No writing book is all-encompassing, and therefore, I cannot in good conscience answer the question I get asked the most: which book on how to write/how to survive graduate school is the best? As I said on Twitter: “none of them”. Anybody who has written a book on this topic will agree: you gain insights from other authors, so you should read more than one book. Nobody has the last word on anything, least of them writing.
I recently read Anne Lamott’s amazing “Bird by Bird”, and doing so really made something click in my head. I can now understand more clearly why I can’t recommend ONE single book but instead MUST recommend several. Being able to change my mind about something is EXACTLY why I am a professor and a researcher: I am able to develop new ideas and challenge my preconceived notions of a phenomenon through reading, reasoning and absorbing new knowledge.
After reading “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott, whose approach mirrors Brene Brown and mine (on being gentle, kind, empathetic and drawing from your emotions to shape your research and improve your work), I thought again about the entire “which book is best for me”.
My answer now: pic.twitter.com/UZmYIJQEVa
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
I stand by my statement.
I don’t think any of them are “THE BEST” or “THE MOST SUITABLE” for you or for anyone. As much as they’re all fantastic in their own right, each one of these books provides different insights, and therefore you should buy a small library containing a few of each type. Books that inspire you, volumes that help you develop your skills and tomes that will be thematically specific to your work.
As I said in another thread, reading Lamott has transformed me, and it has awakened something that might have laid dormant before:
There are books that INSPIRE you to write.
There are books that TEACH YOU how to write.
And we all need a combination of all of these. pic.twitter.com/WGBIY9pwG5
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
I develop this typology of books (Thematic, Developmental and Inspirational) below.
In my case, I need to read books that inspire my analytical thinking (on waste and discards, on water, on activism and social movements, on protest, on methods). Those are to me the THEMATIC BOOKS. I need to read how OTHER scholars I respect write about the subjects I care about.
Then you have the “This is How To Do Research and Writing” type of books. I call these DEVELOPMENTAL books.
These books show you how to plan your writing, set schedules, develop a writing practice, organize your research, find books, survive academia. pic.twitter.com/R4TJi3KvNf
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
And then you have the “sit down on the porch/curled up on your couch”, memoir-type books on writing that tell you insights from published authors on their writing process.
I call these INSPIRATIONAL books. The ones that you read and think “damn, I want to write, sounds fun” pic.twitter.com/pxz73M2pPM
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
Of course, you will find inspirational, pithy quotes in Thematic and Developmental books, surely. No typology is perfect and no categorization is without its flaws. But the main insight I gained in reading Lamott yesterday and answering a query on which was the best book am now more convinced that there is no authoritative, definitive guide to academic writing (or research or writing) because we all need different components of the process.
You will learn different things from reading my work on water than you would absorb from others.
There are MANY excellent books that will teach you A METRIC TONNE of stuff that you NEED to learn. But sometimes you will find yourself staring at a wall, or devastated that you got a rejection from a journal, or simply stuck with your writing. So you’ll need INSPIRATION.
Last year, I wrote a synthetic memorandum on a few lessons that I had learned about writing in general, academia and scholarly writing in particular (which you can read here https://t.co/egCHiLfdct)
Reading back my own writing, I realize that I’ve learned a lot this year.
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
I also found different patterns from various “memoir-type” writers.
Stephen King and Henry Miller write more forcefully: “sit your butt on the chair every day for X number of hours until you get Y number of pages done”. I find Lamott much gentler: “you may need a system”.
Many of you ask me if I write book reviews. I don’t. I mean, I do (and they’re published in peer-reviewed journals), but what you’ll find on my blog is a set of Reading Notes https://t.co/cWFfhmCKhJ
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
And it’s true. I don’t write book reviews on my blog (I do in journals). I write sets of Reading Notes.
Doctoral (generally speaking, grad) and undergrad students as well as supervising faculty might find my reading notes of books on “how to do academic work” useful https://t.co/jPcfvf8Plz
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2020
In conclusion: Develop a syllabus-like approach to reading “how to write” and “how to do academic work” books.
Of course, everyone wants to write (or read) “THE Authoritative Book on How to do Academia”. But think of learning about scholarly life as a lifelong syllabus: You write syllabi because your students need to be exposed to a variety of ideas and learn bits and pieces from others.
So no, I don’t think I can point you to THE best book on writing. I can give you some ideas on what to look for in a book and share with you pearls of wisdom I have distilled from each one.
But you’re going to have to invest in building a small library of books on these topics.
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