This is a select bibliography of references to help the nurse writer and the nurse scholar. Your additions are welcome.
Buresh and Gordon’s From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public (2nd ed., ILR Press, 2006; 296 pp; $19.95) guides practicing nurses to write for public audiences in order to enter public debates on health issues in various media.
Fondiller’s The Writer’s Workbook: Health Professionals’ Guide to Getting Published (2nd ed., Jones & Bartlett, 1999; 184 pp; $64) is now somewhat dated (the publishing landscape has changed dramatically in ten years) and is designed for a professional, rather than academic, readership.
Fondiller and Nerone’s Health Professionals Style Manual (Springer, 2007; 152 pp; $40) provides a concise guide for both academic and professional writers in all health professions, not just nursing.
Heinrich’s A Nurse’s Guide to Presenting and Publishing: Dare to Share (Jones & Bartless, 2008; 438 pp; $53) provides a writing-workshop process approach to a variety of forms of professional communication for nurses and is particularly attentive to the psychological obstacles to writing/publishing that many nurses experience. It is intended to be read chapter by chapter as the writer moves through the a process from concept to submission of a manuscript.
Holtzclaw, Kenner and Walden’s Grant Writing Handbook for Nurses (2nd ed., Jones & Bartlett, 2009; 293 pp; $45) focuses on a detailed beginning-to-end analysis of the process of applying for and managing research grants.
Anna Neumann’s Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lives and Careers in the American Research University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009; 306 pp;$45) is a monograph reporting on the author’s qualitative study of faculty at different colleges and universities (Four Universities Project and People’s State University Project). The seventh and final chapter (“The Middle Remapped”) summarizes implications for faculty, higher ed leaders, and researchers who study higher ed. Appendices include study design, interview protocols, and a summary of the five propositions forming the framework for the studies.
Nursing Care Planning Made Incredibly Easy (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007; 288 pp; $43) addresses one specific kind of professional writing, and provides methods and templates for writing care plans.
Oermann’s Writing for Publication in Nursing (Lippincott, 2002; 313 pp; $57.95) provides a detailed step-by-step textbook approach to writing in a variety of genres and for a variety of forms of publication.
Tornquist’s From Proposal to Publication: An Informal Guide to Writing about Nursing Research (Pearson, 1984; 215 pp; $51) is specifically aimed at an academic audience of nurse scholars and researchers (including graduate students) who seek to publish their research; it is also now over 25 years old.
A fuller bibliography has been recommended by members of the International Academy of Nurse Editors:
Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success
Wendy Laura Belcher
Write Tight: Say Exactly What You Mean with Precision and Power
William Brohaugh
Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
Claire Kehrwald Cook
Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches
John W. Creswell
The Art of Thinking Clearly
Rolf Dobelli
Writing Literature Reviews: A Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Jose L. Galvan and Melisa C. Galvan
Evaluating Research Articles from Start to Finish
Ellen R. Girden and Robert I. Kabacoff
Becoming an Academic Writer: 50 Exercises for Paced, Productive, and Powerful Writing
Patricia Goodson
Publish and Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar
Tara Gray
A Nurse’s Guide to Presenting and Publishing: Dare to Share
Kathleen T. Heinrich
Writing for Publication in Nursing and Healthcare: Getting It Right
Karen Holland and Roger Watson
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anne Lamott
Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words
David Lindsay
Manuscript Success
Leslie H. Nicoll
Writing in the Digital Age: Savvy Publishing for Healthcare Professionals
Leslie H. Nicoll and Peggy L. Chinn
Writing for Publication in Nursing
Marilyn H. Oermann and Judith C. Hays
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Steven Pinker
The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing
Tonette S. Rocco, Timothy Gary Hatcher, and John W. Creswell
Anatomy of Writing for Publication for Nurses
Cynthia Saver
Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded
Joshua Schimel
The Elements of Style
William Strunk and E. B. White
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss
On Writing Well
William Zinsser
