Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success

An article abstract is a report on what you did do, not what you hope to do.

If you already feel guilty about not writing, you do what you can to avoid feeling even more guilty. The longer you go without writing, the less guilty you have to feel, because writing is clearly an impossible task. Following the exercises in this workbook and its model of a slow and steady pace should help overcome this feeling.

But an essential part of becoming a writer is learning to sift useful criticisms from useless ones.

If you really want to work on a prospective dissertation chapter for publication now, do not let my advice here stop you. If you are wondering, however, whether to choose future dissertation research or something that will not appear in your dissertation, I recommend the latter.

Second, many students are hesitant about showing their writing to anyone. The university environment can encourage students to see their colleagues as adversaries rather than advocates.

Likewise, if you think you will be writing your dissertation on a particular author/place/culture and you have one paper about that author/place/culture that contains your dissertation argument and another paper on that author/place/culture that does not, pick the latter paper for revision.

Third, some students are good at sharing their work, but only when they consider the article complete. Avoid waiting until your manuscript is “done” before sharing it.

Part of the reason students feel they need big blocks of time is because it takes them so long to silence their inner critic.

Don’t give a barrage of data without an argument or a conclusion; an abstract should tell (or at least hint at) a story.