Thriving as a Graduate Writer

I wrote Thriving as a Graduate Writer because I believe graduate students can reframe their experience of academic writing. We all know that writing is at the heart of the academic enterprise. It is both how we communicate and how we are assessed. That combination can be brutal for any writer, and it’s particularly fraught for graduate writers, who must learn disciplinary writing practices while being judged on their early efforts. Recognizing these challenges is valuable; graduate students are better off knowing that their difficulties with academic writing are entirely legitimate. This recognition, however, is only the first step. The next step must be to find ways to ameliorate those challenges.

In the book, I offer a discussion of principles, strategies, and habits that I think can help. (The table of contents can be found below, so you can see the breakdown of this material.) The principles point to a way of thinking about academic writing. Since writing takes up so much time and energy, it is worth exploring foundational ideas that can ground a writing practice: writing as thinking; writing as revision; writing as reader awareness; writing as authorial responsibility. Those principles lead into concrete strategies that can transform the experience of creating and revising an academic text. The heart of this book is the five chapters that unpack these approaches to working with text: managing structure; managing sentences; managing punctuation patterns; managing momentum; and building a revision process. The final element of the book is the consideration of writing habits. Even with a solid approach to academic writing and range of useful strategies to hand, we all still need to find ways to get writing done. Graduate writers, in particular, need exposure to writing productivity advice that is rooted in their unique experience of academic writing. This chapter provides a range of strategies to help build a consistent and sustainable writing routine: prioritizing writing; setting goals; finding community; developing writing awareness; and grounding productivity in writing expertise.

This book is a short (only 226 pages!) self-study text. You can read through the whole book—in whatever way works for you—and then use it as a reference. The manner in which you refer back to the book will depend on what you currently need to concentrate on. Most readers will benefit from returning to two chapters: Establishing a Revision Process (Chapter Eight) and Developing Sustainable Writing Habits (Chapter Nine). Those chapters are organized around charts that are distributed throughout the chapter (and that appear again at the back of the book). Since every writer has their own challenges and their own optimal writing process, I urge readers to take those charts and rework them—on an ongoing basis—to suit their needs. In addition to the charts, you will also find other resources at the end of the book: guides to using the book in a graduate writing course or graduate writing group and brief account of the blogs and books that I most recommend to graduate writers.

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Thriving as a Graduate Writer is now available from the University of Michigan Press. To order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!

Conservatism of Expectations

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Conservatism of Expectations

It’s hard to talk about meeting reader expectations as a graduate writer without attending to the conservative implications of prioritizing established expectations. Rather than conform to expectations that feel allied to outdated and inequitable systems, some graduate writers may wish to write differently, in ways that confront or subvert the norms of standard research communication. Resisting those expectations can take many forms: normalizing World Englishes; refusing white supremacy in language; understanding subjectivity in research imagination; drawing upon Indigenous research epistemologies; integrating multimodal research into doctoral theses. Any one of those endeavors could easily be hampered by the replicative nature of doctoral education. And writing in a manner that requires adherence to existing academic practices can be demoralizing; making changes to those practices is central to why some people undertake graduate work. As a result, some writers may choose to discount those norms during graduate work. It’s worth noting that some writers may share those critical commitments while being uninterested in challenging existing norms. Despite wishing change to happen, these writers may feel that their academic work is already unfairly scrutinized or that it isn’t their job to transform academic writing practices. What’s more, some writers in this situation may feel particularly anxious to gain access to a hidden curriculum that others seem to assimilate more easily. Given that range of attitudes and pressures, I think there is value in laying out established conventions in a way that leaves the writer the freedom to choose their own path. Certainly, working around norms—or making norms work for you—is easiest when those norms are well understood. I don’t want the ideas contained within this book to be an impediment to writing in ways that support the work that feels urgent to you; instead, I hope they can be deployed in the service of the academic work that you want to do in the way you want to do it.

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Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!

Say Less or Say More

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Say Less or Say More

Here’s a common scenario in a writing consultation:

Me: I think this word/phrase/sentence could perhaps be removed.

Writer: Absolutely not, that idea is crucial. 

Me: Okay … but as it’s presented here, it doesn’t seem important.

Writer: How could it be unimportant? This idea is essential to my whole project!

Me: But you haven’t taken the time to show that importance. If the reader does need to know, you’ll need to say more. 

This principle–say less or say more–can be helpful as you decide the level of detail required in your writing. When you confront a sentence that you’re unsure of, first ask yourself if all the detail is necessary. If you decide that everything must stay, then ask yourself a second question: Have you said enough about it? Given all the length restrictions at play in academic writing, writers often try to cram in too much without having the space to do it all justice. Because you yourself know that a detail is significant, you may decide to include it despite the fact that you can’t squeeze in an explanation of that significance. As a writer, you might feel better if you’ve included at least a mention of everything, but your reader might feel worse. Say less or say more.

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Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!

Advice Translator

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Advice Translator

Since graduate students are so often on the receiving end of advice, some of you might find it helpful to be able to engage in a quick translation process.

Advice: You should do X. 

The person telling you to do X is probably suggesting a way to achieve something (let’s call it Y). Unfortunately, they aren’t talking about the importance of Y or telling you how you might achieve Y; they are just telling you to do X. If all you do is attempt X, without understanding its connection to Y, you might actually make your situation worse. A little further investigation on your part can help translate the advice into something more helpful: 

Translation: You should do X because Y. 

Once you have that formulation, to can adapt the advice to your own purposes:

Advice you can use: You should do something to achieve Y. 

To make this more concrete, let’s consider a perennial favourite bit of writing advice: 

Advice: You should write in the morning.

This advice is fine if you are a morning person; however, if you are not, you may end up struggling to force yourself to write according to someone else’s temperament. Or maybe you are a morning person, but your life circumstances–the demands of paid work or care work–prevent you from using that time for writing. To avoid the frustration of advice that doesn’t work for you or your life, you can try to understand the underlying reason for the advice: 

Translation: You should write in the morning to avoid wasting your best energy of the day.

Advice you can use: You should find ways to avoid wasting your best energy of the day.

Now the ball’s in your court. You need to identify when you have the most energy and find ways–within the context of your life–to preserve that time for writing. This translation technique has the potential to help you to use supervisory advice, especially when you find it overly attuned to the specificity of someone else’s writing situation. The cliché that all advice is a form of nostalgia can be true. But it’s possible to translate such advice into a more suitable form, thereby deriving the benefit of advice in a way that makes sense in your writing life.

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Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!