Friday, January 9, 2009

Books on writing

Have you ever read any books on writing?
Any books on dissertation writing?

Did they help?
What did you like about them?
What didn't you like?

I'm curious about books on writing. There are a lot of them; some of them are pretty good; some aren't. I haven't read that many, but it's my intention to read more and I'm just looking for recommendations.

I'm engaging in something of a research project. Partly I want to see if I can learn something new. Partly I want to see whether there are other people out there who are looking at the process the way I am. If there aren't, then there's a place in the literature for anything that I see that others don't. So I have to do my research.

I'm exploring the obvious channels--Amazon--but also wondering which are particularly good. There are too many options and I want to try to cull the best.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave, dunno if you are still interested in this ... just read "How to write a lot" by Paul Silvia. What I liked was his no-nonsense, behavioralist approach (he is a psychologist). It is all about building up good writing habits. He is convinced that once you do that, you are bound to write a lot. I picked up a few good points how to set motivational goals and how to monitor progress. I think it helps you writing and working if you have a rough idea what you want to say and a feasible structure ready. It says less about how to get to that point, which I figured is probably my problem - not so much the writing itself.

Cheers,

Christoph