Thinking About Writing? Here Are the Next Steps

Been procrastinating?

We’re entering August, when many people take at least a few days for vacation before the busy school year begins. For those of you who’ve been procrastinating on writing that article you swore you would write over the summer, and for those who will face writing a capstone paper in your next semester, now’s the time. Here are some suggestions and resources that may help.

At www.ajnonline.com, under the Collections tab at the top, you can access our “Writing Resources” collection, where you’ll find our award-winning step-by-step series, Writing for Publication. It’s a free four-part series that guides you through the writing process. Also listed under the Collections tab is another step-by-step series, Writing Systematic Reviews.

The process of writing: set aside small regular time increments.

Forget trying to churn out a paper in one weekend—it’s a stressful and unfulfilling way to write, and the end product will fall short. If you want to really become a good writer, you need to write. It takes practice, like any other skill.

Commit to set aside a bit of time for writing. It doesn’t have to be a lot; start with 30 minutes, maybe three times a week, and get started writing. Commit to that time faithfully—make an appointment with […]

2019-07-31T09:34:10-04:00July 31st, 2019|Nursing, nursing career, writing|0 Comments
Read More

What Types of Articles Do Journal Editors Want to Read?

Writing is time-consuming and difficult to do—the last thing you want is to spend time working on a manuscript that has little chance of being published. There are many strategies you can use to enhance the likelihood of publication, which we discuss throughout this series, but the first and most important is writing the type of article that journal editors want to publish.

Those opening sentences from “What Types of Articles to Write,” the third in AJN‘s ongoing Writing for Publication: Step by Step series by Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, speak directly to the uncertainty that besets many would-be nurse writers (and in fact, all writers). Form is intimately tied to content. Ideally, the two should support each other, but first they have to be a good fit.

What type of article should you write?

What types of articles will get journal editors’ attention? And what will hold their attention once they open your manuscript? […]

2017-05-25T11:07:23-04:00May 25th, 2017|Nursing, writing|0 Comments
Read More

AJN in March: CKD Complications and Treatment, Writing Tips for Nurses, Acute Pain Management, More

The March issue of AJN is now live. Here are some articles we’d like to bring to your attention.

CE Feature: Improving Outcomes for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: Part 2

The second installment of this two-part article addresses chronic kidney disease complications and treatment of kidney failure. Part 1, which appeared last month, offered an overview of the disease, describing identification and etiology, and discussed ways to slow disease progression.

CE Feature: Defining and Understanding Pilot and Other Feasibility Studies

Nurses are becoming increasingly involved in conducting clinical research in which feasibility studies are often the first steps. This article provides an overview of feasibility studies, including pilot studies, and explains the type of preliminary data they seek to provide in order to make larger, future studies more efficient and successful.

Original Research: How to Create a Poster That Attracts an Audience

Nurses developing a poster presentation for the first time who look for guidance in the literature will find many articles offering recommendations on format and style, but these are based on opinion rather than evidence. This study identifies the design principles and content-specific attributes of a poster that improve the chance that […]

2017-03-06T14:48:04-05:00February 27th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Summertime: Time to Write

karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons

July 4th has come and gone and summer still stretches out before us. For many, summer is a time to relax and take things a bit slower. Working moms and dads don’t have to deal with school projects; faculty have no or at least fewer classes to teach. It’s the perfect time to write—or at least start—that article you’ve had on your “To Do” list for the last year (or two or three).

Many budding authors tell me that the hardest part about writing is getting started, so here are suggestions from a pair of editors and writers who teach writing workshops (included, along with several other writing tips, in my 2014 editorial on the topic):

2016-11-21T13:01:06-05:00July 11th, 2016|career, narratives, Nursing|1 Comment
Read More

‘My Professor Said to Submit My Paper’ (We Hope They Also Told You This)

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons

When we get a manuscript submission, I always read the cover letter first to learn about the author and why the article was written. Often, the first sentence goes something like this: “I am a student and I’m submitting my capstone paper as required by my professor.” Or the letter may say, “My professor encouraged me to submit this paper, my capstone work.”

The paper is usually the very paper the student wrote and submitted to the professor. And that almost always means it’s not suitable for a professional journal.

The problem is not that we won’t consider manuscripts written by students—we sometimes welcome them, especially papers written by nurses who are experienced clinicians and working toward a graduate degree. The problem with the submissions I’m talking about here is inherent in the purpose of the papers themselves. Student papers are written primarily to demonstrate what the student knows about a subject; these papers tend to be expansive, cover the topic in a superficial way, and include a long list of references of books, articles, and Web sites (or, conversely, they may only have a few references, mostly Web sites, plus perhaps one much-cited textbook—thankfully, few are citing Wikipedia).

Student papers that describe themselves as “literature reviews” often have no information about the search strategy—and little synthesis. Instead, they contain a long list of various studies related to the […]

2018-03-27T15:43:18-04:00February 22nd, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top