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Visit www.sagepub.com to explore our complete catalog. 77 WRITING SKILLS Wish you could tackle all your writing assignments way ahead of deadline but wonder if this is even possible? Feeling as though you should be writing and publishing more but just don't know how to make it happen? Well…you're not alone. These 10 tips derived from the POWER model (Promoting Outstanding Writing for Excellence in Research) developed by Patricia Goodson, recipient of the 2018 Textbook & Academic Authors Association's Textbook Excellence Award, will help you gain (or regain) control over your writing and disarm forever the guillotine of anxiety, fear, and stress. • Deep practice: Research evidence points to deep practice as one (if not the one) key element for developing extraordinary skills. If you commit to practice your academic writing and obtain continual feedback, your writing and productivity levels will improve. • Schedule your writing sessions: This will help you to manage the factors that hinder your ability to write regularly. • Organize messy drafts: Place similar ideas together much in the same way you would organize the silverware in your kitchen drawer: knives go with knives, forks with forks, etc. Place like with like. • Incorporate new words into your writing: By doing this daily, you combat writing that eventually becomes stale and boring. • Read a book on good-quality writing, grammar, or punctuation: Do this for 15 minutes before beginning your writing session. Most books will teach you different aspects of correctness or formality, which you can apply immediately in your writing. • Ask someone to identify one grammar problem you have: Focus on spotting that problem in your writing and all other pieces you wrote and correct it. • Identify one grammar rule you will focus on: Apply the rule during your writing session and write about how you applied it. • Develop a writing group: Meet regularly with fellow writers who are strongly motivated and also need support. • Read your work out loud: This can help detect problems such as "roundabout or long winded language," "bureaucratic prose," "repetition or 'clang'," and "interruptions." • Tighten your paragraphs: A "tight" academic paragraph's internal structure consists of the following parts: (Transition) + One Key Idea + Development of Key Idea. It's important to make sure your paragraphs follow this formula so that they help reinforce the structure of the entire piece. The paragraph's structure in academic writing may be boring for creative writers, but it works well for communicating ideas among scholars and other professionals concerned with a bottom-line take-home message. Regain control over your writing with advice from award-winning exper t Patricia Goodson 10 Tips for Building Your Academic Writing Skills Don't miss Patricia Goodson's, Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing, 2e on page 76, Winner of the 2018 Textbook & Academic Authors Association's Textbook Excellence Award.

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