Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Using This Workbook
Goals of the workbook. History of the workbook. Philosophy of the workbook. Pedagogy of the workbook.
General instructions. Using the workbook according to your temperament, discipline, or career stage. Using the workbook by yourself, with a writing partner, in a writing group, with coauthors, or to teach a class. Feedback to the author.
Week 1: Designing Your Plan for Writing
Instruction: Understanding feelings about writing. Keys to positive writing experiences. Designing a plan for submitting your article in twelve weeks.
Exercises: Selecting a paper for revision. Choosing your writing site. Designing your writing schedule. Anticipating and overturning writing obstacles.
Week 2: Starting Your Article
Instruction: Types of academic articles. Myths about publishable journal articles. What gets published and why. Abstracts as a tool for success. Getting started on your article revision.
Exercises: Hammering out your topic. Rereading your paper. Drafting your abstract. Reading a model article. Revising your abstract.
Week 3: Advancing Your Argument
Instruction: Common reasons why journals reject articles. Main reason journal articles are rejected: no argument. Making a good argument. Organizing your article around your argument.
Exercises: Drafting your argument. Reviewing your article for an argument. Revising your article around your argument.
Week 4: Selecting a Journal
Instruction: Good news about journals. The importance of picking the right journal. Types of academic journals: nonrecommended, questionable, and preferred. Finding suitable academic journals.
Exercises: Searching for journals. Evaluating academic journals. Matching your article to suitable journals. Reading relevant journals. Writing a query letter to editors. Making a final decision about which journal.
Week 5: Reviewing the Related Literature
Instruction: Reading the scholarly literature. Types of scholarly literature. Strategies for getting reading done. Identifying your relationship to the related literature. Avoiding plagiarism. Writing about others′ research.
Exercises: Evaluating your current citations. Identifying and reading the related literature. Evaluating the related literature. Writing or revising your related literature review.
Week 6: Strengthening Your Structure
Instruction: On the importance of structure. Types of structures. Article structures in the social sciences and humanities. Solving structural problems. Revising for structure.
Exercises: Outlining a model article. Outlining your article. Restructuring your article.
Week 7: Presenting Your Evidence
Instruction: Types of evidence. Writing up evidence in the social sciences. Writing up evidence in the humanities. Revising your evidence.
Exercises: Discussing evidence in your field. Revisiting your evidence. Shaping your evidence around your argument.
Week 8: Opening and Concluding Your Article
Instruction: On the importance of openings. Revising your opening and conclusion.
Exercises: Revising your title. Revising your introduction. Revisiting your abstract, related literature review, and author order. Revising your conclusion.
Week 9: Giving, Getting, and Using Others′ Feedback
Instruction: Types of feedback. Exchanging your articles.
Exercises: Sharing your article and getting feedback. Making a list of remaining tasks. Revising your article according to feedback.
Week 10: Editing Your Sentences
Instruction: On taking the time. Types of revising. The rules of editing. The Belcher diagnostic test. Editing your article.
Exercises: Running the Belcher diagnostic test. Revising your article with the diagnostic test. Correcting other types of problem sentences.
Week 11: Wrapping Up Your Article
Instruction: On the perils of perfection. Finalizing your article.
Exercises: Finalizing your argument, related literature review, introduction, evidence, structure, and conclusion.
Week 12: Sending Your Article!
Instruction: On the importance of finishing. Getting the submission ready.
Exercises: Writing the cover letter. Preparing illustrations. Putting your article into the journal′s style. Preparing the final print or electronic version. Send and celebrate!
Week X: Responding to Journal Decisions
Instruction: An exhortation. Waiting for the journal′s decision. Reading the journal′s decision. Types of journal decisions. Responding to journal decisions.
Exercises: Evaluating and responding to the journal decision. Planning your revision. Revising your article. Drafting your revision cover letter. Requesting permissions. On the importance of persevering.
End Notes
Works Cited
Recommended Reading
Index
About the Author

About the Author

Wendy Laura Belcher is an award-winning author, academic editor, international lecturer, and professor. She designed one of the first publication focused writing courses for graduate students and junior faculty in the nation, and for ten years has conducted such courses at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in research institutions around the world, including those in Norway, Malawi, Sudan, and Egypt. These popular workshops are based on her twenty years of experience as an academic editor, including eleven years managing an ethnic studies press and the peer-reviewed journal of record in the field, Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, as well as her two master’s degrees in the social sciences and a doctorate in the humanities.

 

She is also a published nonfiction author, whose memoir about her childhood in Ethiopia and Ghana, Honey from the Lion: An African Journey, won a Washington State Governor’s Writers Award and honorable mention in the Martha Albrand/PEN Society Award for first book of nonfiction. She is now an assistant professor of African literature in the Princeton University Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for African American Studies.

Reviews

"Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks is the one book I would most recommend to inexperienced academic authors in the humanities or social sciences who seriously wish to see their scholarly work in print. Other books may be quicker to read, but I doubt if any would ultimately prove to be as effective."
*Steven E. Gump*

"Thorough, beautifully organized, and humane.  This is a welcome light on a dark process."
*Kevin Peterson*

"Belcher′s book uses an interactive format to help writers develop a manuscript for submission from a pre-existing text such as a dissertation/thesis... When I used this book to teach writing for publication, doctorial students responded enthusiastically to the format and tone, which bolstered their confidence and enabled them to confront displacement activities."
*Mary Jane Curry*

"While addressing the sometimes-unsearchable field of scholarly writing and publishing, Wendy Belcher uses unpretentious, contemporary, and even witty prose that is simultaneously captivating and informative."
*Grant Eckstein*