Meriam Library News

Silva, P.J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

This is an excellent book, and will be particularly useful for your upcoming paper. And the paper after that. And, in fact, everything you write in college.

How to Write a Lot presents a useful, practical approach to writing. Not that it's wildly groundbreaking - it's not. In many ways it states the obvious. But what it does do is pull a clear methodology for writing together - motivating yourself to write, and writing clearly and efficiently. It serves as a one-stop resource for managing this whole process. And it is a short book written in a clear, straightforward, easily understood style. You can read it in a day or two, and then use the strategies it presents to earn back the time you spend reading it by finishing your paper ahead of time.

Paul J. Silva is a psychologist and tends to draw his examples of the writing process from the psychology field, but his approach to writing is easily applied to other fields. Silva also writes for an audience of graduate students and professors, but again, his approach may be applied to undergraduate papers just as easily as to graduate research. In short, for anyone who feels bogged down / hampered / frustrated / etc by the process of writing, this book presents some useful, practical strategies for alleviating that frustration and producing the writing you need to produce.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen