Today I went to National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and listened to the Wallace's English Writing Classes. One topic is "How to stay motivated and produce more writing". This topic clearifies my question about being a research and a writer. He talked about these subjects: Maintain writing motivation, Develop the writing habit, Find weak points and Improve, Create positive publication competition and supportive writing groups, Dramatize the writing and submission process with mental exciting models, View the paper writing process like a supply chain.
He considers the academic writing as producing a product, just like business. Therefore, We must fulfill our customers' needs. Writing is not fun. Writing is just a tool, that is, a mean to our other ends. He break my myth by telling us that we shouldn't confuse reading and writing. Reading is needed, but too much reading will be redundant. Too much reading will block us to write. If we don't want to write now, we won't write forever. If we want to produce our product, we need to push ourselves to write no matter what cause we have. We must write! Write anything in my head.
He told us we must collected data from all occasions. Therefore, take a notebook (paper is better than electronic one), and jot down anything we get in mind. These ideas become our material to write articles. He told a story about a professor who had three walls to post his ideas by post-its on the wall. His ideas was from arraging his post-its on the wall. When he finished an article, the wall became clean.
Dr. Wallace quoted a sentence: " I view producing every paper like producing a product, a creative product like a movie. We have screenings, editors and deadlines to release our product. I am not always the director of the movie, that might be me or it could be one of my students. But I am always the producer. The producer needs to push everybody so that the movie can by released on time." Dr. Wallace wanted to tell us "effective researcher have a publication supply chain" The trick is "write little and often".
He told us better to maintain a stock of papers under review constantly. Because the acceptance rate is low, we must have papers under review. This is a way to avoid wasting time to wait for the papers back.
He also told a story that a professor who publish 800 more papers. Wallace asked the professor what is his secret to publish. The professor replied "This is beyond of my scope". that is, the professor always publish one idea in one paper. Wallace said "Don't put two good ideas in one paper". We should cut one long paper into two short paper. Paper shorter, better. Paper clearer, better.
Wallace suggest that we can recycle parts of other papers, especially the introduction, method and discussion, to make new papers. A paper can look at the same problem form a different perspective. Social, political environment, financial. etc. Collaborating across disciplines often creates interesting topics journals are eagar to publish.
Wallace also give students the ideas that "Survival is more important than glory in the early stages of your career". Exactly, His words are accurate. He told us not to put all my eggs in one basket.
Second, he talked about the academic asceticism. We should sacrifice other interests if we want to become high impact researchers. Wallace cited Theodore Roosevelt's word: "when you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all."
Third, "Practice research like golf". We can imitate skillful writers's words and phrases, and modify them to suit my topic. We can create a file of template sentences.
Fourth, "dramatize process by creating models" such as "the great struggle, building a house, or killing a monster. Wallace told a story that one doctor student whose paper was rejected. The student can't graduate. His girl friend told him if you can't get Phd degree, I won't marry you. The student love his girl friend very much, so he tried painfully and finally published three papers in one year.
Fifth, Wallace said writer loved wrting was a myth. Writer didn't always enjoy writing. They just write. Just do it. The truth is " Many writer hate writing, but enjoy the results." What they do are forcing themselves into a daily writing routine. An electrical Engineering researcher said "Nobody loves English writing. It is only a tool, a necessary tool, without it noe one will appreciate our good ideas and reviewers will kill us."
In other words, Researcher are not born to love write English, they learn motivation for writing about their topic. "Researchers first forced themselves to write and later developed an interest in writing. He warned us "Talking about writing isn't writing. Thinking about writing isn';t writing. Dreaming isn't writing. Neither are outlining, researching, or taking notes. All these may be necessary to getting a project completed, but only writing is writing. Pen to paepr, fingers to keyboard."
Therefore, Wallace ask us to build writing habit. We must write at the same time, at the same place. We can carry a notebook and write anything. We may need quiet place and must get rid of negative thoughts. We must sit along in silence. Grammer or wrong spelling can't block us. What we want are ideas and express freely for the first draft.
Wallace also introduce us writers' blocks: weak motivation, poor planning, perfectionism, treatments. We don't need to edit our words when we are writing. We can write a paper one day and edit it on another day. We must know "An unused gift is worthless. Writing is a skill. We never hear about "scientist' block." Both scientic skills and writing skills are learned and improved through practice." (continue...)
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這是我照今天聽課聽到的東西作的練習，強迫自己坐在電腦前一個小時寫英文。想到什麼就寫什麼，也許錯誤很多，但是我想先建立起英文寫作的習慣。練筆之作，繼續努力。希望一年後，我的英文寫作可以搬上枱面 :)
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