I was fortunate enough recently to win a Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship – awarded by Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council – to write a book. I will use my research grant proposal as the basis for this seminar on the art of writing – not so much in the rain, but for success both in winning grants and in publishing. I will start by describing some general techniques that I have learnt in my years as a writer and as an editor of numerous journals and book series. These techniques include how to write good abstracts, introductions and conclusions; the many different ways to make an argument; how a focus on purpose helps with structure and development. Then I will look closely at some sections of my Prestigious Fellowship research proposal and show what moves I made in writing a proposal that won the Fellowship: why I wrote inductively here and deductively there; how I made that argument succeed this one; why a particular writing technique probably worked better than another I could have used; how the writing works continually to keep reviewers’ attention and, yes, to impress them. This is thus a presentation focused at the micro-level on the techniques of good academic writing.
