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 […]

If You Want to Write, Do It (and Skip the ‘Weaseling Qualifiers’)

Photo by mezone, via Flickr. Photo by mezone, via Flickr.

Are you one of those people—nurse or otherwise—who daydreams about writing (a personal essay about a formative experience, an article about a quality improvement project you took part in, a blog post about some aspect of nursing) but can’t seem to find the proper way to get started?

Since the weekend is coming and the October issue of AJN is now live on our Web site, it seems a good time to draw attention to “On Writing: Just Do It,” the editorial by Shawn Kennedy, AJN‘s editor-in-chief. Kennedy points out the one idea common to most writing advice: you have to start somewhere. You have to do it, and learn from doing it, and then keep doing it. Or, as she puts it:

One key to becoming a good writer—or a good anything—is persistence.

But the editorial also gives a range of other excellent tips from Kennedy and several experts in the field, and quotes writing advice found in AJN issues through the decades. My favorite bit is from a 1977 editorial by former AJN editor Thelma Schorr:

“ [the writer] will use the active voice and not shirk his [or her] responsibility by introducing a statement with such weaseling qualifiers as ‘It is considered that…’ or ‘It is generally believed that…’”

What a great word: “weaseling.” It’s about as far as you can get from the jargon that afflicts so much academic […]

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