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On the benefits of online writing groups

My life changed right about March of 2020. Well, yes, there’s that pesky thing called a lethal global pandemic, SARS-CoV2, that also changed the lives of absolutely everyone on this planet.

But I also feel changed through the work I have been doing with two amazing writing groups: one led by Dr. Amanda Bittner (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and the other one organized and shepherded by Dr. Mirya Holman (Tulane University).

Writing at my home office in Aguascalientes

Writing doesn’t need to be a lonely activity. Instead, it can be social. Even during this global COVID19 pandemic.

Around when we got into a global lockdown, Amanda and Mirya (both good friends of mine) decided to organize online writing groups. I had heard of them, but I never thought of joining one because well, I already had my writing schedule prepared.

BUT THIS THOUGHT OF MINE CHANGED THIS SPRING, AND I AM EVER SO GRATEFUL TO MIRYA AND AMANDA FOR THIS.

I already had a writing practice of my own, waking up at 4 in the morning and writing from 4:30 to 6:30 Monday through Friday, as my schedule shows. However, joining Amanda’s and Mirya’s online writing groups really has boosted my writing capabilities and improved my ability to focus and concentrate in my research, even during a semester where I taught FOUR courses (how did I survive THAT is material for ANOTHER blog post).

writing calendar

It’s not only the actual writing commitment, the daily declaration of goals and check-ins. It’s the care, love and mutual respect, it’s the constant motivation and positivity. It’s the accountability. It’s the community-building aspect.

I love my writing groups, I really do.

I’m not the only one, though. I recently asked this question on Twitter.

I absolutely loved the responses. A sampler:

And obviously, I also adored Dr. Louise Seamster’s response in an article, as well as Dr. Nicole Janz’s post.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 25, 2020

Expanding Detailed Outlines into Memorandums and those into Full Manuscripts

As most of you all know, I’ve been teaching research methods, research design and academic writing for a while now. My students ALWAYS, literally ALWAYS ask me the question:

“How do I go from having the Detailed Outline to actually writing a Memorandum (or a series of Memos) that I can then assemble into the full draft of the paper?”

This blog post answers this question, based on a Twitter thread I wrote a few days ago.

Writing at home

This is the process I outlined on Twitter. You can see the entire thread by clicking anywhere on the tweet below.

My first advice to students when writing outlines is ALWAYS FINISH THE INITIAL OUTLINE FIRST.

My second piece of advice: is: FINISH DRAFTING THE DETAILED OUTLINE FIRST.

What is the reason for finishing the Detailed Outline first, you ask? Well, the rationale is that you will be able to see the overall argument, at a distance, from a vantage point, “bird’s eye”.

Now, another key question that my students ask me regularly:

“Professor, how do you decide what goes into your memorandum?”

Generally speaking, I try to write ONE memorandum per Triggering Question. For example, in this case: “what is ethnography?” would be an ideal Triggering Question based on which I could write a full, well developed Memorandum.

Now, for the “breaking down the big project into small pieces” part of this thread and blog post. Different people use different strategies for outlining. I teach most of them. One of them is outlining by hand (as I have been doing). Others outline directly on screen.

A few options:

Personally, I’m not tied to any model for outlining (directly in Scrivener, Word, or whichever word processor you use, by hand, or using mind maps). I find that combining both sets of techniques (digital and analog) really helps me refine and hone the final product.

Now, let’s move from the Detailed Outline to the Writing Memorandums stage.

Here’s what I do:

  1. I break down the Topic Sentence or Triggering Question into its elements.
  2. I begin a memorandum using heading-level Triggering Questions or Topic Sentences

Let’s grab the “What is Ethnography” Triggering Question, and the “Elements of Ethnography” Topic Sentence/Sub-Heading.

In my mind, there are three key elements to ethnography:

  • Observation
  • Fieldwork
  • Understanding culture.

I can use those categories and/or elements to start my Memorandum.

This is the moment when we need to READ AGAIN to make the argument and start writing the Memorandum. My students think that we read, read, read, read, and THEN WHAM BAM, there’s a paper.

No, writing requires us to think, mull over, reflect and write in smaller chunks.

The final product of the Detailed Outline can be shown below.

Now, here is the finalized Detailed-Outline-to-Memorandum product. This memo would not have been possible had I not thought of writing an Initial Outline, adding more thoughts and ideas to make it a Detailed Outline and then broken down each Triggering Question and Topic Sentence to craft a Memorandum.

Again, DON’T STRESS ABOUT WORD COUNT.

Does using Triggering Questions and Topic Sentences work to stimulate thinking and help our students write?

I can 100% certify that this method works and has worked with my students (it also works for me, obviously). This method is an easy strategy to tackle Writer’s Block and the Blank Page.

I hope this blog post and the links associated are helpful to those battling papers, book chapters, theses and books!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 13, 2020

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (my reading notes)

Index cardsAnybody who follows me on Twitter or reads my blog will know that I am absolutely smitten with index cards. I have taken notes in index cards for decades, and I still do it. I loved index cards as a grade-school student and I adore them as a professor. I have a number of boxes to store my index cards. A few of those are portable, so you can take them with you, others are intended to stay at home. Index cards have been an intimate part of my life since I was too young to even write on them, and will continue to be an important element of my teaching practice, as I strongly believe that my students benefit from learning how to take notes in index cards, and the various methods associated with their usage. In fact, this 2020 I taught note-taking techniques using Index Cards and all my students have loved it.

There are numerous strategies to take notes with index cards, but perhaps the most famous is Niklas Luhman’s Zettelkasten, which has recently been made popular again by Dr. Sönke Ahrens, who wrote one of the most authoritative texts on the method. Full disclosure: though I bought and paid for Ahres’ book on my own dime, I actually do NOT use Zettelkasten, as my Twitter thread explains.

Bottom line: I DID enjoy this book and recommend it though I really do not like the Zettelkasten method as is. Hope my reading notes are helpful to someone.

As someone who LOVES index cards, and who is a Virgo, Type A, Upholder (Gretchen Rubin) you might wonder what I do NOT like about Zettelkasten.

I do not like the sequencing approach, nor the “unique key”.

HOWEVER…

I think reading Ahrens’ book is EXTREMELY VALUABLE/HELPFUL.

DISCLOSURE: I bought and paid for this book on my own dime, as I do with ALL my books.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 10, 2020

Writing papers using Initial Outlines and Detailed Outlines

Because of the COVID19 pandemic, I’ve had more time (and concentration) to write despite my heavy teaching load (which I hope will not repeat itself ever in my entire life). This Fall term (and this past summer 2020) I’ve also taught a metric tonne of workshops and given a number of talks on academic writing. On top of my traditional courses on research methods and research design, I’ve had to think a lot about writing, academic writing and keeping my writing practice alive despite the pandemic.

Desk in my room (Malakoff, France)

I’ve also made my courses a lot more applied by teaching my students in a hands-on way. I’ve taught them to do research, by actually doing it and writing it. One of the concepts I’ve re-emphasized my students is the notion of outlines, specifically Initial Outlines (the ones we prepare at the beginning of the writing process) and Detailed Outlines (which we develop to help us “flesh out” our arguments and write full papers).

This is the process I use to develop my outlines and the one I teach my students.

This blog post is specific to Detailed Outlines, but I’ve also written other posts on Outlines that you might find useful (see below).

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 7, 2020

Reconsidering the Zoom University, synchronic/asynchronic and online teaching and learning

I am absolutely exhausted. And it’s only late October 2020.

face I want to preface this blog post by saying that I love teaching, and that I know that part of the reason why I am tired is that I am honoring all the commitments to my previous institution (CIDE) and my current one (FLACSO Mexico) so I am teaching more courses than I am used to. I am definitely not a stranger to online teaching, did it over the summer with wild success and I have enough technological literacy.

I also have a passion and interest in pedagogy so I have taken courses over the summer, experimented with sample classes, etc.

BUT I SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT THIS IS NOT A SUSTAINABLE MODEL.

My good friend, Dr. Juliette Levy, sums it up:

I have been an educator since I was eleven years old. I love teaching, mentoring, tutoring, educating. But doing this online thing via synchronic (and I would say even asynchronic) delivery is not sustainable, at least in the way we seem to be doing it right now.

I do miss being physically in the classroom, surrounded by brilliant students.

I draw energy from my students. I also can walk throughout the room. I can also scribble on the whiteboard.

A lot of proponents of asynchronous delivery suggest recording short segments so students can watch them on their own time. I have seen great lectures that are recorded in a way that puts much less stress on the speaker by using a camera and recording the lecturer as they walk students through whiteboarded ideas.

But the kind of applied, hands-on stuff I teach is not really very easy to deliver in the YouTube lecture kind of model. I also wonder about spending so much time physically sitting in front of a computer – to take classes, to do homework, to email, to coordinate with friends and colleagues for group work. This is very concerning.

I know that online teaching works. It’s been working for ages. The problem is that we have multiple compounding factors making online teaching harder. Students are worried about funding, worried about their parents’ and loved ones’ health (hoping they won’t catch COVID19), frantic about their own health. Can they really take online classes and just focus on that? No, I don’t think so. Because if they are parents, they don’t have daycare (because they’re closed in most countries).

Perhaps we need to just keep the sound for some classes, or record short segments (VERY short) with quick online meetings with students. I don’t know, but this is getting very tiring. I wrote a Twitter thread reflecting on this that might be of interest to my readers:

Here, I explain my new model for 3 hour classes:

And I added one last bit: perhaps just listening into some classes would be better? Others won’t work, of course, but maybe this is a thought.

At any rate, I really hope we can control the COVID19 pandemic because this is getting really out of hand.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – October 28, 2020

Those who can, DO *AND* TEACH – on what teaching entails

Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega at CIESAS workshopOne of the sayings that irks me the most is that old one: “those who can’t do, teach”. As a professor, a teacher, an educator and someone who has spent basically his entire life minus 10 years teaching, educating and mentoring students, I cannot stand the systematic devaluing of the teaching profession, and of educating as an activity. This lack of proper valuation is both systematic and widespread. The saying “those who can’t do, teach” assumes that there are other activities that are more complex, technical and sophisticated than teaching. This is a fallacy, and a grave one that has led to the defunding of teaching and education from kindergarten to post-graduate education. Because I am a professor, I know that my job entails research, teaching, service to my university and to the discipline(s) I work within, to my field and to academia.

Within the job, mentoring students is one often forgotten element of what we do. Research is underfunded. But frequently the most devalued of all the activities we engage in is teaching. This devaluation also can come from evaluation committees where publication and research are the most revered activities of what professoring entails. Nevertheless, within the educational system, teaching is perhaps the most key activity of them all. We transmit our knowledge and open students’ eyes to a new way of viewing the world.

Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega at CIGA-UNAM (Morelia)

I love teaching, I really do. It exhausts me, it drains me, it requires a lot of work from me, but I really, really love teaching. I’m definitely in love with my research, but I adore being able to shape students’ minds and transmit knowledge. This love prompted me to reflect on everything that teaching entails, and that is definitely undervalued. My Twitter thread shares some of these thoughts below.

I believe that one of the reasons why teaching is so undervalued is that we make ideas, concepts and subject matter look easy.

THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT, PEOPLE.

After I wrote this component of the Twitter thread, I remembered that there were MANY other parts of this job that people don’t/can’t see.

As readers reacted to my thread, many of them added other parts of the job that I might have missed (I was rage-tweeting, to be quite honest, and I wrote these ideas just off the top of my head). I really hope that after reading my thread and responses, quote tweets and conversation, we get a better understanding of just how hard it is to be an educator. Worth it? Definitely, yes. But nevertheless, very, very hard.

Even more so during COVID times.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – October 26, 2020

Teaching and pedagogy in the Zoom COVID19 pandemic times: Reducing reading workload and making my courses more practical and pragmatic

I have news about online teaching and reading workload, friends.

Zoom

Me, teaching via Zoom.

I have experimented with DRASTICALLY REDUCING the number of readings I assign for a class. This is sometimes perceived as hard in overview courses because you always feel like they should have “the lay of the land” and master all that there is available to learn.

HOWEVER…

My students have performed BETTER with reduced reading workloads.

Undergrads focus on ONE reading per week, while having 3 more available “if they so happen to have the time to read them” (they often do try to read these extra readings). Masters’ level students have appreciated taking a “let’s just take things more slowly” approach. Doctoral level students felt somewhat weirded out that I wasn’t assigning three books a week. Though they appreciated it.

What I have drawn from my experiences:
– Workshops work. Having a section of the class that is “hands-on, let’s get writing/analyzing/thinking/reading” as a workshop fulfills two goals, for me:

1) Cements my students’ understanding of the method.

2) Helps them have actual time to think and read and write rather than rush through.

Depth and breadth are issues we need to compromise on.

– Do I want them to read more broadly or more deeply?
– Do I want them to become more expert in a few things or become more generalist-type people?

These choices are malleable, as is our context.

What is NOT malleable: Time is NOT malleable.

Students and faculty and staff all have 24 hours per day.

Zoom University exhausts people because we miss physical interaction, social interaction. We don’t draw the same energy from performing inside a classroom. Staff are exhausted all the same.

I am someone who studies scarcity and decision-making under uncertainty. When time and energy are scarce, I prefer that my students make the choices that are more efficient, in my view: choose to read ONE reading deeply, practice what I teach you, become proficient in the method.

When all this *gestures broadly* passess, my students (then probably graduates!) will have again the time to read broadly, BUT they will also have the skills to engage with the material DEEPLY and PRACTICALLY, PRAGMATICALLY.

So, to me, reducing reading load actually worked.

The pedagogy that I use now is still much along the lines of how I taught: with kindness and understanding. But I now vary instructional techniques and strategies in a way that even when taught through Zoom, my courses can still be enjoyable.

Also, I err on the side of kindness.

Moreover, I have experimented with bringing in several guest speakers as guest lecturers. I am ever so grateful to everyone I have invited who has had an opportunity to accept and give a talk to my students.

This guest speakers pedagogical strategy has several benefits:

1) Students don’t keep hearing my own voice all the time.
2) They hear from experts in the field
3) While my students may hear the same or similar ideas as I have shared they hear them from SOMEONE ELSE.

I have always used workshops in my social science courses. I am trained as a chemical engineer (undergrad). EVERYTHING I learned had its own lab. I do the same thing: “here is the technique and how I use it, now, here: do it yourself”.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – October 11, 2020

Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything (Germano and Nicholls) – my reading notes

syllabusIf you’ve been reading my blog for a very long time you probably know that I have written quite a lot about syllabus-writing. I also have written about Dr. William Germano’s other books (“From Dissertation to Book”, and “Getting it Published”). I have corresponded with Professor Germano before, so he told me his next book with Kit Nicholls was in the works, and that it was on syllabus-creation. This made me, obviously, very happy. Writing about syllabi is hard, because much of the time, what we do is complain about them, and about how despite its existence, often times students do not actually pay attention to it. In my view, a syllabus is part a contract, part a narrative. That’s exactly why Germano and Nicholls’ book really resonated with me. This book is generous, gentle and kind, exactly the type of interaction I have always had with Dr. Germano.

Germano and Nichols’ writing resonates with my own thoughts on the topic of syllabus construction and development. I actually now think syllabi are scholarly products that could and should be taken into account in evaluations. They can also be public goods for other professors.

I share my own syllabi publicly (though I need to be more systematic about this) precisely because I think that there are others coming behind me who might benefit from reviewing how I have taught courses. I am particularly keen in sharing my syllabi with early career scholars, and more importantly, with contingent faculty and graduate students who have a responsibility to teach a course as instructors of record.

I’m a senior professor. It’s on me now to make the path of those coming behind me more accessible, easy to traverse. That’s why I share.Really a delightful way to spend the morning. I’ve corresponded with Dr. Germano quite frequently as I’ve read and written about his two previous books, and I’ve used them in the courses and worskhops I teach on how to do academic writing.

Grateful to have this book. 10/10 would recommend.

Disclosure: Dr. Germano sent me a physical copy of his latest book with Kit Nicholls as a gesture of kindness and academic generosity, but this in no way affects what I think of the book.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – October 11, 2020

Project management for academics III: Juggling multiple writing/research projects

Recently, Dr. Gretchen Sneegas (Texas A&M University) asked me how I manage multiple writing projects, a situation she’s facing right now as a post-doctoral researcher. This is not uncommon, even as a doctoral students: in academia, we tend to work on several projects at the same time. The biggest challenge for me is how to continue moving all these projects forward without falling behind. Obviously we are in the midst of a global pandemic, so no strategy that we used to implement functions properly under these conditions. Yet, there are a few heuristics we may be able to follow in order to continue doing our work and being organized even in the midst of all the turmoil provoked by the global COVID19 pandemic.

AcWri highlighting and scribbling while on airplanes

For this blog post, I’d like to speak to two components of the project management structure I use. The first one is Prioritization. I have written before about how I give priority to R&Rs, coauthored pieces, and stuff with actual, real pressing deadlines. This prioritization respects my coauthors and those I owe written output. I have also written before about the importance of prioritizing ourselves BEFORE giving priority to others and yet being able to respect commitments with those we agree to collaborate with. My TOTOs/TOMs (Text I Owe to Others vs Text I Owe Myself) heuristic allows me to ALWAYS make time for the stuff I need to write and still respect my colleagues, coauthors and collaborators.

#AcWri while travelling

The second element I find useful when thinking about project management is the importance of a Project Time Allocation heuristic. This means, how do I choose (from the set of projects I am currently working on), where to focus my writing efforts.

Again, we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and we are all overwhelmed, so I wouldn’t want anybody to over-stress. Least of them, ME! I have just recently changed universities, and this moves bring along a lot of changes and a steep learning curve about processes and procedures in the new university. Thus, what I have done is to continue my Project Time Allocation heuristic as I establish myself in this new job.

In my responses to Dr. Sneegas, I wrote about how I have recently eschewed my trusted “Move Every Project Forward Every Day (MEPFED)/Work on One Project Every Day (WOPED)” strategy. I no longer can move every project forward every single day because I am simply overwhelmed with moving to a new job, starting classes in my new university, dealing with holdovers from my previous job, etc. Working on a different paper each day of the week also distracts my brain, which at the moment really needs to focus.

I’ve devised a third approach to prioritization and time allocation, which I call the Research Streams Approach.

While normally I would associate a Research Stream with grant-funded work, this isn’t always the case because I don’t always have funded projects (or when I do, not everything is paid for, or some projects have funding and others do not). So, I can be writing 3 different pieces that come from the same Research Stream, but that have different Research Questions/Puzzles. I try not to work away from similar Research Streams (so, right now I am working a lot on informal water and informal waste aka informality). So, if I write about transnational environmental activism, at the same time (same week/month) as bottled water, as ethnography, I end up a bit overwhelmed. Thus, I write pieces around similar Research Streams around the same time (as it is the case right now, where I’m doing a lot of work on informality).

Below is my thread.

During these pandemic times, I’ve experienced some duress (my parents are aging, I decided to basically move in with my Mom so I could be near her and my Dad, I still have my own house, so I need to travel back-and-forth to Aguascalientes, I switched jobs) so neither of my previous approaches (MEPFED/WOPED) gave me the peace of mind I needed to move my research forward knowing that I have a very immunocompromised body and that my parents and I are all at risk because of COVID19. So I’ve moved to a different approach, what I call the Research Streams Approach (RSA).

I often move across areas (water, bottled water, wastewater, solid waste, environmental activism and protests, water conflict, polycentricity) and disciplines (political science, public policy, public administration, human geography) and methods (ethnography, experiments). One of my Research Streams is “Comparative Qualitative Methods”: comparative ethnography, comparative case studies, process tracing across countries/subnational contexts, etc.

Another Research Stream is Waste and Discards” and yet another one is “Bottled Water”. I am currently writing two book chapters: one on doubly-engaged ethnography for bottled water and discards and another one on research methods to study waste. Both of these combine 2 Research Streams nicely.

I am also writing 2 papers on informal waste and informal water vending. Both of these papers fall under combinations of Research Streams (Water and Informality, and Waste and Informality). So I am also trying to stay within the informality theory scholarship for reading/writing. I also got invited to write a paper on the politics of climate change in Mexico. I do write on climate politics but it’s more rare. So I had to basically set aside every other writing project to re-read, delve deeply into the climate literature. I know it, but I have to re-read.

I struggled with finishing this book chapter because I am often removed from the climate literature. Had it been on informal water or informal waste, I would have cranked it out in a couple of weeks easily (I am healthy now and my psoriasis/eczema/dermatitis/chronic pain receded). But contrary to other projects (where I applied either MEPFED or WOPED), this time I stayed with the climate politics literature until I was done (I sent it out last week). So now I’m back to informality, ethnography, waste and water. These are areas where I write comfortably. I’ll probably go back to Bottled Water stuff in about 3-4 weeks time, once I get these four pieces out.

Writing while travelling

One proviso to the Research Streams Approach (RSA). If I get an R&R (a revise-and-resubmit), I listen to every senior scholar who tells me “DROP EVERYTHING AND RESUBMIT”. This is super-hard for me, and I often times dread working on R&Rs. I am super, super, super afraid that “one wrong move, you’re an organ donor”. That is, I am scared that if I screw up the response to reviewers I will not have my paper published (I do have posts on R&Rs too!).

But the more senior of a scholar I become, the more used I get to the fact that if my paper doesn’t get published in journal A, it’ll end up in journal Z at some point (or in a book, or elsewhere).

I no longer have absurdly high expectations of where I am going to publish.

Thus, while I eschew making recommendations, I would suggest that regardless of which approach you take (MEPFED/WOPED/RSA/write whenever my care obligations/health allow me to), you should TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND YOUR LOVED ONES FIRST, especially your health and well-being.

These are not the times for productivity. If I write about stuff like this, it’s with the understanding that whatever I do I’m doing it to survive this pandemic, continue my research, teach as well as I can, and not kill myself in the process.

Take care of yourselves.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 13, 2020

How to develop a writing practice II: 12 tips to help you start, develop and hone your writing craft

In a previous post, I indicated that one of the best ways to develop a writing practice was to read volumes that worked as workbooks, teaching readers how to write and how to gradually learn the craft of producing good prose. This post is a summary of the second part of my Twitter thread on writing practices, wherein I offer 12 pieces of advice to help current and writers-to-be hone their craft.

Reading, annotating, scribbling, Cornell Notes, index cards

Now, on to the list…

And the last tip on the list, but by no means the least important.


We all know how important reading is for me (so much so that I launch Reading Challenges and have a full page filled with links to blog posts I’ve written on Reading Strategies). At the same time, I am always pushing for scholars and other writers to recognise that we ought to value the runway time we invest, and do the grunt work too.

Hopefully these 12 tips will help those of you interested in starting or perfecting your writing practice.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 6, 2020