The Productive Academic Writer An Easy-To-Read Guide to Low-Stress Prolific Writing

Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan, Ph.D.

ALSO BY K. GOPALAKRISHNAN

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Copyright 2015 Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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ISBN: 1-937145-04-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-937145-04-0

EDITORIAL REVIEWS FOR THE PRODUCTIVE ACADEMIC WRITER

"An interesting introductory guide to writing, which is very useful for both

academics and non-academics."

- Prof. Miklas Scholz, The University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK

If you have had the intention to write something, but you have not been able to

achieve your goal, The Productive Academic Writer will explain why you havent and

what you can do to make your intentions a reality.I am sure academic writing

teachers and writers, in general, really appreciate being understood by another

writer, Gopalakrishnan, who had the time to present our doubts and common

stressful situations with answers to overcome all of them.

- Prof. Beatriz Manrique, University of Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela

There are plenty books on the market telling the would-be author (academic or

otherwise) how to write with clarity and grammatical precision. There are fewer

books dealing with the issue of how to get motivated to write in the first place. That's

why "The Productive Academic Writer" is so useful, for it provides sound advice,

which, if followed, is sure to make the would-be writer more disciplined and

productiveAlthough this book is primarily written for people in academia (where

one's job often depends on written productivity), anyone who writes a lot, whether as

an avocation or a career, will benefit from its advice.

- Dr. Doug Erlandson (Amazon Top 50 Reviewer), Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy, Southeast

Community College, Lincoln, NE

The Productive Academic Writer, like the subtitle suggests, is an easy to read primer

that applies simple time management skills to writing in an academic context. The

book gives lots of tips and ideas for getting started immediately. Would recommend

to anyone getting started on academic writing, but unsure where to start.

- Sugu Althomsons, English Instructor, Kansai International Academy, Osaka, Japan

The Productive Academic Writer is a timely help for me, a novice researcher who

always struggles with the task academic writing and feels stressed out by it. The

limiting beliefs described in the book, like perfectionism, procrastination, and lack

of accountability, are too familiar to me. Academic writing seems much more a

mental, rather than intellectual, obstacle to me! The book presents an assortment of

wonderful and practical solutions to my problems with writing. I am really fond of

such tips as "free writing", "daily writing", and the promdoro technique, etc.,

which, I believe, serve to foster importantly healthy writing habits for me and many

other like-minded struggling academics. More interestingly, this book provides the

links to useful software or apps for us to put those techniques into practice. For

academics aspiring to improve their writing productivity, it is an engaging and easy-

to-read book worth reading and remembering.

- Prof. Weiqiang Wang, School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of

Foreign Studies, China

I will definitely recommend this book to my students and colleagues. It has also

helped me a lot to recognize problems that I have with writing. For me, the added

value is the concise, yet extremely valuable, exposition of the problems that potential

writers face leading to failure in writing, and how to overcome them. Easy-to-read,

convince yourself and you're writing.

- Dr. Rogelio Palomera-Garcia, Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,

University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico

The Productive Academic Writer: An Easy-To-Read Guide To Low-Stress Prolific

Writing is a useful guide which addresses academic writing, an important issue of

academics who are affected by a range of factors. In this book, Kasthurirangan

Gopalakrishnan asserts that although productive writing is key to success, many

people have different idiosyncrasies and blocks which prevent them from being

academic writers. This book is very useful for people struggling to find out what

affects their writing, and also offers solutions and systematically points out useful

books which provide further info in each case Overall, I found the book useful,

with wide appeal, and I felt that it was very down to earth, direct, and sympathetic

while denouncing an unduly harsh approach to writing productivity.

- Reviewed By Nandita Keshavan for Readers Favorite

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

The Perfectionist Mindset

Your Inner Critic

Chapter 3 Set SMART Goals

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-bound

Chapter 4 Create Your Daily To-Do Lists

Chapter 5 Write Daily

When to Write?

Use Freewriting

Writing is Thinking

Chapter 6 Set a Timer When You Write

The Pomodoro Technique

Monitor Your Output

Chapter 7 Eliminate distractions

Avoid Online Distractions

Get Internal Focus and Calmness

Chapter 8 Be Accountable

Chapter 9 Wrap Up

Dedicated to my

Teachers

With utmost gratitude!

PREFACE

The Guardian, a British national daily newspaper, recently featured a news article on

how the intense pressure of graduate, post-doctoral study, and early-career academia

can be quite stressful leading to mental health problems. The demand for increased

product and productivity was blamed as the primary cause for rising levels of mental

health problems among academics. If you like, you can read the full article here:

http://goo.gl/C1DuH7.

Graduate students need to produce journal articles and conference papers to graduate.

While the internet age has opened up access to all kinds of information available never

before, the burden now rests on the students to stay up-to-date with the state-of-the-art

research advancements at the global level. The consequence is that most students are

forced to subscribe to the culture of rapid scanning and skimming of pieces of

information from multiple electronic sources with very little time to concentrate and

contemplate on the actual research questions. As someone rightly said, these days we

click a lot of links, read less, and remember even lesser.

The writing productivity of graduate students is under siege from multiple directions:

finding the fine balance between their coursework and research, managing time wisely

amidst all the distractions, the pressure to find a job after graduation, etc.

Postdocs and researchers are under similar pressure to publish and write proposals to

secure funding on an ongoing basis.

Young tenure-track faculty are working harder and harder to meet the promotion and

tenure requirements which are becoming stricter year by year. First, scholarship in most

disciplines was measured in terms of number of publications which created the publish-

or-perish syndrome. With the increasing number of open-access journals all over the

place, the emphasis then shifted to the number of publications one needs to have in

high-impact Science Citation Indexed (SCI) journals. Now, the number of citations and

H-index have taken the high seat.

Each discipline and university will have its own requirements for promotion and

tenure, but everyone would agree that the pressure on young faculty to publish is

enormous in the middle of often overloaded teaching and service responsibilities.

Without going through all the details, it is suffice to mention that our personal and

social lives add their own flavor to our already stressed-out lives.

My aim in going through this is not to enlist the number of excuses to justify why

academicians cant write, but to underscore the need for some compassion towards

ourselves and empathy towards our colleagues in similar situations. We deserve every

bit of encouragement first from ourselves to keep going. In other words, let us not be

too hard on ourselves!

By saying this, I am in no way encouraging some sort of self-indulgence or

complacency. But, productive academic writers are those who realistically strive for

excellence in their pursuit of writing goals with a down-to-earth attitude.

Bullying, calling names, punishment, and pressure tactics are negative, fear-inducing

strategies that can never truly inspire anyone. Rather, they lead to more severe

problems than the ones they originally intended to solve. On the other hand, genuine

appreciation and positive reinforcement of even the minor efforts made towards our

goals has far-reaching positive implications leading to high levels of low-stress

productivity. This will be a recurring theme of this book.

There are already so many good books on this subject, so what was the need for one

more book like this, you ask. A valid question. In one sense, there is nothing new in this

book that has not been discussed before. The aim was not to create new knowledge or

new strategies to productive writing as such, but present available information on this

topic in an easy-to-read, and hopefully engaging manner.

I have tried to present proven productivity strategies and tips in a way that doesnt

demand you to add more activities to your already stressed-out schedule. Rather, this

books aim is to assist you to do what you are already doing more effectively and

efficiently with minimal stress, and possibly to identify and eliminate those activities

and habits that interfere with your writing productivity. In other words, be productive

and have a happy life!

Considering the vast body of existing information on this topic, this book has heavily

drawn on the work of others. The author cannot fail to acknowledge with deep

gratitude the contributions made by every individual whose work is referenced in this

book.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Everywhere I go Im asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion

is that they dont stifle enough of them.

Flannery OConnor

Academic writing is hard. You may wonder why I begin this book on an apparently

negative note. Well, I could have started it by saying academic writing is the easiest

and most lovable task that you can ever imagine. May be for some. But, for most of us

students, post-docs, researchers, and professors, thats far from the truth. Most of the

time, we just have the opposite experience - at least when it comes to getting the writing

done.

We dont seem to mind reading others work, doing the research, collecting the data,

conducting data analysis, interpreting the data, etc. And, we definitely enjoy the

moment and even celebrate when our work is published with our name on it in the

form of a journal article or a book chapter or a book. But, we do seem to resist what

comes in between these two the writing process.

Have you had the excruciating experience of sitting in front of the computer and staring

at the monitor hoping that words would start appearing magically forming sentences

and paragraphs? Have you ever given up after starting a manuscript resigning to the

idea that you just dont have enough time to complete it now, but that you will come

back to it later which never happened? How many times have you determined that

youll use those summer months to finish writing up your pending papers and

proposals, but never followed through?

-------END OF PREVIEW-------

THE PRODUCTIVE ACADEMIC

WRITERAn Easy-To-Read Guide to Low-Stress Prolific WritingAre you an academic feeling stressed out because of the increasing demands placed upon you to work harder and produce more?If so, you are not alone. The intense pressure of graduate, post-doctoral study, and early-career academia leading to mental health problems is now well-known. Publish or Perish!Do you want to achieve optimal productivity and happy work-life balance?Buy this book now to learn and explore how to: Overcome limiting beliefs that interfere with your productivity Set SMART goals, develop a weekly plan and daily To-Do lists that puts writing as one of the topmost priorities Use freewriting technique to write a lot and produce the messy first draft Use a timer while you write and monitor your daily output Use an accountability mechanism suited for you to overcome feelings of isolation, exchange and learn new ideas, and socialize and connect with other writers an important trait of productive academic writers

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All the principles for becoming an effective and efficient writer put together in a concise and easy-to-read manner.

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