In an article from last fall in The Cronicle of Higher Education, my colleague Mike Munger gives ten very good writing tips. The one that has worked best for me has undoubtedly been this one:
“Edit your work, over and over. Have other people look at it. One of the great advantages of academe is that we are mostly all in this together, and we all know the terrors of that blinking cursor on a blank background. Exchange papers with peers or a mentor, and when you are sick of your own writing, reciprocate by reading their work. You need to get over a fear of criticism or rejection. Nobody’s first drafts are good. The difference between a successful scholar and a failure need not be better writing. It is often more editing.
If you have trouble writing, then you just haven’t written enough. Writing lots of pages has always been pretty easy for me. I could never get a job being only a writer, though, because I still don’t write well. But by thinking about these tips, and trying to follow them myself, I have gotten to the point where I can make writing work for me and my career.”
I had not seen this article when it came out last fall, but the Twitter feed for the Chronicle mentioned yesterday that readers seemed to have discovered belatedly, as it had it all of a sudden become one of the Chronicle‘s most emailed articles.