Patricia Goodson

If you are someone who is already convinced of the merit of slow, purposeful writing and separating creating from editing, and other good practices: I recommend that you skim the book cover to cover before really starting the exercises. If you are not yet, then I recommend reading chapter one thoroughly first. I think the whole book is good for people who have not engaged in deliberate practice to improve our academic writing, for those of us who have already spent a good deal of time reading different books and going to workshops, you'll want to pick and choose. My choices: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Ex. 1-5 & 8, Chapter 7 Ex 29-35.

My mistake was to try to follow the book like a class, starting from exercise one and then working my way through. It didn't work well for me, because my skills and approaches weren't necessarily satisfied by that order. I did try writing every day, and I kept a writing log, and I learned many useful approaches: (1) Record where you left off and what you want to do next so you can quickly start writing at the beginning of your next session - but I don't need to keep a time log, that's distracting information for me. I just use evernote to copy in the last session and start the new revision. I write my time minimum up top in the title, and I set my timer on my phone (Forest app). (2) Write every day for at least a few minutes - I'm already thinking about my writing, might as well BE WRITING!

What I find best about the book is the examples on writing and editing, organizing, cleaning, dumping, etc.… (meer)