Want to shorten your academic article to meet the word count limit? Here are three tips (plus 1 bonus tip for qual papers) I use to shorten my clients’ works to make the journal’s word count. Works every time!

For the past 20 years, I've worked alone at home. The lifestyle is great, but it can be really hard to work alone. It’s lonely. So how do we motivate ourselves to work? How do we find the energy to not only get started, but to keep going?

So if the last post resonated with you, and you suspect you might need to procure a developmental editor for your manuscript, you can read on to get a sense of what it’s like to work with a developmental editor, what the process may look like for you, and how much it might cost [not as much as you might think].

Every request for editing I get asks me for a copy edit. And yet, when I start reading the paper, I see that what it needs is not a fix for its writing issues but a fix for its thinking issues. The paper actually needs a developmental edit. What does your paper need?

Chefs practice mise en place—the key culinary technique we covered in our previous post—whereas most PhD students are expected to learn how and what to write on their own! This lack of training is a paradox, especially considering the importance of writing skills to academic success.

So, you want to finish a piece of writing you have been working on. Or you are attending a writing boot camp. Will you waste precious hours writing, deleting, writing and then eventually surfing the internet? Or will you create something of good and promising value?

I started using the Pomodoro technique last year when the pandemic hit and the kids stayed at home to study, and it’s the best thing to ever happen to me.

If I am not happy and balanced, then it is no surprise that I am easily distracted and uninspired. And so, achieving balance and happiness will involve some kind of reflection on my thoughts and emotions. Let’s use techniques that can improve your mental well-being and cognitive performance to make you a more productive writer.

Here are the main things a writing coach can help with: Guide you with a methodical approach to writing; Analyse your writing for problematic patterns and show you ways to overcome them; Set deadlines to boost your writing dedication and productivity; and Provide writing and organisational tips to take that burden off your shoulders.

The writer Peter De Vries once famously quipped: I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired every morning at nine o’clock. It sounds like a quote about discipline and the rigour of regular practice, but seen another way, what De Vries is really talking about is inspiration.

Is bad writing bad science? Bad science here refers to imprecision. Based on that idea, we can say that imprecise scientific writing—which is another way of saying “bad writing”—definitely creates bad science.

The main reason faculty were not signing up for my workshop was because of confirmation bias: “The fact that I am publishing confirms that I am a good writer, which means writing workshops are not for me.” But ask yourself this: Are you publishing in top-tier journals? Have you tried, but just can’t seem to make it? And have you considered that the problem may not simply be your research, but your writing?