When we work with our data we have to decide who and what gets to be in the story. A number goes in the table or it doesn’t. A quote earns half a page, a passing mention, or nothing at all. The participant who said the awkward, off-message thing gets wrapped in a sentence that […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Have a word or two with your data
Love your revisions
George Saunders won the Man Booker prize in 2017 with his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Earlier that year he wrote about his revising process. My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and “N” on this side (“Negative”). I try to read what I’ve written uninflectedly, […] … learn more→
How to be Reviewer 2
Everyone in academia knows Reviewer 2. You ‘ve probably received their comments. You may even in a dark moment, have been them. This post is a practical guide to achieving full Reviewer 2 status. It’s offered in the spirit of knowing your enemy. Reviewer 2 has an attitude. Even before they have read the abstract, […] … learn more→
Key words – dissemination communication, sharing
Doctoral researchers are sometimes asked in their viva what their plans for dissemination are. Gulp. But this is a question worth thinking about. It’s not a trick question. Examiners are genuinely interested in how you think about what happens after the viva. They may also have some helpful ideas about what you could do. However, […] … learn more→
Is AI really ‘writing’? From a priestess to philosophers, ancient authors would have said ‘no’
I teach writing and rhetoric, but my college students and I often overlook a surprisingly complicated question: What is writing? And can artificial intelligence really do it? Many people think of “writing” as putting words on a page. However, even from very early on, writers have seen their craft as something more. From Enheduanna, the first named […] … learn more→
From thesis to monograph
There’s nothing quite like holding your first book in your hands. The tactile nature of the object somehow emblemises the years of hard work. It has weight. Physically turning each page feels satisfying. Black symbols on bright white paper stand as a beacon of hard-earned knowledge. If the Great Gatsby novel emblemised the jazz age, in a […] … learn more→
Key word – coherence in academic writing
A coherent piece of writing is one where the parts connect to the whole. That sounds obvious, but it can be difficult to achieve. That’s partly because the whole is surprisingly easy to lose sight of, especially in long texts where the writing happens across days or weeks or months. The whole is never entirely […] … learn more→
Placemaking and the academic writer
I’ve just read a paper about epistemic placemaking. Epistemic placemaking is equipping and arranging places for knowledge work. The paper suggests that students might actively co-design the spaces they need, rather than simply inhabiting whatever institutional niche happens to be there. The nub of the argument is that knowledge work is deeply entangled with the conditions […] … learn more→
Key word – concision
Concision is not the same as brevity. A short piece of writing can be wasteful with its words, and a long piece can be meaning-full right to the last sentence. Getting concise is about getting clear about meanings, not addressing the total word count. When you cut a sentence that does no work, or replace […] … learn more→
In defence of procrastination
Procrastination often gets a bad rap in academic writing advice circles. It’s generally seen as a problem to be managed, a symptom of anxiety or perfectionism. In other words, it’s a productivity failure. Writing advice givers like me have designed entire systems to overcome procrastination – tomato timers, accountability partners, writing retreats, word-count targets. And yes, before we […] … learn more→
