescales."

In his second edition of "How to Write a Lot," Silvia describes various approaches to prioritizing. You might focus primarily on your most important work, the one that you think will best further the next stage of your career. Or you could decide to prioritize those projects that are closest to publication.

"There’s no one optimal way that’s going to tame the chaos," Silvia says. What’s important is figuring out your approach. That might include limiting the number of writing projects you commit to in the first place, he says.

"A big part of writing productivity is choosing what not to write," Silvia says, "and what to just kind of euthanize."