Top 14 Paul J. Silvia Quotes
#1. Equipment will never help you write a lot; only making a schedule and sticking to it will make you a productive writer.
Paul J. Silvia
#2. Never reward writing with not writing. Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette.
Paul J. Silvia
#3. Remember, you're allocating time to write, not finding time to write.
Paul J. Silvia
#4. Writing a journal article combines all the elements that deter motivation: The probability of success is low; the likelihood of criticism and rejection is high; and the outcome, even if successful, isn't always rewarding.
Paul J. Silvia
#5. Academic writers are bad writers for three reasons. First, they want to sound smart. "If the water is dark," goes a German aphorism, "the lake must be deep." Instead of using good words like smart, they choose sophisticated or erudite.
Paul J. Silvia
#6. Writing is more fun when you have a partner, so find friends who share your research interests. Two authors can write faster, can complement expertise, can help with hard decisions, and understand context of decisions made.
Paul J. Silvia
#7. Do you need to "find time to teach"? Of course not---you have a teaching schedule, and you never miss it. [...] Finding time is a destructive way of thinking about writing. Never say this again. Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write.
Paul J. Silvia
#8. Novelists and poets are the landscape artists and portrait painters; academic writers are the people with big paint sprayers who repaint your basement.
Paul J. Silvia
#9. The subtlety of your analysis of variance will not move readers to tears, although the tediousness of it might.
Paul J. Silvia
#10. (I used to hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign on my office door, but people interpreted this as "His door is closed, but he wants me to know he's in there. I'll knock.") Be
Paul J. Silvia
#11. Reading an endless litany of study after study-one article found this, and another experiment found this, and another study found this-is like watching laundry spinning in a dryer, except that something good eventually comes out of a dryer!
Paul J. Silvia
#12. Writing time is for writing, not for checking e-mail, reading the news, or browsing the latest issues of journals. Sometimes I think it would be nice to download articles while writing, but I can do that at the office. The best kind of self-control is to avoid situations that require self-control.
Paul J. Silvia
#13. Revising while you generate text is like drinking decaffeinated coffee in the early morning: noble idea, wrong time.
Paul J. Silvia
#14. Writing involves many [acts] tasks, not just generating text
Paul J. Silvia
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