Developing doctoral writing in four dimensions: Helen Sword’s baseline

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Desire to write, Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

This post is premised squarely on the base line of Helen Sword’s latest book on academic writing. She begins by asking the reader to self-audit their own strengths and weaknesses as writers. This task orients them into the book, one rich with data from interviews with successful academic writers as to how they work. Sword has recommendations for each of the dimensions in this exercise. Yet she begins not with good advice, but with an affective approach, reaching into the core of each reader by asking us to reflect on who we are as writers. To self-analyse, we are given an exercise evaluating the different aspects of academic writing that influence development.

Lyn’s Favourite Things: Time Management Strategies

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time management, Writing motivation

In this post, Dr Lyn Lavery offers some excellent advice to doctoral writers for managing their time productively.

I’m a big fan of making the most of the time I have as it means I have more time to spend on the things I enjoy. Here are my three favourite strategies for doing just that.

Eat a Frog

If you’ve ever had the experience of sitting down to check your emails first thing in the morning, only to realise three hours later that the most productive time of your day has disappeared, then I highly recommend frog eating. The idea comes from Mark Twain – he suggested that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ll know that’s the worst thing that will happen to you all day. (There’s a thought for when your doctoral writing is getting on top of you.)

The developing thesis proposal: questions to launch doctoral writing

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research questions, Writing motivation

By Susan Carter

A potential doctoral candidate choosing their topic might ask themselves: ‘”What are the subjects that interest me—that I want to make sense of?” “Who do I want to talk to about these subjects?” And “What can I bring to the conversation?”’ (Kempe, 2005: 2). These are three pertinent questions that Anne Sigismund Huff saw as initiating research direction. From there, though, it is rarely that simple.

How to work with a thesis editor

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professional editors, thesis editing, thesis supervision

Dr Kerrie Le Lievre is a former teacher of business and academic writing at the University of Adelaide, and a current freelance editor. She is a professional member of the Society of Editors (SA), a branch of IPEd. You can find her blog, which includes thesis-writing tips, at https://kleditor.wordpress.com/blog/.

By Kerrie Le Lievre

It’s becoming increasingly common for PhD and Masters students to employ professional editors or proofreaders when finalising their theses. However, many editors report that the students who contact them often know very little about what a thesis editor does, how to work with one, or even when to approach one.

While Australia’s Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) has some useful information available online both for supervisors and for students, these mostly focus on what happens once an editor has been engaged, and cover only a small portion of what students need to know to ensure that they can work effectively with their chosen editor. Similar information is available from the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) in the UK, and multiple bodies in the USA. This post uses Australian practice as a model, but the advice given here will be useful in other contexts too.

Preparation phase

Well before students complete their thesis drafts, they need to know what a thesis editor does, how to locate one and when to contact one.

Moving beyond ‘because I said so’ – motivation for thesis writing

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completion of doctorate, Disciplining the writer, Emotions and academic writing, Writing motivation

Dr Kay Guccione (@kayguccione) works at the University of Sheffield. Kay designs mentoring programmes for researchers and her work is centred on linking people together to talk about the things that matter to them.

By Kay Guccione

Writing a thesis of 80,000 to 100,000 words is something we expect of everyone in almost all forms of doctorate. In a PhD it’s impossible to avoid doing some writing — our writing is what we are assessed on and how we communicate our research in conventional forms. With ‘publish or perish’ resonating down every corridor, our attitude to writing is our gateway to the currency of research careers. We are emotionally preoccupied with the fear, excitement, dread, satisfaction, guilt and elation of writing (Wellington, 2010) — see #AcWri #AcWriMo #shouldbewriting #shutupandwrite…

But for some, writing in thesis form seems a futile endeavour at first glance.

New Year’s resolutions and doctoral writing: best wishes!

Tags

writing habits, Writing motivation

By Claire Aitchison, Cally Guerin and Susan Carter

Turning from one year to the next brings out self-auditing tendencies, the New Year resolutions. We have written on this before: drawing on psychology to build self-control so that those resolutions are actualized (2016) ; suggesting a series of practical approaches that might help doctoral writers get more pleasure and productivity (2015) ; and considering ‘habits of mind, body, time, place and pace’ with a range of options used by famous authors (2014) . That was useful advice, and the posts are still there for any wanting new year re-energisation. This year, though, we thought we would each describe our own aspirations for 2017.

Claire

This year Susan has set us on a provocation to declare our New Year’s writing resolutions. It’s a delightful (although slightly scary) suggestion to make something public that is generally private.  As usual, during the Christmas break I took down my annual writing schedule from above my desk, and before throwing it out, reviewed what I had achieved. It’s a satisfying task to reflect on what has come in as anticipated and to ponder further on what was not achieved. The most exciting thing for me is the little buzz that I get from the writing that happened serendipitously, not even imagined at the beginning of the year.

Over the years I have become better at planning my writing for the year ahead. I’ve also learned that the most crucial variable is how much control I have in my life.  There have been some years when new demands have seriously limited my ability to progress my writing goals. As a consultant over the last few years I have had more control over my workload and thus have had greater success.

I often co-author with colleagues with whom I have established productive working relationships.  Some years January commences with a number of commitments already in train and other times the horizon is pretty clear. Conferences and colleagues are always built into my planning – for me, both are powerful motivators.

But, what of my plans for 2017?  This year my job has changed and I am beginning to see how I can bring the learning from that into my work around doctoral writing. I enjoy new challenges and particularly enjoy working with colleagues who push my thinking. I always learn so much from working with others, whether it’s a simple trick with Word, or a new perspective; I find it invigorating. In addition I find stimulation from my work – many workshops have ended up being posts and then extended further into papers.

I also like to extend myself with a new theory  or a topic.  For example, I may be intrigued with a thought that returns and shapes up over months (or years!). Sometimes the theory comes first and sometimes it is the problem or issue that surfaces and troubles my thinking. The beginning of a year is a good time to do a stock-take to see if I can nail this down into something publishable.

So, what does this add up to? I’m devising my own year as a foray into new areas of interest.I will also continue to write with old friends and colleagues. Reflecting on my process for this post lets me see what might be of use to doctoral students; namely:

• Make a schedule: to keep you anchored when things are madly busy and for a self-auditing.
• Use the aspects of writing you know inspire you as motivation—acknowledge them and factor them in.
• Accept that some writing obstacles are outside of your control.
• Identify and acknowledge the learning you do as a writer.

 

 

Cally

Last year I tried to finish off a few writing projects that had been hanging around for some time. I wanted to get them off my desk to clear space for new thinking in 2017. So now I’m allowing myself to start work on some new projects.

As a first step, I’m preparing a couple of ethics applications. I hear from others about their frustrations at being forced to fill in the forms, and what they experience as delays when they have to amend applications to meet the requirements of their ethics committee. But in my field I don’t have the complications of human drug trials and medical interventions, working with children, with indigenous communities, nor negotiating the sensitivities of vulnerable groups. My work is regarded as ‘low risk’ in that I just want to talk to people about topics that are not particularly contentious or disturbing. This means that it’s usually fairly straight forward and at my university these applications can be approved by the core committee – I don’t need to meet particular deadlines posed by the less frequent meetings of the full committee. On the whole, I find ethics applications provide a very useful process that makes me think carefully about method and project design, why I want to do what I do, and how it can be useful to others. Obviously, I want my research to be ethical, and paying proper attention to this at the very beginning is appropriate and leads to better outcomes – in my experience, at least.

I’ve also been thinking about more creative, alternative research methods, and want to take the opportunity with new projects to try and push this a little further. One book that has inspired me is Helen Kara’s (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide (Bristol: Policy Press). She talks about shadowing, mapping, and transformative data gathering, all of which I find interesting. Others are doing fascinating work using big data and social media in their education research. I certainly don’t feel very confident about how to do anything like this, so it’s bound to be a steep learning curve! It feels promising to start the New Year with some new writing challenges – I’m keen to get on with it.

Susan

I’ve been in the habit with my academic writing of simply listing what I want to complete in the new year. There is something confirming about reviewing the year that has gone and looking forward to the one ahead. Primary questions are

• When I reach the end of this new year, what writing will I be most satisfied to have completed?
• What must I do?
• What really interests me?
• How theoretical am I willing to be? Am I willing to go further into theory this year?

Doctoral students usually find ‘what must I do’ the most important of these, and rightly so, but it is worth taking the annual cusp opportunity to face up to other relevant questions about direction.

It’s quite a personal consideration because it includes the persona in style and voice as well as the topic focus. I sit with an overview in mind and list goals for the year, usually on paper. I think about the pattern of the year, that is, when I might want to take a break; when teaching might be heavy; when there are deadlines that I already know I will need to meet. As the year feeds through, I follow this up with monthly goal-listing and weekly goal-listing. Somehow sitting and writing this down usually anchors my writing flow throughout the year. The trick is to take your own deadlines seriously.

This year, though, I am thinking differently. I want to focus on increasing the pleasure that I find in academic writing. So I intend to consciously treat both my writing and my academic work as a game. I am convinced by Jane McGonigal (2010): when we’re in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again. And in real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we often don’t feel that way. We feel overcome, we feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when we’re playing games; they just don’t exist in games.

I want to put behind me the irritation that I feel when writing doesn’t go well, or the dread I feel towards the drudgery of revision for consistency. I want to find pleasure in what I do, and courage to change my own patterns if I feel that they trap me in the same rut. For me this year, my ambitions are less with productivity and more with attitude.

McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. TED, Feb, 2010. Available at http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world/transcript?language=en#t-161000