Product Description

Here is a proven book to help scholars master writing as a productive, enjoyable, and successful experience -- Author, Robert Boice, prepared this self-help manual for professors who want to write more productively, painlessly, and successfully. It reflects the author's two decades of experiences and research with professors as writers -- by compressing a lot of experience into a brief, programmatic framework. Like the actual sessions and workshops in which the author works with writers, this book admonishes and reassures. In the innovative book lies the path for sustained, highly productive scholarly writing!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41114 in Books
• Published on: 1990-03-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 190 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780913507131
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

About the Author
Robert Boice received his B.A. degree in the honors program at Michigan State University magna cum laude, and later received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from MSU in psychology. He both taught and worked as a faculty-development practitioner, and devoted much of his distinguished career to the study and publication of techniques for helping faculty to become more productive writers. He conducted scores of workshops on his and other campuses and pioneered numerous techniques to include highly successful post-workshop visitations to help faculty stay on track with their writing programs.

Customer Reviews

Advice that really works
Face it, all of us academics would like to think that someday a muse will descend upon us and infuse us with the capability to write the great work in our field without self-doubt, procrastination, etc. Boice shows empirical evidence that demonstrates these hopes are in vain (which is no big surprise to anyone), but even better, he provides the solution: writing is like physical exercise--the more you do it, the easier and more pleasant it becomes--if you write a little bit every day, even if you think it's pointless, at the end of a six month period, you will have 150 pages of writing to edit. It makes sense and it works. He even talks about reasons that people want to resist this truth, and how to trick yourself out of your writer's block. Grad students especially should benefit from the strategies he suggests.

A Must for Academic Writers
If you are writing a dissertation, thesis, or engaged in other regular academic writing this book is a must read. Boice's sage advice is based on years of experience with and (yes, empirical evidence) research on helping academicians produce necessary writing -- regularly. He includes self-assessment questionnaire on writer's block that enables you to target your areas of strength and weakness so you can focus on exactly the areas that hinder your progress. The book is short (180 pp including excellent anotated bibliography). He answers the agonizing questions about why you don't write when you want to and desperately need to write. He discusses, in clear, concise detail, the phenomenology of writing problems, while providing both short- and long-term strategies for ensuring writing productivity that are actually do-able. His writing style is easy, conversational and reassuring. He takes you through his actual consultation process, session by session. Simply stated, the book is just great.

Essential for struggling academic writers
This is one of the best books out there for academics who need help getting themselves to write. I'm a clinical psychologist who coaches faculty, post-docs and grad students, and this is one of the first books I recommend. Almost all of Boice's prolific body of work is useful - and his suggestions, both in books and journal articles, are backed up by research - this makes his contributions unique in the genre of self-help books for academics.