Review your Reflective Reading Journal, as well as other literature from the course. Your goal is to analyze, explain, and build a personal action plan. Please write a 5-page paper outlining improved

Chapter 1 Get Ready to Practice The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise . Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) 1 Wishing you could tackle all your writing assignments way ahead of deadline but wondering if this is even possible ? Feeling as though you should be writing and publishing more but just don’t know how to make it happen? Being pressured to write for publication in order to get promoted or tenured but unsure whether there will be enough time to get things out before you have to submit your packet? Having to write that thesis or dissertation but not envisioning how to manage such a monstrous project? Feeling motivated but lost when piecing together a journal article for publication or a grant proposal for extramural funding? Well … you’re not alone. Although writing and publishing define much of our lives as academics (professors, students, research staff, administrators), survey data show many faculty in U.S. colleges and universities publish less than one article or book per year (Belcher, 2009). What’s more, within specific fields of inquiry such as social work, faculty members from 20% of the doctoral-granting programs are responsible for 43% of all journal articles published in that field (Green, Bellin, & Baskind, 2002). In other words, only a small number of college or university professors (in the United States and worldwide) write and publish at a steady, productive pace (Teodorescu, 2000). When probed for reasons why they aren’t writing or publishing more, both faculty and graduate students point to multiple barriers. Lack of time is the most common (DeAngelo, Hurtado, Pryor, Kelly, & Santos, 2009; Page-Adams, Cheng, Gogineni, Sruna, & Ching, 1995). Faculty and students claim they have difficulty fitting large chunks of writing time into their extremely busy schedules. And because many academics struggle with writing or lack confidence in their abilities, they relegate the task to the proverbial back burner. As they (or should I say we? ) systematically postpone a task they experience as difficult and unenjoyable, finding time to write, to start, or to complete a project looms over their academic lives like a guillotine, ready to plunge at any second (Steel, 2011). This is how writing controls our lives: through fear, avoidance, and stress. The more we avoid it, the more it controls us. If you are such a writer—the kind who begins writing shortly before a deadline, who knows you should be writing but just can’t feel motivated or find the time to do it, who isn’t quite sure how to put together a publishable piece of academic writing—this book is for you. It will help you gain (or regain) control over your writing and disarm forever the guillotine of anxiety, fear, and stress. The POWER Model This book describes a model for taking control of the academic writing process—the POWER model (Promoting Outstanding Writing for Excellence in Research)—and provides weekly exercises to improve control. The model combines certain behavioral principles with specific practices to help you master and become comfortable with your writing. If you understand the principles and practice the exercises on a weekly basis, you will establish a stress-free writing habit that will serve you throughout your academic career; increase your writing (and publishing) productivity at a comfortable, consistent pace; and improve the quality of your academic writing (in two words: write better ). POWER embodies two related elements: (a) a writing support service created for faculty and graduate students at Texas A&M University (as a service provided by the College of Education and Human Development) and (b) a set of principles and practices for promoting academic writing productivity and quality (in other words, a writing model ). POWER Services 2 are based on the POWER model. The model represents my effort to organize available theory and research data into useful strategies anyone can use. Peter Elbow (1998), Robert Boice (1990), Joseph Moxley and Todd Taylor (1997), along with Michael Mayrath (2008), are a few of the scholars who developed the theory and conducted the research supporting these strategies. Moreover, the neuroscience and psychology literatures regarding the characteristics of elite performers, such as Olympic athletes, chess champions, and expert musicians, also anchor the exercises and suggestions contained in the model. The Theory Behind POWER The POWER model is grounded in Peter Elbow’s (1998) theory of the writing process. Elbow refers to the notion of writing with power as encompassing two meanings. The first meaning alludes to powerful texts—the writing we see in poetry, religious documents, and political manifestos—the kind of writing that touches people’s hearts, moves their souls, and fills them with courage (Rosenblatt, 2011). Yet anchoring this book is the other meaning in the phrase writing with power : the idea that the writer has control and power over his/her writing. Writing with power, as Elbow (1998) defined it, “means getting power over yourself and over the writing process: knowing what you are doing as you write; being in charge; having control; not feeling stuck or helpless or intimidated” (p. viii; emphasis added). Peter Elbow’s theoretical approach to writing— in other words, his explanation for how good writing takes place (Goodson, 2010)—begins with the need to write badly, develops through the importance of sharing both early and late drafts, and results in gaining mastery over the writing, with the entire process becoming more pleasurable over time. According to Elbow (1998), when writers are comfortable generating initially messy texts, are eager to hear readers’ reactions to what they wrote, and are motivated to rewrite their texts to incorporate these reactions, only then will they begin to enjoy the writing process and the power it engenders. In his words, Once people have the feel of producing some words that were a pleasure to write and that make a dent on readers, they do better at putting in the enormous work needed to produce more of them. For really, the central question in writing (as with any difficult skill) is this: How can I get myself to put in the daunting time and effort I need for more consistent good results? The answer, I think, is to cheat—to look for pleasure and shortcuts. (p. xxi) The POWER model and the exercises in this book, then, build on this theoretical perspective, emphasizing the value of initially messy writing, the need for practice, and the importance of feedback. If the principles, as well as each of the 50 exercises, are put into practice, they will nudge you into developing consistent and healthy writing habits, becoming more productive in your writing/publishing, and gaining power over your writing. Along the way, you may even surprise yourself by finding the entire process a bit more pleasant! The Research Behind POWER The most informative data on faculty productivity were collected in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite its age, the research remains valid because little has changed over time. Similar to the data I quoted regarding faculty in social work doctoral programs, data from faculty in science reveal that between 10% and 15% of authors are responsible for publishing 50% of everything read and cited in the field (Cole, 1981). Bolstering these dated findings, more recent surveys continue to indicate—as I mentioned earlier—that many professors in U.S. colleges and universities publish less than one article or book per year (Belcher, 2009). It will be interesting to observe how the advent of open access publishing might change these numbers—as some analysts have suggested. Yet, despite estimates that in the sciences “a new paper is now published roughly every 20 seconds” (Munroe, Kaiser, & Malakoff, 2013, p. 58), it is still true that many academics are not publishing at expected rates and struggle with academic writing. What explains the low publication rates for many academics? Researchers such as Robert Boice (1989, 1990, 1997; Boice & Johnson, 1984) and Joseph Moxley and Todd Taylor (1997), among others, examined academic writers’ low productivity systematically. What they found pointed to faculty who struggled with getting their writing done and did not wish, or did not know how, to ask for help. Robert Boice (1990) wrote: In my two decades of experience with professors as writers, I’ve consistently seen people whose inexperience in discussing their blocks exceeded their shyness for revealing almost anything else, even sexual dysfunctions. They often came for help believing themselves to be unique as problem writers. And they worried that asking for help was an admission of weakness. (p. 1) Dedicated to understanding and providing solutions for these professors, Boice and other scholars dug deep into academic writers’ psyches and work habits. They found many explanations for academic writers’ low productivity, including their strong critical sense or censorship, fears of failing, strong tendencies to perfectionism, struggles with procrastination, and negative writing experiences in the past. Poor mental/emotional health, personality type, work habits, attitudes toward writing, and perceptions of busyness were also identified as culprits for low writing productivity among faculty (Boice, 1989, 1990). While psychologists such as Boice and Moxley zoomed in on individual-level factors, sociologists examined the problem of faculty productivity using a wide-angle lens. The broad image revealed multiple-level as well as structural influences, including the socialization process that faculty undergo when entering a professional field, the reinforcement and reward systems in which they operate, as well as the quality of the academic training received during their doctoral programs (Neumann & Finaly-Neumann, 1990). Even though sociologists identified structural elements that significantly impact academic writing productivity, it fell to psychologists to offer solutions to the problem. So far, at a broader, systemic level, little has been done to change the socialization process or the reward systems in which academics are immersed. Meanwhile, focusing on individual-level factors, psychologists devised specific strategies that professors and graduate students can adopt to improve their writing productivity. The principles and practices you will find in this book are grounded in that psychology literature. The strategies include making writing a priority within one’s daily schedule, managing distractions, and changing nonproductive/maladaptive attitudes toward writing (Moxley & Taylor, 1997). This book will also teach you the importance of obtaining feedback and establishing a social support system for yourself and your writing. I admit this with sadness, but the exercises will do nothing to change the structure of academic settings and how they reward writing. Perhaps you might take on this particular challenge? While I anchor this book’s principles and practices in the research on faculty productivity, two other bodies of knowledge also support the POWER model: (a) the psychology literature regarding elite performers and talent development and (b) the neuroscience literature focusing on the neurological dimension of extraordinary achievements, talent, and performance. Talent Development and Elite Performance: The Psychology Literature The work developed by K. Anders Ericsson represents a portion of the psychology literature regarding elite performance (Ericsson, Nandagopal, & Roring, 2009). Ericsson has done extensive research and theoretical development regarding elite performers’ characteristics. With his observations, experiments, and theoretical reasoning, he has contributed to the scientific debate surrounding the question “Is expert performance the result of innate talent (or genes), or of learned behavior (or practice)?” Ericsson’s (2007) conclusions point to the role of deliberate practice (sometimes also referred to as deep practice ) as one vital element shaping expert performance: My central thesis is that experts continually engage in deliberate practice activities … that lead to refinement and maintenance of the mediating mechanisms [such as mental representation, anticipation skills, and control of motor actions, among others]. In contrast, less-accomplished individuals do not engage in these activities once they have reached an acceptable level. Their performance is prematurely arrested in its effortless automated form. (p. 12) Put simply, Ericsson’s thesis is this: Elite performers differ from non-elite performers in one key element—deliberate practice. Non-elite performers will learn a certain task—playing golf, for example—and will practice just enough to become “competent players.” Once they feel they’ve achieved a satisfactory level, they stop practicing. Elite performers, on the other hand, don’t stop. Instead, they sustain practice in order to maintain and further refine the basic skills they achieved (see also Colvin, 2010, for more on deep practice). Talent Development and Elite Performance: The Neuroscience Literature Curiously, neuroscientists researching expert performers have come to the same conclusions about practice as those reached by psychologists: Deep practice or deliberate practice is one (if not the one ) key element for developing extraordinary skills. In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle (2009) proposes to find answers to the question “What explains exceptional talent?” Not surprisingly, one of the first answers he unveils is deep practice, and he offers this insight: Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you’re forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them—as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go—end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it. (p. 18) Yet Coyle uncovered that practice, by itself, does not explain talent or expert performance. It’s what happens to our brains during or as a result of deep practice that accounts for the expertise. Coyle (2009) begins describing the importance of what happens during and after practice by first admitting the biases he brought to his investigation. Similar to what most of us understand about how human brains work, Coyle believed the most important element or portion of our brains was the neuron network. But while interviewing numerous neuroscientists to learn about expert talent and performance from their points of view, Coyle learned these neuroscientists were experiencing an important shift in their thinking: As important as the neurons and their synapses are for brain function, it appears that myelin the substance insulating the axons (or nerve fiber extensions of our neurons)—might have an even more prominent role than the neurons themselves. Coyle describes this shift in thinking as a “Copernican-size revolution” and adds: The revolution is built on three simple facts: (1) Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electrical signal traveling through a chain of neurons—a circuit of nerve fibers. (2) Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. (3) The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become. (p. 32) Practice allows us to fire specific circuits in our brains repeatedly and to develop more myelin. In turn, more myelin leads to faster or more optimal firing of circuits and developing of skills, as explained in this exchange between Coyle (2009) and the neuroscientist George Bartzokis: “What do good athletes do when they train?” Bartzokis said. “They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire—lots of bandwidth, a high-speed T-3 line. That’s what makes them different from the rest of us.” (pp. 32–33) As Coyle (2009) recounts in his book, nearly all extraordinary talent can be explained by tremendous amounts of practice and consequent myelin production. One example he gives relates specifically to writing: the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Many literary scholars have labeled them “natural-born novelists” and poets because they wrote prolifically at very young ages (p. 56). Yet the facts suggest that instead of being naturally talented they were born into a literary-nurturing environment, engaged in a significant amount of practice very early in their lives, and produced quite a lot of poor (yes: poor! ) writing early on. Coyle writes, Deep practice and myelin [as opposed to “natural talent”] give us a better way to look at the Brontës. The unskilled quality of their early writing isn’t a contradiction of the literary heights they eventually achieved—it’s a prerequisite to it. They became great writers not in spite of the fact that they started out immature and imitative but because they were willing to spend vast amounts of time and energy being immature and imitative, building myelin in the confined, safe space of their little books. Their childhood writings were collaborative deep practice, where they developed storytelling muscles. (p. 57) Granted, both the psychology and neuroscience literatures also list several other factors, alongside myelin, as playing roles in developing above-ordinary talent. These factors include exposure to skilled mentoring/teaching and skill acquisition at young ages. Yet the central, common element in all the research is practice, with its consequent myelin building. Research Shows … Gerardo Ramirez and Sian L. Beilock (2011) tested whether a 10-minute expressive writing session before a high-stakes academic exam could prevent college and high school students’ low performance due to test anxiety. The authors conducted four studies based on two important premises: (a) When people perform under pressure, their worries and anxiety about performance “compete for the working memory (WM) available for performance” (p. 211), leading to less optimal performance levels, and (b) expressive writing has been proven effective in dealing with traumatic or emotional experiences and is therefore useful for regulating worry and anxiety. Based on the studies’ findings, the authors conclude that the expressive writing intervention “significantly improved students’ exam scores, especially for students habitually anxious about test taking” (p. 211). And they add, “For those students who are most anxious about success, one short writing intervention that brings testing pressures to the forefront enhances the likelihood of excelling, rather than failing, under pressure” (p. 213). Practicing Academic Writing So, what does all this mean for us academics? What does it mean for our writing productivity and writing quality? Simply put, it means this: If we commit to practice our academic writing—and obtain continual feedback—our writing and productivity levels will improve! And how can we practice academic writing, besides by just … well, just writing? We can incorporate practice exercises designed to develop specific dimensions of our writing, much as we would do if we were attempting to strengthen and build specific muscles in our bodies through physical exercise. This book will provide the opportunity to practice your writing on a regular basis. It is designed to give you a chance to repeat an exercise, make mistakes, correct them, and, with repetition and feedback, add to the myelin you already have, and improve (Sterner, 2012). As Ronald T. Kellogg and Alison P. Whiteford (2009) state in “Training Advanced Writing Skills: The Case for Deliberate Practice”: The term deliberate practice refers to practice undertaken with a specific goal to improve. The learner mindfully engages in practice designed by an instructor, coach, mentor, or tutor, who further provides corrective feedback as encouragement to excel. (p. 251) Please note that—as the quote above emphasizes—an important element in this practice approach involves obtaining feedback so we can correct our mistakes and incorporate the corrections when rewriting. Therefore, you may want first to take a close look at Chapter 2 (where we practice creating a writing habit) and Chapter 5 (where we practice securing support and feedback). Making sure we develop a system for continually obtaining feedback will help our practice significantly. I hope this brief incursion into psychology and neuroscience helps you see how this book is grounded in both a theoretical and an empirical platform. I also hope that the evidence pointing to the value of gaining control over your writing, the importance of deliberate practice (with feedback), and the contributions a text such as this one can make to the process will motivate you even more to plunge into these exercises and improve your writing productivity. POWER in Practice … During my graduate studies, the POWER model and its scaffolding, as well as the POWER Writing Studios and anecdotes shared by my colleagues, provided a solid foundation for me, in the world of academic writing. This foundation is particularly evident in this first chapter, where Dr. Goodson connects writing with deep or deliberate practice. As a former college athlete and Division I collegiate coach, the concept of daily practice resonates with my experience. In order to be successful during my competitive years, I had to practice daily and if I didn’t practice it would show; the same was true for the athletes I coached. I realized I had to approach writing with the same mindset I used in training for an athletic event: with appropriate tools, daily practice, and lots of discipline. The exercises in this book provided those tools, the structure for practice, and the motivation for discipline. Chyllis E. Scott, Ph.D. Assistant Professor—Literacy Education Codirector: UNLV P.O.W.E.R. Team University of Nevada, Las Vegas Note to the Second Edition Since the book was first published, I began to consider other factors—both theoretically and empirically—to be as important as the notion of practice for the development of a productive writing habit. I haven’t yet elaborated these factors formally, nor incorporated them into the POWER model—therefore, you will not see an extensive treatment of these in this edition. I did want to briefly mention them, however, so you would become aware and consider how they might affect your own writing productivity. The first factor is our identity as writers . While I do mention this notion in Chapter 2 , I do not develop it substantially, for I’ve only begun to explore the concept. But as I’ve learned more about how identities are formed, shaped, or changed, I have begun to think about ways to foster and shape academics’ identity as writers. Students who participate in the Writing Studios or in the writing productivity course I offer sometimes challenge me by saying, “Dr. Goodson, you say it is important to think of ourselves as writers; you say we are writers; if we are in academia, writing is the most important tool of our trade. Yet I don’t feel like a writer; I write because I have to , but I don’t see myself as a writer . I’m not there yet.” And while I sympathize with the struggle, I have tried to learn about ways to foster this identity, ways to help people wear this “new persona.” An important starting point in developing a new identity, I learned, is to cultivate a mindset that privileges personal growth. The research agenda developed by Carol S. Dweck and her colleagues has demonstrated that people who embrace a “growth mindset” tend to experience both “short-term achievement and long-term success” (Dweck, 2010, p. 15; Dweck, 2008), when compared with people who have a “fixed mindset.” A person who has a growth mindset approaches tasks with the perspective that the task can be learned, and the learner improves or grows in the mastery of the task over time. A growth mindset privileges effort and realizes that hard work and practice, with time, are the hallmarks of long-term, systematic success (Dweck, 2010). You may not yet identify yourself as an academic writer, but the magic word here is yet . When it comes to writing, in particular, many students I teach have a fixed mindset regarding themselves as writers: I can’t write. I am not a writer. My writing sucks . For those students (and, perhaps, for you, right now), the single, most beneficial shift they could experience would be to start believing “Yes, I can become a writer; yes, I can learn this, and with appropriate practice and adequate tools, I can become good at it! If others learned and mastered the academic writing process, so can I.” According to research done by many scholars, success is correlated with a growth mindset, coupled with steady commitment, practice, and social support. Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2008), comments on a study done by Benjamin Bloom of 120 elite performers in various fields (sports, math, and science, for instance): Most were not that remarkable as children and didn’t show clear talent before training began in earnest. Even by early adolescence, you usually couldn’t predict their future accomplishment from their current ability. Only their continued motivation and commitment, along with their network of support, took them to the top. (p. 65; emphasis added) The good news is that we can, indeed, change our mindsets. Yeager and Dweck (2012) acknowledge: “Our research also shows that students’ mindsets can be changed [from a fixed to a growth mindset] and that doing so can promote resilience” (p. 303). Even though this change in mindset will not happen in a vacuum, it will begin to manifest itself as you take steps to learn, as you begin your practice—and working through this book is a significant step in the direction of learning and growth. But what does a growth mindset have to do with identity? It’s simple: If academics do not view themselves as writers—yet—they can view themselves as writers-in-training, or soon-to-be published authors, and devote the commitment and the practice to becoming an academic writer. According to the Heath brothers in their book SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Heath & Heath, 2010), people with a growth mindset—those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long-term view—can’t help but progress in their lives and careers. (p. 165) (Take note of the phrase accept feedback we will address this, closely, in Chapter 5 .) And they conclude: “The aspiration of a new identity with the persistence of the growth mindset”—can lead to amazing things! I believe it. I’ve experienced it myself, and have witnessed it in many of my students and colleagues. The second factor I have begun to consider and to mention when I teach academic writing productivity is emotional intelligence (EI), especially the dimensions of self-awareness and self-control. EI has been defined in many ways, but the definitions I find most useful are the ones characterizing EI as a set of traits and abilities that facilitate effective decision making and performance (Bar-On et al., 2000; Boyatzis, Goleman, & Rhee, 2000; Shao, Yu, & Ji, 2013). Any of us—for whom academic writing is integral to our professional lives—know that writing is a task demanding a substantial amount of self-control in the form of emotion regulation and management of delayed rewards (Magen, Bokyung, Dweck, Gross, & McClure, 2013). It appears, however, this notion—that writing takes a great deal of self-control—is taken for granted among social scientists, because research on the relationship between EI and writing productivity is scant. In one of the very few studies published on this topic, Shao, Yu, and Ji (2013) claim: “At the time of writing this article [published in 2013], no research has investigated the relationship between EI and learners’ writing achievement” (p. 100), even though there are many studies documenting the association between EI and academic achievement. In their paper, those authors report a positive association between EI and writing achievement, after students are exposed to a brief literature-based intervention. Their study, however, focused on testing a simple strategy for enhancing expressions of emotions (and EI) in the written text. They were not concerned with exploring the intricate mechanisms of emotional intelligence and how it can hinder or facilitate the academic writer’s productivity. James W. Pennebaker’s work on using writing to manage the emotional outcomes associated with traumatic events may well be one of the most renowned pockets of research on the impact of writing on the writer’s emotions. While not addressing academic writing, per se (nor EI, specifically), Pennebaker’s methods are helpful for academics who either struggle with their emotions/feelings about writing (e.g., experience writing anxiety or aversion), and/or wish to learn how to use writing to manage their own emotional health and well-being (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). In the book that has now become a classic, Pennebaker (and in the more recent edition with coauthor John F. Evans) not only proposes a strategy for using writing to heal from traumatic emotional wounds; he also documents the research on expressive writing. According to Pennebaker and Evans (2014), researchers have consistently observed positive effects of expressive writing for various physiological/biological systems (including the immune system), for the management of chronic illnesses, as well as for stress management. The authors also summarize the evidence in favor of expressive writing enhancing academic performance: Among beginning college students, expressive writing helps people adjust to their situation better. Consequently, at least three studies have found that students make higher grades in the semester after a writing study…. This may be because emotional writing boosts people’s working memory. (p. 11) Although Pennebaker and Evans (2014) candidly admit (a) “not all people benefit from writing” (p. 13), and (b) research evidence has not delimited a specific profile of the people who do benefit from it, the data seem to suggest, rather strongly, that expressive writing does foster “improvement in overall well-being and improved cognitive function” (Pennebaker & Evans, 2014, p. 11). Given the evidence, it is reasonable to assume that using expressive writing to enhance the academic writer’s EI is a strategy worth exploring. As previously noted, I have not yet formally or systematically incorporated these elements into the POWER model. I have, however, begun to assess their role in academic writing productivity and in my own writing. Perhaps exposing yourself to some of the literature related to identity theory, writing to heal, and emotional intelligence can prove useful, along with the exercises in this book, to facilitate your growth as an academic writer. Conceivably, as you learn about the need for better understanding how these factors affect academic writing, you might even feel motivated to explore these relationships in your own research. Notes 1. Quotations heading each of the chapters were chosen from a selection culled by Gregory Victor Babic (2008) and published in Words to Inspire Writers . All quotations are in the public domain. 2. A graduate student at Texas A&M University can go to http://power.tamu.edu to schedule an appointment with a consultant (or with me), to obtain feedback and support while working on a writing project. If you are at another university, you may want to consider creating a service such as POWER for the graduate students at your school. Electronic Source Texas A&M University Writing Support Services: http://power.tamu.edu References Babic , G. V. ( 2008 ). Words to inspire writers . Australia : F. C. Sach . Bar-On , R. , Brown , J. M. , & Kirkcaldy , B. D. ( 2000 ). 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Chapter One—Main Points in One Page The POWER Model (Promoting Outstanding Writing for Excellence in Research) combines certain behavioral principles with specific practices to help you master and become comfortable with your writing. The POWER model and the exercises in this book build on the theoretical perspective offered by Peter Elbow, emphasizing the value of initially messy writing, the need for practice, and the importance of feedback. Evidence from three areas of knowledge anchors the principles and strategies in this book: (a) research on faculty productivity, (b) the psychology literature regarding elite performers and talent development, and (c) the neuroscience literature focusing on the neurological dimension of extraordinary achievements, talent, and performance. Research evidence points to deep or deliberate practice as one (if not the one) key element for developing extraordinary skills. Therefore, if we commit to practice our academic writing—and obtain continual feedback—our writing and productivity levels will improve. Part I Practice Becoming a Productive Academic Writer

Chapter 2 Establish and Maintain the “Write” Habit We are what we repeatedly do . Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit . Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e .) Think About It … If I asked you to complete this sentence, what would you say? The most important tool for success as an academic is _______________. When I invite students in my classes to go through this sentence-completion exercise, they quickly come up with “critical thinking,” “research skills,” or “statistics” as their answer. Because they are in a writing productivity class, however, they suspect I’m going to say something like “writing,” so some volunteer answers such as “publications” or “articles published in professional journals.” But rarely do they point to writing , itself, as the most important tool. I’m not sure why they don’t come up with writing as their answer. Do they believe that writing is a by-product of research or teaching? That writing is merely a necessary evil, something one “gets to” only when there’s an assignment to complete, if there’s enough spare time? That what matters most are the completed papers, the published products, not the process itself? That writing cannot contribute to learning and to personal or professional growth? I also ask graduate students and faculty who attend my workshops to share how they reply to the question “What do you do for a living?” I probe to see how many will say “I am a writer; I write for a living.” Curiously, few, if any, ever identify themselves as professional writers. With these two reflexive exercises, I come to my point, to the single take-home message I want them to remember if they happen to learn nothing else in my classes or workshops: They are writers . They write for a living. Every dimension of their future success as academics—grades, promotions, presentations to professional groups, funding for research projects—will depend on how well (and, yes, how much ) they write. Aside from trade-book authors, no other professional group depends so strongly on writing for its survival. Academics (here, I’m thinking of faculty, students, research staff, and even administrators) are professional writers, whether they identify themselves as such or not, whether they like it or not. Therefore, the single most important take-home message I want you to remember is this: You are a professional writer . If you are a college student, a graduate student, faculty, research staff, or an administrator, you write for a living. You may not make as much money from book sales as modern-day authors such as Stephen King, John Grisham, or Patricia Cornwell. After all, these authors have published at least one best seller a year, over many years, in the United States. Yet, as it happens with these famous authors, your salary and your success will largely depend on how much and how well you write. No doubt about it, academics write for a living . Therefore, you write for a living, whether you like it or not, whether you want to or not. Writing term papers, reports, reviews, journal articles, book chapters, research grants, books, or textbooks defines much of students’ and faculty’s lives in colleges and universities worldwide. Yet as you read in Chapter 1 , research data suggest faculty write and publish at lower-than-expected levels, while students struggle to respond to their professors’ expectations for their writing. In part, the low productivity and struggles with writing have to do with how academics view themselves and their work. If they do not see themselves as writers , their writing becomes relegated to whenever they have enough time . “Enough time” never happens spontaneously, so they seldom write. Even though writing represents THE most important tool in the academician’s toolbox for professional advancement, we (yes, I, too, have been guilty of this) treat it much as we do our gardening tools: shoved to the back of the toolshed or garage; stored among the other dusty, rusty tools; and used only sporadically, when absolutely necessary. As many of you who love to have the right tool for the right job already know, certain equipment—when used infrequently—deteriorates and loses its efficiency. Seeing Yourself as a Writer The exercises in this book, therefore, were designed to help you develop a new perspective of yourself as a writer . Recall, in Chapter 1 , I suggested the following: Even if you don’t see yourself as a writer, yet , practicing new habits and strategies will help you develop this new perspective and, over time, grow into this new identity. But to develop this new perspective or this new identity, you’ll need to take three steps: STEP 1: Embrace the “write” attitude. STEP 2: Manage the contingencies. STEP 3: Practice. STEP 1: Embrace the “Write” Attitude The first action step you must take to develop a healthy and sustainable writing habit is to adopt the appropriate or right attitude. What is an attitude, then? And which attitude is the most appropriate? The simplest definition of attitude regards it as the judgment human beings make of everything around them (their environment, other people, situations, and themselves) as good or bad, favorable or unfavorable, positive or negative, pleasurable or displeasing, likeable or unlikable (Albarracin, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005, p. 3). While scholars disagree about how many dimensions an attitude has, for our purposes we’ll adopt the simplest construction: An attitude comprises two important dimensions—a belief and a value. The formula is straightforward: A strong, favorable belief, combined with a high value, produces a strong, positive attitude. Put simply, if you believe developing a healthy, sustainable, stress-free writing habit will lead to better-quality writing and more steady production, then you have a positive belief about developing a writing habit. If writing well and producing more steadily without stress are important to you, then what you believe in has a high value. When combined—the belief together with the value—they form an attitude. When the belief is positive and the value is high, the attitude is strong and favorable. When the belief is negative and the value is low, you have a negative attitude. The most appropriate and helpful attitude you can embrace as an academic writer is this one: (a) believing that developing a healthy writing habit CAN, in fact, lead to improvements in the quality of your writing and to stress-free productivity, AND (b) valuing improvement and stress-free productivity. If you admit not having this attitude, right now … well, good for you! You’re being honest, and honesty is very important for powerful academic writing. But don’t lose heart. Attitudes take time to develop, as they are influenced or shaped by everyday experience, practice, and reinforcement. Therefore, if you don’t have a positive attitude this very minute, I invite you to follow along with the book and see if your attitude improves. The exercises I propose in the text are designed to shape your writing experience positively, to provide opportunities for practice, and to facilitate obtaining reinforcement. Engaging in these practices will help you develop a more favorable attitude toward writing and grow into your new identity as a professional writer. If you do, however, have a positive attitude right now, then you’re already on the road to better writing and increased productivity. Welcome! STEP 2: Manage the Contingencies Embracing the “write” attitude, however, is only the first step you need to take to establish and sustain a healthy writing habit. The research on academics’ writing productivity points to the need for managing contingencies , too (Boice, 1983, 1997b). Managing contingencies means handling and controlling the factors that either facilitate or hinder your ability to write regularly. Contingencies are the circumstances and events surrounding you, which affect your writing habit. For example, checking your e-mail or Facebook page is a contingency (Carr, 2011). If you check them too frequently, you may become too distracted and unable to focus on your writing tasks. By scheduling a specific writing time in your schedule/planner and turning off your e-mail or Internet access, you will be managing an important distraction. You will be paying attention exclusively to the writing during your writing sessions, distraction-free. You will be managing some of your contingencies. Research Shows … Robert Boice (1997a) studied a sample of 40 “blocked” academic writers and what they said to themselves while writing. When examining the self-talk data, Boice observed that 74% of what blocked writers said to themselves while writing was maladaptive, or not helpful. Only 7% of their self-talk “could be construed as helpful.” Here is a list of the most common maladaptive thoughts exhibited by this sample: Writing is too fatiguing and unpleasant; almost anything else would be more fun. It’s O.K. to put off writing, to procrastinate. I’m not in the mood to write; I’m too depressed or unmotivated to write. I feel impatient about writing; I need to rush to catch up on all the projects that I should already have finished. My writing must be mistake-free and better than the usual stuff that gets published. My writing will probably be criticized and I may feel humiliated. Good writing is done in a single draft, preferably in a long session. (p. 30) STEP 3: Practice In addition to adopting a favorable attitude and managing your contingencies, you will need to take one last step: Practice your writing. The research done on musicians and athletes suggests one of the most important elements distinguishing elite performers from mediocre ones is the time spent on deliberate (or deep ) practice . (For some interesting descriptions of deep practice, see Daniel Coyle’s [2009] The Talent Code , Geoff Colvin’s [2010] Talent Is Overrated , and K. Anders Ericsson’s [2007, 2008; Ericsson, Nandagopal, & Roring, 2009] research, mentioned in Chapter 1 .) Deliberate practice means targeted, focused repetition of specific behaviors—accompanied by persistent correcting of mistakes—for the purpose of improving performance (again, see Chapter 1 for more on deep or deliberate practice; see also Cleary & Zimmerman, 2001; Kitsantas & Zimmerman, 2006; and Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1999). The key to optimizing deep practice is to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n during practice. Slowing down forces the one practicing to pay attention to mistakes, identify them, and correct them immediately. The exercises in this book are designed to help you practice writing by slowing down, paying attention to your unique patterns of mistakes, and developing a system for getting feedback to correct those mistakes. Contrary to popular belief, practicing our writing requires more than sitting down and “just doing it”—just writing, writing, writing. Practice entails repeating an action with a defined goal, a specific strategy, and a mechanism for correcting mistakes. Practice—especially deep practice—entails more than mere repetition. Deep practice involves setting goals, slowing down, paying attention to mistakes, and correcting them as soon as possible. The exercises in this book will help you precisely with these things: setting goals, slowing down, strategizing repetitions, catching and correcting mistakes. Rarely do we think about approaching our academic writing from a perspective of practice . When was the last time someone told you they couldn’t meet with you because they had a writing practice session scheduled for that time? As you work through this book you will learn to respect and protect your writing time much as Olympian athletes protect their practice schedules. This book is anchored, therefore, in the well-established reputation of deep practice for expert performance in many areas, and it will attempt to shift your attitude to one that values practicing your writing (see Chapter 1 for further details on the empirical and theoretical basis grounding this notion). In sum, the exercises I propose were designed to help you develop the “write” attitude, manage your contingencies , and practice your writing . Let’s begin! Exercise 1—Schedule Your Writing Sessions TIME NEEDED: 15 minutes in the first session; 05 minutes thereafter MATERIALS NEEDED: Your weekly/daily planner; a timer This week’s exercise will establish the foundation for all other exercises in the book. Scheduling your writing sessions is the single best contingency-management strategy you can adopt. Research examining productive faculty’s habits consistently points to scheduled and protected writing time as a key element for success. One example is the study Michael C. Mayrath (2008) conducted with 22 of the most productive faculty in educational psychology. The question posed to the faculty was “If you were going to explain why you were so productive, what would you say?” (p. 46). Among the answers participants gave, “scheduled time to write” emerged prominently: Karen Harris [one of the participants in the study] said she was taught a “calendar trick by a very productive researcher” when she was an assistant professor. The trick is that “research and writing time belong on your calendar.” She said an author must write in [the calendar] time to write and do research, and that you must protect this time just as if it were a meeting that you could not reschedule. (p. 52) If the strategy is essential for extremely successful scholars, why wouldn’t it be helpful for us, too? Therefore, take 10 minutes, right now, and examine your weekly/daily planner. Then do the following: Schedule your writing sessions for this week. Schedule one session every day . Yes! Every day! (I recommend at least 1 day off per week, however.) And, if your schedule allows, schedule each session at the same time every day (try your best to make this happen). Start with 15-minute sessions if you’re not used to writing regularly. Plan for 30-minute sessions if you’re more used to writing routinely. I am certain you can find a block of 15 minutes, every day, somewhere in your busy schedule. After scheduling the days/times you will be writing this week, spend the remaining 5 minutes listing what pops into your head when I ask you the question highlighted below (just write a bulleted list, as the ideas come to mind). Write as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about editing or capturing your thoughts in complete sentences; single words will do:

What does it take to get me to write (to begin and/or to continue)? In each writing session this week, use 5 of your scheduled 15 minutes (or 30 minutes) to answer these other questions (one question per writing session):

What keeps me away from writing? What aspects of writing do I really enjoy? What aspects of writing do I especially dislike? How have I been treating my most important academic tool? Is it rusting away; out of reach or sight; needing repair, polishing, or sharpening? Or is it always right here, in a clean, airy place, fully functional and ready when I need it? In other words, how much time and how many resources have I dedicated lately to improving my writing? Do I see myself as a writer? If the answer is yes , in what ways do I “wear” my identity as an academic writer; in other words, how do others see that I am an academic writer? If the answer is no , what keeps me from viewing myself as an academic writer? Do I have a fixed or a growth mindset (Dweck, 2008) related to my academic writing? After you’ve done Exercise 1, keep your writing schedule for this week. During each session, however, write (or don’t write) as you normally would. If you feel you have nothing to write about, read a journal article and note your thoughts as you write. If you’re really having difficulty figuring out what to write, practice copying a text—yes, copying (more on the benefits of copying in Exercise 15, Chapter 4 ). Or write about your experiences with developing a writing habit, or write a letter. I doubt—because you’re an academic—you will struggle to find something to write about. This week, the purpose is to begin developing a writing habit; the goal, to get used to showing up for your writing sessions. What you write about right now is not as important as training your body and your mind to follow a specific routine, to create a writing habit. Remember: Athletes, musicians, and other world-class performers spend much of their time in practice sessions. Regularly. Consistently. Why shouldn’t you? After the first week, revisit your planned schedule and make any necessary changes. Eventually, you will learn which time slots work best for you, depending on your routine and your demands. Being an academic myself, I realize you may be asking, “But when will I find time to practice writing within my already packed schedule?” Once, when I was asking the same question, I came across this brilliant quote in Johnson and Mullen’s (2007) Write to the Top! : Prolific academics create writing time where none exists and then carefully protect it from intrusion. (p. 8; emphases added) Notice the difference here? Create versus find . None of us can ever find time because we look for extra time those minutes left over, unclaimed, after everything else is addressed. Such time rarely, if ever, can be found! Yet all of us can purposefully create and protect time to write. I suggest you print the quote above and post it next to your workstation as a reminder of what you’re practicing this week. Try it. It works! POWER in Practice … When I began my Ph.D. I found that my productivity did not match the program’s writing demands and expectations. Reading and practicing the exercises in this chapter completely transformed my writing habit and productivity. The first habit I began practicing was scheduling my writing sessions. Prior to reading the chapter, I believed writing was something you should do only when inspired or motivated. But I quickly realized that I would not be a productive academic writer if I only wrote when I was motivated. So I began scheduling my writing time, made sure it

Goodson, Patricia. Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing (Kindle Locations 1390-1413). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

Goodson, Patricia. Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing (Kindle Locations 1368-1390). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.