"Writing proficiency is not just for graduate students in literature and history. Practicing professionals, regardless of field, devote much of their time to writing memos, policy briefs, proposals, reports, and other documents. This book is a gem: A gifted scholar and graduate school dean provides precisely the kind of practical, tested advice that all students need to write theses, dissertations, grant proposals, job applications, and scholarly articles efficiently. I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone who has ever suffered from the barriers to successful writing: procrastination, distractions, self-doubt, writers block, and an inability to accept any standard short of perfection."
Steven Mintz
University of Texas at Austin
"I wish I had had this book when I wrote my dissertation! Writing can often seem to be a lonely process. This book helps overcome that sense of isolation and offers important and practical suggestions for how to get unstuck and keep writing. Its full of great advice, grounded in insights from many top writers and tested by the author herself. I particularly liked her description of the power of writing groups to hold one accountable and provide an ongoing critique of your writing."
Jeffrey Engler, PhD, Vice President, Special Projects
Council of Graduate Schools
Unfortunately, few graduate students start their programs with well-established habits of writing. Instead, they figure it out on their own; often relying on strategies that sufficed during their undergraduate years. Binge writing. Procrastinating. Mired in perfectionist gridlock.
Those strategies, however, don't work for doctoral writing. What to do? Shed the old habits and develop new ones. Easier said than done, of course. Fortunately, there is help. This book will set you on the right course.
Jan Allen has seen it all. For decades she has brought her empathetic wisdom to help graduate student writers find their voices and their writing rhythms. This book is a pithy distillation of her wisdom. She serves it up in bite-sized chunks. Use it as an energy burst to start your daily writing time and set your new habits into place.
Chris M. Golde, Assistant Director of Career Communities for PhDs & Postdocs
Stanford University
"You eat a whale one bite at a time. As this practical book will convince you, you write a doctoral dissertation or any other daunting assignment of scholarly writing in much the same way. Jan Allens encouraging voice and useful tips have helped graduate students at Columbia and Cornell finish the whale and earn the degree. The Productive Graduate Student Writer now makes her optimism and wisdom accessible to graduate students everywhere."
Cole M. Crittenden, Deputy Dean of the Graduate School
Princeton University
"Anyone interested in becoming a better writer will learn from The Productive Graduate Student Writer. Inspired by some of the best writers and grounded in extensive research, Dr. Allen offers up an easy to read, step-by-step, practice-based approach to managing the process, time, and energy it takes to complete a writing project. Graduate students as well as new faculty who follow the authors pragmatic advice will not only become more productive but may also discover that, indeed, they are writers.
Laurie Bellows, Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"The Productive Graduate Student Writer: How to Manage Your Time, Process, and Energy to Write Your Research Proposal, Thesis, and Dissertation and Get Published provides students with all-in-one guide to managing grad school's demands. From working on and finishing a project both without and under deadlines to defining essential tasks, conducting research, and translating it to a dissertation, this addresses the basics student writers need to know to get projects completed in a more efficient manner. Unlike more general college how-to guides or creative writer's guides, The Productive Graduate Student Writer's focus on the routines, demands, and processes of grad school makes for a specialized presentation that provides exact details on the process of research and writing for grad students."
Midwest Book Review
"Dr. Allens book is divided into two sections: tips on how to be a productive writer and tips on writing specific documents, such as grant proposals, a graduate thesis, a dissertation, and a journal article. She bases her theories and comments not only on her own experiences and research, but also cites other scholars and authors in making her case for how to be a productive writer. Her appendices at the end of the book provide step-by-step suggestions on how to monitor your progress, as well as steps for writing a dissertation proposal and planning for additional writing projects.
This book does present a concise and easy-to-understand methodology for being more productive in your writing. Her suggestions are simple and easy to follow, and come from her many years working with graduate students and scholars at multiple universities to help them with the task of writing. She also supports her experiences and research with that of other scholars who have written on helping graduate students be productive writers. I have shared this book with my doctoral students to help them in the writing process."
Teachers College Record
