6.5 research exquisite...draft non-existent?

this is for all my friends with 123908 open tabs of things to read, a pile of ILL requests to pick up at the library, four unwatched webinars on how to do academic things in their inbox....who are still feeling stuck turning all that research into writing.

we talk this week about why it happens, and how to move forward, on this week's episode. get into it!

• transcript

   📍  Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. 
  
   This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I. 
  
  And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for my working more intentionally tool kit. Which is available for you totally for free. Now let's get into it
  
  
  
  
  
   All right. If you're sitting on piles of research, so much data notes up the wazoo. If you're guarding it like a dragon guards, its hoard. This one is for you.  I call this episode research exquisite, draft non-existent, because this is one of the most common things that I see, especially in early writers. 
  
  It could be that your research is around the content of what you're working on. It could be that you're actually researching the process. Like how to write a dissertation or how to write a book proposal, or maybe you're even still in the data collection phase.
  
  One more experiment. One more trip to the archive.  But this pattern looks like you are waiting to start writing. You're purposefully holding back on the writing until you hit some point where the research feels done, where you feel like you know how to do it, where you feel that you are ready to start writing from a place of confidence. 
  
  I see three different flavors of this. One is the kind of underwriting question of did I find everything? Is there another article out there that says what mine says that I need to cite, that everyone will be so embarrassed for me if I don't cite.
  
  That's so key to the conversation that I'm having that by not finding it and reading it and citing it here, I'm gonna be laughed off the face of the subfield that I'm in. That's one version. Did I find everything?  The second version is, I'm not ready. I don't know enough yet. This is a variation, but it's often like, oh, well, I was researching this idea and then this method came up, and then I'm researching the history of this method, and you're following each one of the links,
  
  like you're on a Wikipedia deep dive. You're just clicking the backlinks and the backlinks and the backlinks, and they keep going, and so you assume that you must not know enough because you keep finding new ideas, new pieces of evidence, new research, that  are important for you to at least be aware of before you start writing. 
  
  And the third kind of iteration of this looks a lot less explicit sometimes, but it boils down to, I feel safer here. I feel safer behind my desk, reading articles, doing notes, looking at books. I am not ready to write. It seems scary, seems hard. I don't want to do it. I don't have time to get into it. It seems like it's gonna be really difficult, so I'm just gonna keep doing more research because I know how to do that.
  
  I feel confident in that and I know I'm not going to mess that up.  So any of these three flavors can really stall you because no one is going to accept your mental download of a research folder. For publication, not as a chapter, not as an article, not as a conference paper. So you eventually do need to move into the writing phase, but there's a reason that so many of us get stuck here, and it's because there are these persistent thoughts, these ideas that if I just find the secret thing, it's all gonna feel real.
  
  And a lot of that boils down to this idea that when I'm ready to write, I'm gonna know it.  I'll feel ready to write. I will feel full. I'll feel confident. I'll be ready to go. And I really hate to share this with you, but it also could set you free. That ready isn't a feeling  ready is a decision, and that it actually is a lot faster to start to teach yourself, train yourself, support yourself in writing earlier than you feel ready with less research than maybe you feel ready because that that act of.
  
  Putting your thoughts onto paper where you can read them, where you can read them back, and when maybe other people can read them is going to move you further faster than endless loops of research. So.  In terms of strategies that you can walk away with right now, the first is to start writing earlier. I really encourage you to have some sort of active writing process that goes along with your research, whether that is taking notes, answering questions, putting things inside of your citation manager, or a little bit of free writing to warm up or end a research session. 
  
  Practicing synthesizing those ideas in a low stakes way. That's not for anybody else, but you can be a really excellent way to get the kind of writing juices flowing earlier in the process. But just in general, start writing earlier than you think you should, than you think is reasonable, because it is almost always going to be the thing that helps you refine your research questions or show you how much you already know already.
  
  So. Start writing earlier, push it back by a week, push it back by a month or maybe right the whole time.  The second strategy is to write around the gaps. I am a big fan of putting in parenthetical notes to myself when I'm drafting, like insert reference here, or a question to my future self, like, does this need a citation?
  
  Or, which one of these papers should I use?  I then go through at a various stages of my draft, and I fill in those parenthetical resources, or I decide that I don't need them, that it was actually extra evidence or. Extra support that bogs down my argument instead of making it clearer. But the more that you can practice writing around the gaps, writing a paragraph that says blah, blah, blah, insert big idea here, and then keeps going.
  
  The more you're going to let yourself stay in the writing flow, instead of reaching for a book, reaching for A PDF, looking for your notes.  You can always go back and add, and that is the skill that many of us have never been taught how to do, how to write in more frequent, shallower passes than  I took this class and then I stayed up all night to write the term paper.
  
  Your academic work probably won't follow that same pattern, so this is about practicing writing in a different way.  Ultimately, this boils down to the idea that writing and research overlap much more so than you might be familiar with from other kinds of writing that you've done in even your academic past.
  
  But because of the way that academics are expected to have multiple projects going. Projects that branch off from each other, that overlap, that intersect, that maybe are parts of collaborations or solo authored. But when you have so many different things in your quote unquote academic pipeline, it is a skill and a benefit to be able to have the research process and the writing process.
  
  Not follow one after another where you wrap up all of the research and then you start the writing, but that they happen in tandem, so that as you write and the argument develops, you know what research you need to do further, and then you can do it in a more targeted, efficient, effective way.  Ultimately, that feeling that you're not ready to start writing, it might not ever go away.
  
  I know that I felt that way on the day I was defending my dissertation. When that project was as done as it ever was gonna be, I was like, I'm not sure I'm ready. I don't know that I know enough, but ultimately that feeling isn't a fact. It's a sign that what you're doing is vulnerable, that it means something to you, that it's high stakes.
  
  That there are things that need support inside of you. Maybe you need somebody to give you some feedback and say, actually, this does need a little bit of development. Or, I think that you're really bogged down in the weeds here. Maybe you need something really cozy to kind of help support your nervous system while you sit down to write.
  
  Or maybe you just need, like almost all of us do a little bit more practice building a writing. Habit or writing practice that's going to serve not only the kind of writer that you're becoming, but the kind of projects that you're being asked to do.  Thank you so much, and I will see you next week. 
  
   📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com.  Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show.  Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!