AcWriMo: types of feedback
How to ask for feedback, different kinds that you can ask for, common tricky feedback styles and more! This coaching call from my community is all about how and why you might want to ask for feedback, and best practices for getting what you want! get the transcript here!
explaining academic writing: a review of Dr. Jo VanEvery's Short Guides
i was completely unprepared to do academic writing of any kind.
i was MONTHS into my PhD before anyone even asked me what i was thinking of doing in terms of publishing. no one ever told me about how to scout journals, what to expect in a peer review, or how to decide what kinds of things to publish when.
i wish that i had Dr. Jo VanEvery’s short guides then. i’m so grateful you can have them now.
i first learned of Dr. VanEvery’s work when we crossed paths in a community for self-employed PhDs. she runs an amazing, generative salon of sorts for writers. like me, her work takes different forms, from coaching to community writing spaces, and her short guides are an outgrowth of that important work.
the four short guides are, well, short - but in a good way; you don’t have to take all day to read one and get something useful out of it. they’re practical and full of time-tested strategies and information to help demystify some of the most confusing and insider-only areas of academia. I can’t describe the topics any more elegantly than the author herself:
The Scholarly Writing Process
Scholarly writing involves both using writing to articulate your own ideas and get clarity on what contributions you could make, and writing things that will communicate those contributions to other scholars (and perhaps those beyond academe). Getting stuck is a normal part of the writing process, even for experienced writers. My aim in publishing this Short Guide is to help you generate new writing projects, keep your writing projects moving forward, and ensure that your writing process results in publications. Designed so you can refer to it whenever you get stuck, this Short Guide breaks down the scholarly writing process into stages and provides both a description of that stage and writing prompts to help you get unstuck.
Finding Time for Scholarly Writing
Finding Time for your Scholarly Writing addresses the problem of juggling writing alongside your other responsibilities. I identify three kinds of time: full days, longish sessions, and short snatches. In this Short Guide, I explain what kinds of writing you can do in each, and suggest ways of combining the three to ensure that you make the best use of the time available at different points in the academic year.
Scholarly Publishing
In Scholarly Publishing, I focus on the big picture of publishing for scholarly audiences. After discussing the purpose of publishing for scholarly readers and what is meant by making a contribution to the advancement of knowledge, I look in detail at the main types of scholarly publication: books, peer reviewed journal articles, and various types of work-in-progress publishing (conference papers, working papers, etc) to help you decide which type of publication will best suit your purposes. The concluding chapter discusses how you can improve discoverability of your publications. Each chapter has questions to help you apply the information to your own situation.
Peer Review
This Short Guide provides an overview of what peer review is and why it’s important, along with practical advice for both authors and reviewers. Guided by the principle that peer review supports academic writing, topics include the emotional work involved in writing and receiving reviews, and advice on finding time to review.
for grad students, i think the last two short guides, Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review, are particularly useful. especially if there are holes in what your department has or hasn’t given you training around, these guides are in some ways a replacement for the seminar or advisor taking you aside and letting you see how the wheels turn.
if you’ve ever wondered how and when to approach a publisher, how to vet a journal, the differences between publishing an article and a piece in an edited collection, well, there are answers here for you in Scholarly Publishing. the advice is broad enough to be useful for people in many different disciplines (although most pertinent to those in the humanities and social sciences, where there are more distinctions between types of publications) without being prescriptive. in addition to information to help demystify the process, there are really productive reflection questions sprinkled throughout to give you a framework to think about what ideas could or should live where.
my favorite part of the Peer Review short guide is that it begins from the premise that soliciting, receiving, and responding to criticism about your work is an emotional as well as intellectual process. like the other short guides, it contains a masterful balance of useful, clear explanations of terms and processes, and reflection spaces for you to unpack the process and support yourself. especially as more and more junior colleagues are being asked to participate in the peer review process, the view and how-tos from both author and editor are invaluable in understanding how the process works beyond just your comments, given or written.
all four of the short guides are also concluded with meticulous reference and further reading sections. i found myself bookmarking all kinds of sources for myself, and i do this professionally - so i can scarcely imagine how useful these resources will be to those just starting out on the journey of academic writing.
if you’re looking to learn more about the books, listen to a sample, or pick them up for yourself, you can do here - i recommend them highly to anyone who just wants to know how the process works, and how best to support themselves within it.
**I received these books as review copies, but all my opinions here are my own and in no way compensated. I just think these are really help for grad students!!
AcWriMo2020: draft on purpose
Most of the clients that come to me know how to do the later stages of drafting pretty well - taking a skeleton of ideas and expanding it into something more complete. But what is harder to wrap grasp is how to do something earlier in the process - how to write messy, write sloppy, write on purpose even when you aren’t quite sure what you want to say yet. I find that the earlier in the process you start to write, the more you can work with something concrete, instead of wrestling with it all in your head.
One of the most powerful tools in my writing arsenal is free-writing. Even after years (and honestly more than a few therapy sessions) digging in to why I feel anxious about writing, I've discovered that lowering the stakes helps me be much more productive. The more I focus on writing well, writing clearly, writing academically, the more I freeze up and don't write anything. But if I just commit to writing a sh*tty first draft, if the only thing I have to do is get words onto the page, then I feel much (but not totally) more comfortable with the whole endeavor. I used to be able to write very good first drafts of undergraduate, and even MA level papers - just a read through and they were ready. That isn't true of my PhD writing, and it isn't true of my professional writing. My first draft is usually one of four or five total drafts, with lots of feedback from other people along the way. So the first draft doesn't have to be 95% of the way there, just 20 or 25% of the way!
But making that switch in my mind was different than actually teaching myself to write a sh*tty first draft. It was a skill I had to develop, to let myself write more freely without editing as I go, without judging the work as it develops. Here's where free-writing comes in. This looks one of two ways for me:
1) I open up a blank Google doc, Scrivner file or Word doc and just start typing. When I'm in this flow, I type stream of consciousness thoughts, usually starting with how much I hate writing and how bad I am at it and how it will never end and I'll be working on this stupid draft for the rest of my life. Eventually, even my brain tires of writing about that, and I switch to narrating the task I'm setting down to do:
Today I'm going to write about how this newspaper article from 1934 records the unsanctioned screening of amateur footage taken from near the JESSE JAMES set. This is important because this proves that people saw the footage of the accident on set, and that it really did contribute to the backlash against the film, despite the studio's assurances that it was a non-event.
I usually don't use this writing directly in my draft but it does help me clarify my plan for the day, limit the scope, and transition my brain from "kicking and screaming tantrum about the idea of writing" to "slightly more willing participant in the writing process."
2) If I'm already feeling pretty warmed up, or if I've completed step 1), I move on to some of these writing prompt questions. Again, the text of these don't always make it through directly into the draft, but sometimes it does! But starting from these high-level, authorial reflection questions definitely helps me narrow down my contribution, instead of just narrating my research or my findings.
What is the most interesting thing about the research?
What was my most unexpected finding?
If I was teaching this source/study to an undergraduate, what context would they need to understand it?
How are my ideas different from the scholars who have looked at this topic/phenomenon before me? How are they similar?
Who will benefit from the research I've done?
What was the most difficult question to answer? What was the easiest question?
What Big Ideas in my field does this relate to?
What made me decide on this topic in the first place? What's interesting to me about it even still?
What questions do I still have about my work so far?
A pom or two answering these questions, and I'm usually ready to start working more formally on my writing: expanding my outline, filling in sentences, editing what I've previously written. But giving myself a chance to write in a low-stakes way, play with the ideas, and then move on to a first, or fifth, draft gives me a chance to get used to the physical action of typing, the headspace of writing, and sometimes even lets me tap into the fun and excitement of generating new ideas and putting them in a place where people can read them.
Scheduling writing
Many of my clients (most of my clients) (all humans everywhere, probably) lead busy, full lives. There are a thousand things competing for their attention and writing can sometimes seem like the least urgent thing in the room. But, there's a difference between urgent and important.
Urgent: things that need to be completed soon or there will be dire consequences. Urgent things are often public, and they often impact other people. These are the fires you're putting out on a daily basis.
Important: things that have a high value. It will matter if you do not do them. They're the big goals, the huge milestones, the end of the road.
But the two aren't always together. For example, if your cat escapes from your house, locating them would be both urgent and important. Submitting grades on time for your students is both urgent and important; it impacts your students (and your evaluations) if they're late, and doing well in your teaching assignment can have a long term impact on your career.
It's easy to understand why urgent and important things have to be prioritized. But if you're running your schedule solely by what is urgent, things can fall off your plate. Long term projects, far away deadlines, and your overall goals can slip out of focus when you're only dealing with the tasks and roles that are demanding your attention day to day.
Writing tasks often fall into the important, but not necessarily urgent, category. How many of us have put a conference submission deadline on the calendar months in advance, only to wake up that morning without an abstract? I struggled during semesters where I was teaching, working, and being a human to prioritize my writing - there were simply too many other things to do, and those deadlines were a long way off anyway. But then, a therapist introduced an idea to me that changed my life:
Schedule your writing.
As part of a "Dissertation Stress and Anxiety Management" support group, we were asked to track our activities and moods for a week, down to the half hour. If you spent a half hour checking Twitter, you noted it. If you slept for 12 hours, you wrote it down. It was eye opening for several reasons, but most of all, it exposed a fatal flaw in my own scheduling.
You see, I went into the exercise feeling confident that I would "do well." I was busy! I took care of important tasks and kept multiple projects up and working all at once. I rarely spent whole days procrastinating (or resting, but that's a subject for another time.) But what I realized, when I looked at the week written out, was that I spent all my time dealing with urgent tasks as they came up. I worked to the deadlines, letting others' schedules dictate my time. And I wasn't writing. I wasn't moving any of my long term goals forward. I was busy, and productive, but I was avoiding the writing because it was big, and scary, and not due yet.
So the therapist shared how she balanced her own dissertation writing with her clinical hours - she blocked out 3 hours, twice a week, as her "Dissertation Class." She was great, she reasoned, at making meetings and seminars - she would never schedule over that commitment. So, why not treat the dissertation work the same way?
She put it on her calendar, and she respected it. She didn't schedule meetings over it. She wouldn't move the time around, even by an hour, no matter how busy or behind she felt. And if she ever felt compelled to skip, or move it, or otherwise not work during that time, she would run the "class" test.
"If this were a class, with other people in community with me, would I skip it?" And if the answer was no, then she went to work. Having just six hours a week blocked off made a massive difference in moving her writing forward. It gave her time to focus on important things, not just urgent ones.
Make it work for you.
Maybe you have plenty of time for writing - but by the end of the day, you're too tired to work out. Maybe you're blocking plenty of time for your academic goals, but your professional development and career planning is falling by the wayside. You can use the same principle! Make a list of the things that are important to you, and work backwards to block time off to work on them.
Sign up for conferences or workshops around your professional development - having a commitment "on the books" can support your growth.
Look at your schedule for time you're not using as well as you could - would scheduling in a fitness class or walk around the neighborhood that you treat as immovable help you be more active?
Take an inventory of your life in its totality - where are you hitting your goals? Where could you put more focus? Does your schedule give you protected, dedicated time to work on your long-term objectives?
It can be hard to focus on important things when they aren't urgent - but eventually, they become urgent. Your dissertation chapter is due in a week. The conference abstract is due today. You are graduating next month. Your health is suffering, or your mind is anxious. Blocking time off, in the amounts and places where it works for you, in advance will help you focus on both the short and long term picture.
Plan out your time mindfully. Respect the time you set aside - you are a priority. The urgent things can (sometimes) wait until you're done.
A list of things to do when you don't want to write.
Change locations.
Open up a new document and write in that.
Try writing longhand on a piece of paper.
Reread what you have and annotate it.
Do a chore you've been putting off.
Brainstorm titles.
Format citations.
Reread part of the text that inspired your thinking.
Send a paragraph to a friend to get their quick take.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write an impassioned essay about how much you hate writing. Then try again.
Imagine how you would explain an idea from your work to your parents, or to your students, or to an alien new to the planet.
Answer the question: who needs what you are writing?
Writing is hard, and it is easy to wait until you feel inspired to write. But, if you can get in the habit of writing when you say you will, no matter how you feel about it, you can begin to test the hypothesis that you need to be inspired to write. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be new words on the page every time. It doesn't have to go in the final draft. But endeavoring to keep your appointments for writing with yourself is a habit worth building.
Learning to write, again.
Pals, I used to be so good at writing. In grade school, in high school, in college, heck, even in my masters program, I was great at writing papers! So good, in fact that I could often put off my papers until the last minute (or at least, a far later minute than my teachers and professors intended), show up at my computer and have ideas just ready to be typed out! The words flew out of my fingers onto the page! The feedback was great! I was so good! But then, all of the sudden (it felt like), I was very bad at writing.
I wrote a little bit about how I came to see myself as a "bad writer" in this post, but today, I want to offer some practical advice for those who are finding themselves needing some encouragement around something hard that maybe once was easier.
Be patient with yourself. Frustration is a natural response to feeling like you aren't meeting a standard, and trying to will yourself to feel otherwise (or feel in any specific way, period!) is usually counterproductive.
Remember that you're raising your writing level, and that with growth comes growing pains. Anyone who has ever trained their body to do something physical, or practiced a skill, or rehearsed a performance, knows that the progress curve is not a smooth one. Number of hours put in does not necessarily equate to a smooth line of growth from point A to point B. It's okay to have to work on acquiring new skills - but it can feel uncomfortable, repetitive, and frustrating. Try thinking about it more like practice and less like perfection from the go.
Build in new networks of support. I am no longer a solitary writer, even though I used to be. Lots of people - from writing center staff, to writing groups, to friends, to family, as well as editors - read my writing now. That doesn't mean I'm a bad writer, that just means I am looking for feedback actively.
Which brings me to my next point: look for feedback actively. If you ask for feedback in a proactive way, from peers as well as supervisors, you can control that process (and sometimes even shape the kind of feedback you get!) Feeling in control of feedback usually feels better than waiting for your work to be torn apart by supervisors or peer reviewers or editors at some unknown point in the future.
Let yourself imagine writing as a skill you will always practice and improve on, rather than a goal to be "achieved". There is no magical checkpoint where academic writers suddenly cease having to work on their writing - not even tenure! You will always be working to make your writing more clear, more concise, more accurate, more engaging. Acknowledging that we will always have to keep working can help ease the "I was already good at this!" frustration.
It is hard to feel "bad" at something that used to get you a lot of praise and validation. It can be a massive blow to the ego (it definitely was to mine!) to feel like I was not good at something and to have to "go back to the basics." But viewing my writing as a craft has helped me to see that there is no good or bad writing; writing is a skill that we're always deepening, honing, and improving because it's the only way to get what you know out of your head and into the world.
Book Review - Air & Light & Time & Space
No one ever taught me how to write a dissertation. The last formal writing instruction I received was as an undergraduate, and as so many of us have learned the hard way, a 15 page term paper is a completely different proposition than a dissertation.
Dr. Helen Sword interviewed a hundred different successful academics about their writing habits, and then opened up the survey to a wide community of academics at all stages to get a wide range of perspectives. I appreciated her data-driven approach; the book is a mix of her cogent, insightful writing drawing themes and commonalities out of successful approaches, and individual author profiles. Many other books espousing a "way" to write as an academic feel anecdotal -- and while there is a lot of merit in sharing how things work for you, or how things have worked for you and all the people who subscribe to your method, it is still a trial and error proposition.
If you're looking for Air & Light & Time & Space to lay out a step-by-step, data proven, fool-proof plan to become a productive, happy, academic writer, you're in the wrong place. But that is exactly what I appreciated about Sword's work. She instead identifies four key habits of the writers: Behavioral, Artisanal, Social, and Emotional, and showcases the diversity of successful practices in each area. Imagined as the foundation of a house, she stresses that different combinations of strengths can all produce productive writers. This model is generous enough to account for people who don't, won't, or can't write everyday, or who always work alone, or never work alone, or hate writing, or love writing. Rather than outlining a perfect system, she enumerates the elements that make a successful system. The difference produces a book that feels inclusive, rather than guilt-provoking.
Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
By Helen Sword
She provides a self-assessment quiz on her website to see how you stack up in each area: http://writersdiet.com/base.php . I recommend it taking it - the results are illuminating, and they're helpfully ranked in terms of frequency, just in case you want to see how common, or rare, you are! And I recommend the book, because it empowers you to build a writing routine and set of habits to support writing as it fits in your life, offering options rather than enforcing rules.
For me, I'm working on writing more consistently (on regular days, if not every day!) and taking steps to build up my artisanal skills on my own writing (even editors have to learn how to self-edit!) And I'll be using this with my clients, to identify not how far they are away from an #AcWri ideal, but what methods resonate and appeal.