STLHE 2016 SAPES

Increase your scholarly productivity by a factor of three. Write scholarship that is clearer, better organized, and more compelling. Learn to work smarter, not harder. Many scholarly writers are educated at the School of Hard Knocks, but it’s not the only school, or even the best. Much is known about how to become a better, more prolific scholar and anybody can. Research points to specific steps faculty and graduate students can take to become better, more prolific scholars. Participants in this workshop will learn how to:

• Differentiate between the urgent and the important (Covey, 2013)



• Write daily for 15 to 30 minutes (Boice, 2000).



• Record minutes spent writing—and share those records daily (Boice, 2000).



• Write from the first day of your research project (McCloskey, 1999).



• Post your thesis on the wall and write to it (Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2008).



• Organize your paper around a template (Kliewer, 2005).



• Revise paragraphs around key or topic sentences (Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2008).



• Revise papers around key or topic sentences, which, when listed together make an after-the-fact outline (Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2008).



• Share early drafts with non-experts and later drafts with experts (Becker, 2007).



• Learn how to listen (Becker, 2007).



• Read your prose out loud (McCloskey, 1999).



• Kick it out the door and make ’em say “no” (Becker, 2007).

Participants in a program based on these steps logged their writing minutes in a Google spreadsheet, which showed that they wrote an average of thirty minutes a day for four days per week and which resulted in tripled writing productivity. Participants also improved the quality of their manuscripts by revising their prose around key or topic sentences and by getting feedback in weekly writing groups (Gray and Birch, 2000; Gray, Madson and Jackson in progress).