Winning the Publications Game - 4th Edition (2016)

Know yourself 17
I fondly remember one course participant who said after
the second day that he had greatly enjoyed himself and
learnt a great deal about the mechanics of writing a
paper. But, he continued, he had a busy and successful
practice and a growing family, and he had now come to
the conclusion that he would make a better use of his
time by going fishing instead.
He was in control.
Goals – and can you achieve them?
Once you know why you feel you should be writing, you
can start setting some realistic writing goals. If you want
to be a professor before the age of 35, for instance, you
may decide that you need to have published three papers
in prestigious journals within the next year. If you wish
to write one paper for your CV then a different set of
actions would be in order (see Figure 2.1).
Make sure that you are in a position to do what you
need to do. You have a problem, for instance, if you
need to publish an original paper and the material you
have is only suitable for a case report. You may have to
set up your own research, or find a new job where you
can spend more time on research. But modern life is not
always as straightforward as that, and you may not be
able to take such drastic action. Furthermore, you may
be part of a larger team and have little influence on what
you can write. The important thing is that you keep a
sense of reality: do not write yourself off as an incompetent
writer when in fact, through no fault of your own,
you have nothing suitable to write about.