This post is a modified version of a piece I wrote as part of the Oxford University Conservation Governance Lab.
In this post, I am going to make a distinction between writing as thinking about research and writing as presenting research. I feel that my habits and techniques are quite different depending on which writing mode I am in at the moment.
Writing as thinking
So how do I use writing in this way? During my dissertation and following Bolker (1998), I tried to write at least two pages a day, ideally starting in the morning when I first opened up my computer. This freewriting almost never involved me making detailed arguments. It was simply a way to allow ideas to “pop up” out of my sub-conscious. I would then regularly read through the resulting massive pile of words to pick out useful ideas or research directions. For instance, I can still pinpoint when I looked at the 1,500 page UK National Ecosystem Assessment and chose to focus on ecosystem service valuation:
Writing as presentation
I have to admit that I am less self-aware about how I write documents that are going to be assessed or published. I have tried to “freewrite” pieces before, but that technique really just doesn’t seem to work for me when writing up a draft. I think it is because my perfectionist nature (related to writing) means that I am overwhelmed by the number of things that need to be changed in such a rough form. I prefer to slowly write a section piece by piece, so that the first, rough draft is at least readable and flows together. In other words, freewriting works for me when creating rough ideas – what Bolker refers to as the “zero draft” – but when it comes to the actual first draft I prefer to think through the process. However, aside from general headings (introduction, methods, results, etc.), I don’t tend to map out the structure of what I am writing until the first round of editing on my first draft. However, I probably need to spend more time thinking about the flow of my papers, as I often get feedback saying that the overall structure does not “hang together” as well as it could.
I am also interested in the psychology of writing. I find writing quite stressful, especially when writing for presentation. This is especially true on long documents with lots of moving parts, such as my dissertation and the textbook that I edited in my previous job. To deal with my sense of being overwhelmed by complexity, I have started to create a separate document titled “writing way point”. In this document, I write or edit ONLY the section that I am actively working on, which prevents me from giving into the urge to skip to the next section and then become overwhelmed. And at the end of large projects, I tend to turn off the clock on my computer as well as the word count on Microsoft Word to try to limit my immediate attention to the words on the page.
As a final note, I wrote this blog post straight through and opened up about seven other documents to pull in bits and pieces that I wanted to include. Now I will go through to look for typos and add references.
So how does everyone else write?
References
Bryman, A., 2012. Social Research Methods. 4th ed. Oxford University Press, USA.
Bolker, J. 1998. Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day : a guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis. New York : H. Holt
In this post, I am going to make a distinction between writing as thinking about research and writing as presenting research. I feel that my habits and techniques are quite different depending on which writing mode I am in at the moment.
Writing as thinking
“Writing is thinking in slow motion. We see what at normal speeds escapes us, can rerun the reel at will to look for errors, erase, interpolate, and rethink. Most thoughts are a light rain, fall upon the ground, and dry up. Occasionally they become a stream that runs a short distance before it disappears. Writing stands an incomparably better chance of getting somewhere.”I often use writing as a way to think through my research in a relatively free-flowing, unedited way. One member of the faculty here has talked about how he often lets a paper roll around in his head for a while before putting his thoughts on paper. That approach is very difficult for me, mainly because I cannot map out a piece of writing in my head; my process of mapping almost always requires a piece of paper which I add to iteratively over a period of hours or days.
-Walter Kaufmann, 1968
So how do I use writing in this way? During my dissertation and following Bolker (1998), I tried to write at least two pages a day, ideally starting in the morning when I first opened up my computer. This freewriting almost never involved me making detailed arguments. It was simply a way to allow ideas to “pop up” out of my sub-conscious. I would then regularly read through the resulting massive pile of words to pick out useful ideas or research directions. For instance, I can still pinpoint when I looked at the 1,500 page UK National Ecosystem Assessment and chose to focus on ecosystem service valuation:
“It may be interesting, as sites for both the goals of the report and of interdisciplinary interaction at “the ground level”, to focus on the valuation chapters.” (July 6)A more structured way that I went about “writing as thinking” was to create “research memos” that synthesized my thinking about the literature I was reading (I got the idea from Bryman 2012). For instance, I created a memo on “collective action framing” which served as a “workshop” where I could combine the perspectives I was finding in the literature with my own critical analysis. These memos almost never turned into complete, edited documents. However, many sentences/paragraphs/perspectives from those memos ended up in the final document (especially the literature review section).
Writing as presentation
I have to admit that I am less self-aware about how I write documents that are going to be assessed or published. I have tried to “freewrite” pieces before, but that technique really just doesn’t seem to work for me when writing up a draft. I think it is because my perfectionist nature (related to writing) means that I am overwhelmed by the number of things that need to be changed in such a rough form. I prefer to slowly write a section piece by piece, so that the first, rough draft is at least readable and flows together. In other words, freewriting works for me when creating rough ideas – what Bolker refers to as the “zero draft” – but when it comes to the actual first draft I prefer to think through the process. However, aside from general headings (introduction, methods, results, etc.), I don’t tend to map out the structure of what I am writing until the first round of editing on my first draft. However, I probably need to spend more time thinking about the flow of my papers, as I often get feedback saying that the overall structure does not “hang together” as well as it could.
I am also interested in the psychology of writing. I find writing quite stressful, especially when writing for presentation. This is especially true on long documents with lots of moving parts, such as my dissertation and the textbook that I edited in my previous job. To deal with my sense of being overwhelmed by complexity, I have started to create a separate document titled “writing way point”. In this document, I write or edit ONLY the section that I am actively working on, which prevents me from giving into the urge to skip to the next section and then become overwhelmed. And at the end of large projects, I tend to turn off the clock on my computer as well as the word count on Microsoft Word to try to limit my immediate attention to the words on the page.
As a final note, I wrote this blog post straight through and opened up about seven other documents to pull in bits and pieces that I wanted to include. Now I will go through to look for typos and add references.
So how does everyone else write?
References
Bryman, A., 2012. Social Research Methods. 4th ed. Oxford University Press, USA.
Bolker, J. 1998. Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day : a guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis. New York : H. Holt
