{"id":427,"date":"2013-03-28T18:26:07","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T01:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=427"},"modified":"2013-03-28T18:26:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T01:26:07","slug":"scholarly-writing-and-how-to-get-it-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2013\/03\/28\/scholarly-writing-and-how-to-get-it-done\/","title":{"rendered":"“Scholarly Writing and How to Get It Done”"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s the subtitle of my favourite blog on academic writing, “Stupid Motivational Tricks<\/a>,” authored (primarily) by Jonathan Mayhew, a Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas, who is a friend of mine and has been since our days in the sun in graduate school at Stanford. I have mentioned Mayhew’s work earlier, in my post on “The Plain Style<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Mayhew’s blog is notable for its winsome erudition and a tart, funny and hyper-lucid prose style. Its focus on practical strategies for actually putting words on the page<\/em> is unmatched among scholarly blogs and books I’ve seen. His insights on the latter include ways to divide one’s days<\/a> and weeks rationally, how to use one’s non-writing time<\/a> to resolve intellectual and creative problems, and how best to interact with one’s peers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of these insights are “portable,” and can help you become more productive in your own workplace. His blog is worth bookmarking as a resource for all writers.<\/p>\n

I quite like Mayhew’s recent posts on “creative uses of theory,” like this one called “The Theoretical Reading<\/a>“: It is said that if you don’t have theory, you will be relying on an unstated theory, unreflectively. That is true. Not having a theory or not having theory will not make you into a creative reader! In fact, you are likely to have very dull ideas, in the same way that someone who knows nothing of poetry is likely to write a poem about flowers that rhymes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Full disclosure: A few years ago I made one post on this estimable blog. It was titled “Detecting BS<\/a>.” <\/i><\/p>\n

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Follow us on Twitter: @nocontestca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the subtitle of my favourite blog on academic writing, “Stupid Motivational Tricks,” authored (primarily) by Jonathan Mayhew, a Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas, who is a friend of mine and has been since our days in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9,76,100],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-academic-writing","tag-plain-english","tag-theory"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}