This book describes writing. Unlike an usual writing book, this book describe how to write a lot. The point is not writing well, but a lot. All students and professor need to write, and many struggle to write journal article, book, and grant proposal. If you can write always more than you are needed, it is O.K. If you find the difficulty to write sometimes, you can pick up the idea from this book. This is not exactly review of this book, I will summarize writing techniques which are what I learned from this book and my experience.
1. Write regularly.
This is important. Writing is hard, so every time, we have excuse to run away. But to write productively, we need to write regularly. The “regular” depends on the study or subject. As for physics, we need to get the result to write a paper, sometimes we can not write the paper. But I strongly agree that we need to write regularly. Only I can do is do experiment and analysis a lot, and try to the results regularly. Let’s do it!!
2. Watch your enthusiasm.
Like reading books, you are most excited to write the next, when we finish the manuscript. So, why don’t we start the next, right after when we finish the manuscript.
3. Count number of words you write.
Steven King said “Start from 1000 words a day.” This is for fiction writers, but we can use the same idea. The physics paper, especially for letters, is not so long, compared to psychology, economics. However, if we know, how many words we can write daily. That makes you easy to plan.
4. Posses the topics what you really want to write.
As for physics, when we could get clear and strong evidences, we can write easily. Because we know clearly what we are going to write. If we posses what really want to write, we can write.
5. Learn how to manege.
If we write a lot or longer. We need to manage schedule. When is due, how long we need to write or want. Practice to finish the manuscript by deadline. We have different strategy, for 100 words, 500 words, 2000 words, 10000 words, and so on. You need to have strategy for each.
6. Writing is hard.
Among the language skill, like listening, speaking, writing, and reading, I believe that writing is the hardest. That is why I practice writing. When I drunk, I can listen, speak and reading, but I can not write. Just I want to remind “writing is hard”. That’s why we need to keep writing.