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The logic of research inquiry and the use of the puzzle approach in research design

I like solving and putting together puzzles.

puzzle

Photo credit: Olga Berrios on Flickr. Photo license: CC-BY 2.0

I like assembling evidence and theories to think about the problem, which can also be a metaphor for a puzzle (or as my dear friend Amber Wutich said, a jigsaw). I actually don’t like the type of physical puzzles shown in the photo (my brother loves assembling them but I hate not being able to complete the puzzle assembly). BUT I do like thinking about research questions and phenomena that leave me puzzled, baffled, mystified, perplexed, flummoxed.

I know that in social science scholarly circles, some people like the puzzle approach to developing research questions and others don’t particularly appreciate the model. So I asked on Twitter where we were with respect to the puzzle approach. I got several great responses (of which I reproduce a few below).

Dr. Mirya Holman, by the way, is amazing at research design.

As is Dr. Amber Wutich.

Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens and I talk about research design all the time.

There are, obviously, very valid critiques and concerns, as Dr. Ernesto Castañeda expresses here.

I use both my Twitter account and my blog as avenues to think out loud and get feedback on ideas I have been marinating. I’ve been thinking a lot about research puzzles, research questions, and research design in social science. This is normal for me, because I teach the foundational courses in our institution’s methodology sequence for the Masters and PhD programmes. I normally teach Research Design, Mixed Methods, Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data, and Research Methods in Social Science. Thus, I am always thinking about better ways to teach how to craft good research questions and how to improve research design. The puzzle approach is popular in several disciplines within the social sciences and I thought I’d think about it more, this time in writing.

There are a lot of approaches to constructing research questions (and entire books focused on that very activity!), but one of the most popular is the development of a “puzzle” (or a “research puzzle”). I’ve been thinking about this particular approach for a very long time.

When you find something puzzling, you think “hmmm… this phenomenon is not operating the way I thought or I hypothesized it would, why would that be the case?” In this case, we’re not talking about puzzles like the ones you assemble, but what you find puzzling (or perplexing).

I’ve read a lot of articles and book chapters on this, and I find multiple definitions and classifications of puzzles (research puzzles, that is) somewhat idiosyncratic. But the mere notion of puzzle IS idiosyncratic: what you find puzzling, I may not find perplexing at all!

Let me give you an example: the scholarly literature on water conflicts indicates that one of the key factors to solving a dispute is to have all stakeholders agree and offer good faith solutions. HOWEVER, this did not hold in a case I studied (the Zapotillo aqueduct and dam). This conflict remained protracted for decades until the current President of Mexico came and unilaterally decided that one of the main stakeholders in the conflict (the state of Guanajuato) would not get water from the El Zapotillo dam and aqueduct.

An external actor TERMINATED he conflict, all of a sudden (not really as there are still some tensions and negotiations, but for practical purposes, that’s the case). So the puzzle here is: why (and how) did the President’s intervention change the dynamics of this water conflict? It really is puzzling!

To some water conflict experts (or specialists in conflict resolution), this external actor intervention intended to terminate a conflict may not feel puzzling at all. That’s why I find the research puzzle approach a bit shaky. The puzzle seems to be the “selling strategy”.

And by “the selling strategy” I mean the approach a scholar takes to convince the reader that the question they are asking merits being investigated, because it makes us scratch our collective heads.
“Look! This question is interesting, it left me puzzled!”

I DO teach my students and my thesis advisees how to construct a research puzzle because I find it a good “selling strategy”. Tell me why I (and the research community) should care about the question you are asking, and justify the investment in the research you will be doing.

I find that the review of the literature is a foundational step to design a good research puzzle and craft a solid research question. Puzzles specify the conditions and parameters under which the phenomenon under study contradicts the reality we are observing.

As I specified in my thread, the puzzle approach (which can be seen as putting together a puzzle or as finding something puzzling, two different but complementary views) helps researchers set a potential direction for the study. That doesn’t mean serendipity doesn’t play a role.

The concept of research puzzles as thinking about something that a researcher find puzzling , strange, unexpected is in complete agreement with your point about luck and the serendipitous nature of research. So I don’t think we disagree (I also like the patchwork quilt metaphor shared by Dr. Louise Seamster)

I think Dr. Seamster summed it up well:

I do hope this blog post is helpful for readers in choosing whether they want to use a puzzle approach, both to teach their students and to use in their own research projects.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 27, 2022

4 lessons I learned (the hard way) about health, overwork, and life as an academic

I almost died this summer of 2022. Four times.

This summer, I learned (the hard way) 4 lessons about health, overwork, and life as an academic.

(1) “If you don’t make time for your wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for your sickness” — Joyce Sunada

I was, in fact, forced to take time off because of COVID and its sequelae. This week I sat down with my physician and we did a “post mortem” of my illness. He said: “you have overworked for a very long time. You push your physical limits all the time. You are very energetic, active and passionate about your work, but you keep pushing yourself. Not healthy”.

This was really embarrassing to hear from my treating doctor and a wake up call: I keep advocating for NOT overworking, and yet, in some twisted way, I kept doing it because it didn’t feel (yet) like I was exhausted.

Until it did.

In May, I went to Germany and the US. In normal times, and under normal circumstances, these two trips would have been a piece of cake because I am/was used to travel All The Time. However, this year has been particularly busy with teaching, administrative duties, and course preparation, reading theses, providing feedback. SUPER BUSY.

So (we all know where this is going…) I did not pay attention to my tiredness (in May 2022) because I attributed it to jet lag from going to Germany. But when I went to Washington DC, I was already tired, and kept pushing myself. The last day, two dear friends of mine said: “you look TIRED. You need to take care of yourself. We need you healthy.” (Thanks, Leila and Sameer).

When I returned from Washington DC, my Mom got COVID, so I had to take care of her. She had a very mild case, but I think being stressed about her health was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I then got COVID, and my body was already very weakened from travel, stress and overwork.

We all know how this went. I spent all of June sick (and taking care of a COVID patient and then getting it myself!), July so sick with COVID sequelae that I almost died 3-4 times (depends on how you count), and August in slow-but-steady recovery.

The second lesson is, therefore:

Sunset in Vancouver and North Vancouver

(2) Pay attention to signs of potential burnout.

I had felt burnt out before and could recognise the signs: de-motivated, didn’t want to read academic articles, exhausted with no apparent reason. But again, the travel hid all the signs. I had them all, I just didn’t see them. This is particularly important in academia: we attribute burnout to other factors: “maybe I’m just tired this week”, or “it will get better once I get all these 457 things out of the way and I can clear my deck”. Well, I got news for you: the deck is never cleared.

I’ve written on my blog several times about the importance of not overwork, but for some reason, when it came down to it, I did not recognise the signs that clearly showed anybody except me (because I was too blind to see them) that I was entirely, completely and absolutely burnt out.

(3) Seek support (and this includes emotional support).

In desperation about my lack of health improvement, I tweeted “I’ve lost all interest in academia and all I care about is being healthy again”. I received HUNDREDS of responses sending love and wishes for good health.

The bird app can be hell sometimes, but it is definitely a truth that my Twitter community kept me afloat (my Facebook friends also deserve a very big Thank You because they kept checking in on me, daily). I did not realize I could have so much support from the Twitter hellsite, and it really helped me improve. I received so much emotional support that I began feeling extremely hopeful that I would be, eventuallly, able to recover fully (and I am currently in the process of doing just that).

My physician has prohibited me from returning to my usual hyper-energetic self. He said, deadpan: “I want you to return to normal people’s normal, not YOUR normal — this means dialing it down on the workload and intensity”. As a neoinstitutional theorist, I follow rules to a T. And I have no plans of dying any time soon, so I am paying close attention to my body and how I well am feeling on an hourly, daily and weekly basis. If I need to take a rest, I take it, work life be damned.

But I did not get well UNTIL I went to see a pulmonologist.

Sunset

So the fourth lesson is:

(4) Be your own advocate for your health.

I went to a general MD, then the otorrhinolaryngologist, and it wasn’t until I went to the pulmonologist that we figured out what was wrong and how to fix it. COVID is an extraordinarily strange illness, and it’s so unpredictable nobody really knows the potential outcomes. I am lucky to be alive. Given that I had an immune system weakened from overwork and exhaustion, it was pure sheer luck that I made it alive and in one piece.

What really brought home the severity of my illness and the importance of taking care of myself was this utterance by my pulmonologist: “you survived this time – you probably won’t get another chance – your body won’t withstand another crisis like this. TAKE CARE!”.

YIKES.

In closing: Academic friends: look at yourselves in my mirror. Take care of yourselves *before* you are forced to take time off to take do exactly that: take care of yourselves.

I HAVE, finally, learned my lesson.

Posted in academia, research.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 25, 2022

Reading is writing: To situate your work within the broader literature, you need to READ

I want to make something perfectly clear, particularly because it looks like people want to jump and “do research”, “collect data”, “analyse things” and would rather do any of those rather than read. READING IS WRITING. You NEED to read, to be able to situate your work.

If I am reading an article inside my office, I AM WORKING. I am not relaxing, I am not wasting time, THIS IS PART OF MY JOB. I used to work with consultants who were VERY time-based. They would see me read an article and tell me “which project are you billing your time to?”

I was like “uh, I NEED to read in order to create a literature review from where I can provide a framework for your consultancy project, you dumb-a$$”. Those hours you spend meticulously scribbling notes, making sense of how one piece of writing connects with another, are RESEARCH.

Would it be nice to be able to just crack my laptop open and have words automagically appear on screen and make sense and connect all the different bodies of literature I need to, and VOILA, produce a paper in 3 days? Hell yeah. I totally would love that. That’s not how it works.

Reading IS PART OF YOUR JOB. You don’t need to justify that some days, you get to the office, crack a book open, and read for hours. This IS work. Other days, you may get to analyse data. Others, you may get to write full paragraphs. This job is very varied. BUT YOU MUST READ.

ADDENDUM; Reading should NOT be something we do on weekends, evenings, and on our spare time. It’s WORK. It should be done during working hours. I worked for a terrible boss who would say “you should be running experiments right now, you can catch up on reading at night”. And we need to stop feeling guilty about reading. I feel the guilt, myself. I have to return an R&R on a topic that isn’t water conflicts, but I came across a couple of really key journal articles yesterday, and I have to present a paper on this for a major conference in a month.

Public Policy Books

Do I feel kind of guilty about reading this and other’s papers today? Yes, of course I do. I’m human and feel the same things you all do. BUT my major grant-funded project IS on water conflicts, and these papers did help me move this project forward. I’m the PI. So even if I devoted 1-2 hours to water conflicts over the course of a day or a week, I can still work on my other stuff the rest of the day (or the week). BUT these are important papers and I HAD TO process them.

Now, you may ask – how do I keep up with the literature. Well…

What if not everything I read can be skimmed? I use the acronym “TBRMID” = “To Be Read More In Detail” and add it to the article. That’s how I note articles I quickly skim using AIC when I realize I must come back to them.

Again, the core point of this blog post remains the same I’ve advocated for over the years: READING IS WRITING.

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don’t even think about being a writer.”
― Jean M. Auel

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 21, 2022

3 fundamental lessons about reading and academic writing

Whenever I teach academic writing I tell my students a number of things I strongly believe are fundamental. The three lessons I list here are in my view of the utmost importance.

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

First, to learn how to write, you need to read. On my blog, I have written multiple times about the value of reading and why we need to legitimise reading as an intrinsic element of writing, about different reading strategies, and the importance of being able to triage your reading and choose across multiple strategies and approaches to how deeply you are going to read some materials.

“You will learn more about writing from one hour of reading than you will in six hours of writing.”
― John McAleer

Book reading

Second, to learn how to write well you need to read folks who write well, whose prose is clear, and whose style you like. I always point people to the writing of writers I find extremely clear and powerful. That doesn’t mean YOU will find them equally good nor their writing will make you think or feel the things it does to ME. You need to determine who you like and love reading.

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a person will turn over half a library to make one book.”
― Samuel Johnson

Books and bookshelves

The third lesson on reading and academic writing I emphasize is that you need to read broadly and all sorts of materials. I was a library rat since I was a child so I’ve done a lot of the traditional literature and that’s also why I now read more academic books than fiction. However…lot of academic writers could benefit from reading creative prose, fiction, even no -fiction but unrelated to their research area.

“Read, read, read. Read everything, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

I understand that it is challenging to set aside time to read with multiple commitments and time pressures. But your writing will improve.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 21, 2022

Preparing for the PhD defense/viva? Use the GDN instead of a DTP

Doctoral candidates preparing for the PhD dissertation defense (or viva): I was asked whether I thought it was better to do a DTP (Dissertation Two Pager) or a GDN (Global Dissertation Narrative) in preparation for the defense.

My suggestion now is the latter: write a GDN.

The following two tweets explain my reasoning:

Thus I would say, write DTPs throughout the PhD (lots of Masters and Undergraduate students also use my DTP strategy) and THEN the last semester of your PhD, write both a final, final DTP AND a GDN.

I hope this is helpful to those of you who use my strategies.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 21, 2022

On Cornell Notes and the importance of noting down EVERYTHING including the article or book chapter (or book) full citation.

Those of you who have followed me for a time know that I do love taking notes off articles with the Cornell Notes method. I find it a very useful note-taking strategy when you are reading materials (articles, book chapters, books, etc.) Some people use it to take notes during class, but this is not the approach I use.

Anyways.

Of course, my mistake was forgetting to write down the citation for the articles I was reading. This is A BIG MISTAKE. For many reasons, you NEED to keep the full citation of what you read in every medium you use (Cornell Note, Everything Notebook, Index Card, etc.)

Obviously I needed to find the original articles, which I posted on here:

As far as filing systems, I use the same across different analog techniques.

I share a big mistake I made (and ways to correct it) because I think sometimes we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. Hopefully that will be the case.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 19, 2022

Writing the dissertation (thesis) III: Controlling the dissertation/thesis

I recently tweeted a thread of blog posts of mine that doctoral candidates can use to prepare for their defense (could be adapted to undergraduate or Masters) which I’ll turn into a blog post soon enough.

Now, you may ask, what about those doctoral candidates still in the throes of doing the PhD??

My advice is to always maintain control over the dissertation.

Several of my doctoral students (not my thesis advisees, but those I teach or have taught) have told me:“professor, I have no clue where to go from here. I passed my comprehensive exams and now I’m supposed to write the dissertation, but I feel at a loss”.

This is NORMAL.

One of the anti-climatic things that happened to me after I defended my PhD proposal and passed my PhD comprehensive exams (at UBC we did both when I did my doctorate) was that I was left with a question: NOW WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?. This was probably because I did not feel like I had a schedule and a plan to develop my dissertation. I was too tired from defending my PhD prospectus.

Once I had time to rest and reflect on what I was supposed to be doing, I ended up creating a plan and finishing my dissertation relatively quickly. As the years have progressed and as I’ve become more senior as a professor and researcher, I’ve developed a few techniques to help my graduate students (and a few undergraduate) tackle their dissertation and theses, and more importantly, CONTROL THEM (don’t let them control YOU!)

These three Overview Devices (the Dissertation Two Pager, DTP, the Dissertation Analytical Table, DAT and the Global Dissertation Narrative, GDN) allow me (and my thesis students) to get a “bird’s eye view” of the dissertation/thesis. These three Overview Devices are very short documents, so preparing them is a good exercise on writing concisely. A two page summary of the dissertation, a one page table with all the components of the dissertation and a three page summary of the full work undertaken in the dissertation make up for 6 pages, which should be easy enough for a PhD advisor to read and provide feedback on.

Let’s take a quick look at each one of the three Overview Devices:

For me, a DTP evolves through time. It’s not the same as when my students start their degree. Therefore I ask my students to write a DTP every semester (or quarter).

One can construct a DAT for a manuscript-based dissertation or for a book-style type of dissertation. And as I’ve recommended to my post-PhD friends, it can also help you map out a full book manuscript.

Most of the time, my students will write their GDN as they approach their defense. However, I’ve also tested using it at the beginning (sort of helping them see the end line) and it’s worked wonderfully too. But yes, I will expect that doctoral candidates (or any other thesis-based research scholars) will have a better defined GDN as they approach their defense of the thesis/dissertation.

Writing a DAT, DTP and a GDN every semester helps the thesis writer feel like they can control where their dissertation is going. For me, as a thesis advisor, it helps me see where I need to help my students with their work. And all three Overview Devices work for undergrads and Masters thesis writers too.

This post is as much for those who are trying to control their dissertation (PhD candidates, Masters and undergraduate students) as much as for their advisors. Hopefully it will be useful to you all.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 16, 2022

The missing link in the literature review process: 4 elements to look for when reviewing the literature

As anybody who reads my blog knows, I think a lot about the mechanics of research and especially I have written a lot about how to conduct a literature review. This week, because I have been very ill, I have had a chance to think deeply, and I believe that I have finally found the missing piece linking reading (a lot) with the construction of a literature review.

Many students tell me they don’t know how to organize their literature review, how to start it. That is, I believe, because they don’t know what to look for.

Literature Road Mapping

So, what is someone doing a literature review looking for?

1) what has been done (the lay of the land)

  • Who has written about my topic?
  • What are the results of their work?
  • How have they tackled problems that might be similar to mine?

2) the foundations upon which their own work can be developed

  • Who are the core authors in this space?
  • Which works seem foundational enough to build my own work upon?
  • Where have these works been developed? (this opens up new possibilities for geographical spaces and case studies)

3) any possible spaces where they can insert their own contributions,

  • Where can my work contribute?
  • How would my work dialogue with others’ research?
  • If there is a gap, how does my work contribute to narrowing?
  • If there is something new to develop, whose work do I extend?

4) a map of themes showing connections

  • A mind map of different themes and their connections can help scholars develop their own literature review.

So, in practice, you DO need to read a lot so you can figure out which topics have been discussed in which areas of study, which case studies have been already analyzed, etc.

Concept saturation

This first step, I would break it into two stages (depending on the level of understanding of the particular topic under study):

  • Make a list of possible topics and issues

This list of topics can’t come out of thin air. Therefore the second stage is:

  • Draw guidance from either experts or published reviews to map the list of possible topics.

Normally it is at this stage that I give my students advice on authors and specific citations.

What happens if you don’t have an expert to guide you?

Well, it is very likely that someone already did a literature review about your topic or adjacent to it. We search for the general topic (“a review of topic X”) and it’s likely we will find something that will help us.

For example say I’m doing a project on the dynamics of protests against renewable energy mega projects, specifically windmills. There’s certainly literature on protests. There’s work on extractive industries and their negative impacts, etc.

I could search for literature on these topics. But then the second question my students ask comes up.

“How do you now assemble the literature review into a coherent document?”

There are many ways to do this assemblage, but I believe the Funnel Method is easiest, particularly for anybody who is relatively new to literature reviews.

Writing at the h

So what’s the Funnel Method?

It’s basically taking your research through a conceptual funnel (from the most general to the most specific).

In my case, I would follow a structure like this:

1. Conflicts
2. Environmental conflicts
3. Protests against mega projects
4. Protests against windmills
5. Case studies of protests against windmills across the world.

By the time I get to (5) in this list, I would feel pretty confident that I will have at least a broad landscape of the literature. It takes a while to get to the eureka moment. That’s why this exercise is hard.

When you read accounts from doctoral students and seasoned professors regarding when they actually figured out the topic of their thesis and many of them say “oh years after I finished my PhD”, that’s totally believable.

It was so hard for me to find the niche for my PhD thesis!

What I have found, having survived writing 3 theses, supervised many, and taught numerous academic writing courses and PhD workshops across the world is that the more literature reviews I conduct, the easier it becomes for me. Practice makes perfect.

OBVIOUSLY there’s a catch.

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

The catch is: the literature review (particularly regarding topic selection and assemblage) is driven by the Research Question. A LR doesn’t happen in a vacuum — you need to have a guiding objective – what are you trying to understand or learn. HOWEVER, the LR can ALSO help you develop a solid RQ.

That’s why it’s important to remind learners that the research process is very iterative. It’s not linear and you may need to restart the search from scratch more than once.

Don’t despair!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 22, 2022

The repeating cycle of overwork in academia: a first-person account

I have written several times here (on my blog) about how overworking almost has taken me to the actual tomb. What disappoints me and angers me (and yes I’m disappointed and angry with myself) is that it’s July of 2022 and I am writing about it yet again. As a good friend on Twitter responded to my thread discussing my health situation: “it’s a lesson I need to learn and re-learn over and over”.

I’m not happy about it.

Parksville's amazing weather

I sat down with my Mom last night and had a terrifying but important conversation. Despite repeated negative COVID tests, I’ve had 3 waves of respiratory illnesses and two bouts of gastrointestinal sickness in 5 weeks.

This means my last healthy day was May 27th, 2022.

These illnesses and their permanence track (quite logically) with 2 months of absolute insanity in terms of work. I’ve managed to finish every commitment I had for May and June by working while sick in some way or another. This is, of course, not something I am happy about nor something I advocate for. On the contrary, anybody who has followed me on Twitter or read my blog for any length of time will know that I am an ardent advocate of self-care and avoiding overwork.

I know that everyone at some point works while being ill. It’s one of the biggest issues I think in current society and especially in academia. We have made overworking and/or working while sick a badge of honor. The problem with working while sick, in my case, (or while slowly improving) is that my body is super sensitive to any external negative forces. So, what a mild cold normally do to me (take me out 2 days) takes me instead out 2 weeks. TWO WEEKS.

And then there’s the “feels like COVID even if I tested negative” series of symptoms that showed up in my body this past week.

Parksville at dusk

I want to be 100% clear about this: neither my institution nor my department have put this kind of pressure to work while sick on me. The fact that FLACSO Mexico and their leadership are so incredibly kind and generous is one of the key things that attracted me to it. On the contrary, I have received all sorts of positive encouragement to not push myself, to take care of myself and to wait everything out until I’m healthy again. The current state of affairs is one of my own doing. It’s all on me.

AGAIN.

This time I am taking the time to rest and heal without committing to anything else other than, well, resting and healing. But it’s brutal for me to see me making the same mistakes I made years ago and swore to never make ever again.

You should be your first priority always.

So if you have seen me organize a workshop, teach a class, teach a workshop, know that I did all that while sick. This is not something to replicate in your own life, on the contrary. I’m sharing because I know I should have just cancelled everything and take time to get well.

Most times I share what I see as my best practices in academic life. I’m now sharing a reflection of what I did wrong and what’s I plan to NOT do ever again. I really think I learned the lesson this time.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 3, 2022

A few strategies to overcome writer’s block

I’ve had an absolutely bonkers pair of months (April and May, and June is gearing to be the same). For the first time in 2.5 years, I attended in-person workshops (2!)

I am, of course, behind on absolutely everything.

Writing at the home office

I used to be a very big proponent of the “write whenever you have a small pocket of time” trope up until my health started to go downhill quickly (I am very immunecompromised, since birth, and thus respiratory infections take me out a solid two weeks).

I now try to write for longer periods of time if at all possible.

However, not everybody is me, and therefore when I write about writing on my blog, I describe the range of strategies I have used and continue to use, depending on my health, the amount of service work I have, teaching, and other commitments.

So here’s what I have found.

Writing

1) PROMPTS HELP ME WRITE. Prompts help my students write, and also participants in the workshops I teach.
I am not the kind of person who will open the Word document and be like “LET’S WRITE”. I need something that PROMPTS ME to start writing. I respond to external stimuli.

But writing is a PRACTICE that requires a repertoire of strategies and techniques. A lot of us, myself included, want to write books, articles, papers, chapters just like “laptop open – Word open – words flow”. That’s not how it works.

Developing a writing practice TAKES TIME.

I have several pieces overdue (and though I am almost back to 100% healthy, I have A LOT going on over the next month, so I need to balance my overdue writing commitments with my health and everything else I have on my plate).

On to RESTARTING.

This is a word I hear often.

Seasoned writers (several of them full professors!) come and tell me frequently “I used to have a solid writing practice and a routine, and all of a sudden life/childcare/eldercare/COVID/service work/teaching threw all of that into disarray”.

Friends, you & me both. I get you.

Writing while in Berlin

I think it’s only human to accept that we might have had the best writing practice and the most amazing routines and then life threw a wrench at us and now we’re faced with the challenge of restarting while dealing with *waves hands around* all of this.

Here’s how I’m doing it:

Reading is an absolutely integral part of my writing process.

Reading helps me improve my written prose.

Reading helps me think through ideas I’ve been trying to put into dialogue with other authors’ arguments.

I can’t write if I don’t read. I read every day, in fact. except when I am very ill.

Reading highlighting scribbling annotating

These are a few strategies that may be of help to some of you. Good luck!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – June 30, 2022