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The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in your Nonfiction Writing (John Warner) – my reading notes

My handwritten notes of @aecoppock's paper presentationI have written before about how I believe that writing is a craft and an art. Writing solid prose requires technique, inspiration and knowledge of the subject matter. Learning how to write is a process that helps authors who are interested in producing cohesive, cogent and easy to read text. But I believe that the best way in which someone can learn how to write is by developing a writing practice.

John Warner’s “The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in your Nonfiction Writing” is one of the best books i have ever read to help me learn how to write nonfiction. I very strongly believe it will have the same effect on other readers.

For me, it’s always a bit hard to write about a book that I keep coming back to, because in this case, it’s a workbook and I don’t think I can excerpt anything without giving away how excellent it is. So I went back to every tweet I have sent about this excellent book to assemble this blog post.

First of all, this is a workbook. You’re not supposed to passively read and voilà, your writing will automagically improve. You need to WORK.

After reading The Writer’s Practice, this is what came to my mind: “I need to read this book either as I teach a writing class or as a guide book to walk me through a semester of learning how to write”. You can’t do TWP in a weekend. Too many diverse experiences to try out.

Upon reflection, you *may* just zoom in on the research writing exercises/experiences if you are really pressed for time. Another way of approaching this book is to develop your skills throughout the week, but again, you need to devote the entire week if you want to finish it.

A very minor quibble: Warner spends a reasonable amount of time asking you to think about your audience, yet I didn’t see a strong emphasis on the social aspects of writing: ask people to read your drafts and give you feedback. Doing this (asking for feedback) improves MY writing.

Overall impression: great workbook to help you improve your writing. To be used in a writing class or throughout an extended period of time. In fact, Warner (at the end of the book) provides two models to teach using TWP. I am glad he does the same as Dr. Wendy Belcher with her own book. Strongly recommended.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 6, 2020

Economical Writing: Thirty Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose

I said on Twitter that my reading notes for this extraordinary book, Economical Writing: Thirty Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose, by Dr. Deirdre McCloskey, would be simply an embed of a single tweet: this is a must-read book that everyone, even those not in economics, should buy and read.

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

The truth is, one tweet summarizes how excellent this book is.

I had previously read McCloskey’s writing (or about it – see here, and here) and I had even tweeted about it before this week.

Personally, I think very few people are able to write actionable advice that everyone will take in stride. 12/10 highly recommend.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 6, 2020

A typology of books about writing (Inspirational, Thematic and Developmental)

No writing book is all-encompassing, and therefore, I cannot in good conscience answer the question I get asked the most: which book on how to write/how to survive graduate school is the best? As I said on Twitter: “none of them”. Anybody who has written a book on this topic will agree: you gain insights from other authors, so you should read more than one book. Nobody has the last word on anything, least of them writing.

Acwri books 2

I recently read Anne Lamott’s amazing “Bird by Bird”, and doing so really made something click in my head. I can now understand more clearly why I can’t recommend ONE single book but instead MUST recommend several. Being able to change my mind about something is EXACTLY why I am a professor and a researcher: I am able to develop new ideas and challenge my preconceived notions of a phenomenon through reading, reasoning and absorbing new knowledge.

I stand by my statement.

I don’t think any of them are “THE BEST” or “THE MOST SUITABLE” for you or for anyone. As much as they’re all fantastic in their own right, each one of these books provides different insights, and therefore you should buy a small library containing a few of each type. Books that inspire you, volumes that help you develop your skills and tomes that will be thematically specific to your work.

I develop this typology of books (Thematic, Developmental and Inspirational) below.

In my case, I need to read books that inspire my analytical thinking (on waste and discards, on water, on activism and social movements, on protest, on methods). Those are to me the THEMATIC BOOKS. I need to read how OTHER scholars I respect write about the subjects I care about.

Of course, you will find inspirational, pithy quotes in Thematic and Developmental books, surely. No typology is perfect and no categorization is without its flaws. But the main insight I gained in reading Lamott yesterday and answering a query on which was the best book am now more convinced that there is no authoritative, definitive guide to academic writing (or research or writing) because we all need different components of the process.

You will learn different things from reading my work on water than you would absorb from others.

There are MANY excellent books that will teach you A METRIC TONNE of stuff that you NEED to learn. But sometimes you will find yourself staring at a wall, or devastated that you got a rejection from a journal, or simply stuck with your writing. So you’ll need INSPIRATION.

I also found different patterns from various “memoir-type” writers.

Stephen King and Henry Miller write more forcefully: “sit your butt on the chair every day for X number of hours until you get Y number of pages done”. I find Lamott much gentler: “you may need a system”.

And it’s true. I don’t write book reviews on my blog (I do in journals). I write sets of Reading Notes.

In conclusion: Develop a syllabus-like approach to reading “how to write” and “how to do academic work” books.

Of course, everyone wants to write (or read) “THE Authoritative Book on How to do Academia”. But think of learning about scholarly life as a lifelong syllabus: You write syllabi because your students need to be exposed to a variety of ideas and learn bits and pieces from others.

So no, I don’t think I can point you to THE best book on writing. I can give you some ideas on what to look for in a book and share with you pearls of wisdom I have distilled from each one.

But you’re going to have to invest in building a small library of books on these topics.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 2, 2020

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott) – my reading notes

It took me about however long it took me to FINALLY buy and read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. People have recommended Bird by Bird to me (particularly the Shitty First Drafts chapter) FOR YEARS. And it’s August of the year 2020 and I JUST got it. I would say that it’s weird that I literally *just* bought one of the books that was recommended to me THE MOST. After reading dozens of books about writing, and after writing hundreds of blog posts about the academic process. And while in the process of writing my two books on how to do academia.

I am SO GLAD I did.

Anne Lamott is a treasure, really.

My library of writing and “how to PhD”-type books is vast. I seriously have read a tonne of books on how to write. SERIOUSLY. Al types of books, as I mention below.

But I did a lot of competitive stuff, and when you compete against others, you learn to try to be The Best. I played nationally-ranked competitive volleyball since I was a child until my late 20s. I danced competitively. I didn’t just dance to have fun. I danced to win contests. Lammott’s approach reminds me of Brene Brown’s words: “when you live a wholehearted life, you learn to be kinder and gentler with yourself”.

I believe that’s the component that is missing in the structure of academia. We need a gentler, kinder academia, one that builds us up. Though Lamott writes for novelists, the way in which she talks about character, plot, story development, is extremely useful for all of us who do scholarly research.

In my view, research is about telling a story. With data, with theory, but it’s a story in the end. We reveal things. We explain concepts. We make the complex legible. Storytelling is an underrated skill in scholarly research and writing. Yes, I’m happy you can program with Python and that you develop multilevel models. Can you tell me the story of what your model reveals?

I am not joking when I said that reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird has transformed the way I think about and relate to writing.

100/10 would buy for all my friends and family.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 1, 2020

The September 2020 #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge

I need to stay on top of several literatures and finish several papers, yet I have caved to the “I am too overwhelmed with teaching” reality. So in order to force myself to spend some time every morning catching up with the literature, I decided to launch yet another #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge. #AICCSED, admittedly an awkward acronym, stands for a combination of the AIC Content Extraction Method that I champion to skim articles (Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion) and my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) Method to Systematize the Literature. Both systems combined allow us to stay on top of the vast volume scholarship that is being published at absurdly rapid rates.

Carving time to read is hard enough, so I decided to promote processing articles using a combination of AIC+CSED methods on an regular basis. This strategy is useful if you have a pile of articles and book chapters that you want to read but you keep putting off the time to do it. It also works if you want to stay on top of the literature on a regular (daily, fortnightly, weekly).

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

Yet the problem for me is that unless I am being forced to do it, I sometimes forget that I need to read in order to write (yes, I know I champion this approach all the time, yet I also fall prey to the multiple demands on our time!). Therefore, I decided to give myself a nudge and engage in an #AICCSED Reading, Annotating and Systematizing Challenge.

I am going to read one article every single morning (NEW ARTICLE, NOT SOMETHING I HAVE ASSIGNED FOR MY CLASSES, LET ME JUST MENTION THIS), annotate it and highlight it, and then I’m going to drop my notes in an Excel Dump row. I’m then going to post it on Twitter.

Reading

I’ve done this challenge several times over the past few years, and it’s always turned out well. A few people end up jumping on the bandwagon and it becomes quite useful to them because by the end of the challenge they’ve got notes on 30 articles, and they have read and absorbed at least the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion of 30 articles.

This time around, I decided to showcase the amount of work involved in doing a daily #AICCSED. I wrote a Twitter thread from where I extract to showcase the method here. I do this process following these steps:

  1. I download the paper and upload the PDF to Mendeley.
  2. I clean the reference in Mendeley.
  3. I print the paper (double-sided, always).
  4. I read the Abstract, and highlight it.
  5. I annotate the Abstract, write some notes on the margins.
  6. I read the Introduction, highlight passages and sentences that I find useful and important.
  7. I annotate the Introduction.
  8. I read the Conclusion, highlight and annotate.
  9. I drop my notes in a Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) associated with the topic I am reading. And voila!

In the Twitter thread that follows, I summarized my process for one article, so that people could see what they’re getting into when signing on . #AICCSED doesn’t require that you read the full article, but solely Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion (AIC). What you may find, however, is that you may in fact NEED to read the entire article or WANT to do so because it’s filled with important concepts and ideas.

I am considering if I want to do a Google Forms for this, as my good friend Luxana suggested.

For me, my simple system of #2ThingsADay often means that the only two things I get done in a day is reading a paper (and annotating) using the AIC method, and dropping it into a CSED spreadsheet. What we do in the #AICCSED challenge:

We drop a tweet reporting which article we read and we (often, not required) post a screenshot of the CSED (Excel Dump) row associated with said article.

What’s the purpose? To keep us reading, synthesizing and summarizing EVERY SINGLE DAY.

What an #AICCSED challenge is NOT – it’s not intended to stress you out – we’re in the midst of a pandemic, we’re short on time, we’re all stressed out. But if you can participate in the #AICCSED challenge, by the end of the month you will have 30 articles summarized in an Excel spreadsheet.

It requires some time investment and re-prioritization. For example, I MUST finish a book chapter on climate politics, literally TODAY. BUT… if I engage in the #AICCSED challenge, I want to read stuff on informal water, on waste and discards.

I normally do round months instead of saying “let’s do an #AICCSED fall semester challenge”. This semester, though, to help my student keep reading, I’m going to ask them to do the challenge themselves. It’s only ONE article a day on their actual thesis research.

Not a lot.

Again, I know we’re in a pandemic, and this is in no way meant to stress anybody out. It IS on the other hand intended to provide structure for people so they can keep reading and systematizing their materials.

Q – I can only do 1 a week.
A – GREAT, you’ll have 4 more articles!

Q – I can join #AICCSED but only infrequently
A – Fantastic! Whatever progress you make on staying on top of the metric tonne of readings we have to do is great

Q – I would like to do this once the beginning of the term is over
A – Fabulous. Join whenever you can!

Hopefully the #AICCSED Challenge will be of interest and helpful to you!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – September 1, 2020

The “two sentences’ elevator pitch”: A pedagogical exercise to help students think about their research questions and empirical/theoretical contributions

ElevatorWe’ve probably all heard about the idea of an “elevator pitch” to summarize an idea or a project. One of the challenges I face on a regular basis, with my own thesis students and with those I teach (particularly because I teach research methods, research design, and the mechanics of conducting research) is helping them describe their studies clearly for an audience that will probably have a very short attention span or limited time. The other day, I woke up with an idea for a didactic exercise we all can use to help students think about their research questions and projects and what these contribue to the literature, particularly broader debates and empirical state of the art. It’s based off of the 5 sentences model of an abstract which Dr. Jessica Calarco has talked about before.

Photo credit: Ross Howard-Jones on Flickr. CC-Licensed BY-NC-ND

The model I’ve been thinking about could be defined as a “two-sentences elevator pitch”. It’s based on the same model of the first two sentences in Jess’s model:

1) say what we know (the state of the art), 2) state what we don’t (what your research contributes to the literature).

I am planning to do a quick exercise with my students, in class, in order to help them contextualize their research.

A few quick examples of this approach from my own work:

  • “Institutions are built through repeated interactions between actors. What happens when those repeated interactions are interrupted?”
  • “Waste is often best governed in collaboration between the informal sector and local governments. What happens when this collaboration breaks down?”
  • “Water is established as a constitutional human right in many countries. Which factors hinder its implementation at the local level?”
  • “Good resource governance is often the result of collaboration across networks of actors. How can these collaborations be fostered?”
  • “NGOs often influence domestic politics in contexts where national governments are receptive to engagements with civil society. What happens in less participatory countries?”
  • “Customers will drink tap water if they perceive it is safe. What happens when there’s no guarantee by the local government that this will be the case?”

I am curious to hear from you (you all y’all) if this “2 sentences elevator pitch” model of presenting a research question that animates your own work is helpful to quickly summarize what you study. Can you comment on this blog post some of your work in this 2 sentences’ model?

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 14, 2020

A few structured strategies that we can use to craft paragraphs

Reviewing my students’ theses, and talking with them about their writing processes, they always tell me that they find crafting and constructing paragraphs very challenging. This is not unusual. Sentences and paragraphs form the core of our writing and each of them is, for many of us, beautiful and unique. Therefore, it is important that we develop strategies and heuristics to write those sentences and craft those paragraphs.

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

I wrote a Twitter thread that forms the basis for this post, showcasing several frameworks to build paragraphs.

Articles and book chapters that are rich with theoretical constructs and powerful ideas are usually too important for me to skim or to just do a quick AIC content extraction, so I really engage with them in depth.

The more I read and write about academic writing, the more I realize that for me, the paragraph is the key unit of analysis in academic writing.

As I discuss below, I use the process of constructing paragraphs as a framework to think about how I plan my writing and research time, and how I set my work-related goals.

As I always do, I look for other scholars’ strategies to help guide my readers. This approach allows them to decide if using MY techniques suits them or if another academic’s strategy works better for them. Below are a few links to some members of my community of scholars who write about academic writing, people I respect a lot.

CONSIDERING STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF A PARAGRAPH

Now, which other models do we have to help us craft paragraphs? I think this is where the whole “rhetorical moves” elements of academic writing is useful.

We need to consider two components:

1) the STRUCTURE of the paragraph

and

2) the CONTENT of the paragraph.

You can use any of the models I have mentioned before (Cayley, Thomson, Pacheco-Vega, Hayot, Dunleavy) to structure your paragraph. And THEN to fill up the paragraph you need to provide content organized in a sequence that provides evidence, argument, etc. That is, make it “argumentative”.

You may want to test the above mentioned strategies to STRUCTURE and then provide CONTENT for your paragraph. As for my work-planning strategy, in the end, my writing target goal is always A PARAGRAPH. Nothing more because otherwise I get stressed.

In this post, I’ve provided a few different strategies to STRUCTURE and develop the argument that will form the CONTENT of your paragraph. Hopefully my readers will find this approach will be useful.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 12, 2020

A step-by-step process to write a book review for a journal

I already had written a blog post on writing a book review, but I have published a few that I am quite proud of, thus I thought I’d expand that blog post with a sequential, step-by-step description of my process.

Books on water

A few years ago (I was young, naive, and ill-informed), I mentioned that I didn’t think book reviews ought to be included in curricula vitae as publications (even though I had published quite a few by then in various journals).

That’s not my opinion anymore.

I’ll explain.

I KNOW the hierarchy of publications in traditional academia STILLS eschews towards journal articles, *then* book chapters.

As book reviews were shorter pieces of writing, I didn’t see a lot of value in them (did I mention already I was young, naive and inexperienced?)

HOWEVER…

Organizing books by theme-topic

There are now a number of reasons why I value book reviews.

1) They help shine light on up-and-coming scholars and innovative, interesting, exciting new work. They DO have a place in scholarly communications.

2) They help students assess if a book is worth buying beforehand.

3) They offer graduate students, early career scholars who may be less experienced in publishing in scholarly journals an opportunity to experience the publication process in a less threatening, more collegial and cordial manner.

Are there a$$h0l3s who write awful reviews? YES.

Nevertheless, generally speaking, book reviews are intended to evaluate the book in the most positive way possible. Can you say negative things about a book? Of course, some journal book review editors will encourage you to find one or two areas for improvement. But in my experience n a book review, you can say the good things and the bad things that you see in a book, but you’re not supposed to trash it(*).

(*) I still haven’t found a book I’ve wanted to trash in a book review yet. Don’t send me one to review, though.

I DO encourage scholars now to write reviews of books.

Book review essays (where you review 2-3 or more books and develop a coherent, cohesive argument about them, perhaps bringing into conversation additional literature) are ALSO great opportunities to get a publication into a journal and include your voice and analytical prowess.

Bookshelves

To be quite frank, my most recent book reviews have been some of my best writing. I do remember thinking “damn, these paragraphs are so good I ought to save them for a journal article”.

HOWEVER…

I decided to keep them in the review…

b) highlights Sarah’s contributions to the literature, not only those from her book, but also from other publications she has, and

(c) brings Sarah’s book in conversation with other scholars (including, OF COURSE, myself, because well, I, too, have contributed to these :)).

In this blog post, I am detailing my own process to write book reviews. You can do as you please, but I do not accept books to review that I know I am not going to be positive about. I write book reviews that make the author and their contributions shine. I review books with the aim of ensuring that the world knows how amazing these authors are.

That’s also the approach I take to writing Twitter threads and reading notes of books. Why would I write about something I don’t like? (I have done it, but mostly for work that took me – negatively – by surprise). I hope that outlining my full process here can help prospective book reviewers take a positive approach to writing their reviews, with the intent to help the author(s) research shine and build on broader debates.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 8, 2020

Writing a Response-To-Reviewers-And-Editors letter

I’ve admitted this clearly from day 1: I ALWAYS HAVE A TERRIBLE TIME DEALING WITH REVISE-AND-RESUBMIT MANUSCRIPTS. Yes, I know that Dr. Sara Mitchell would say “R&R is the goal”, but still, it’s SO HARD for me to cope with reading reviewers’ comments and making the revisions.

Advice on writing

I have published quite a bit and yet I still dread reading reviews. I always have this inner fear that I’m not going to be able to properly respond to reviewers and editor’s comments so as to get my work published.

Nevertheless, I have some experience writing letters responding to reviewers and editors. This is how I deal with the process. Hopefully my strategy will help others facing the same challenge. I just published 3 journal articles this summer, and all of these have gone multiple review rounds, so I have plenty of experience to share.

First things first: being a journal editor IS A THANKLESS JOB. It’s an unpaid volunteer activity that is necessary to advance a field. So, my first suggestion when writing Response-To-Reviewers-And-Editors (RTRAE) documents is:

DO NOT BE AN 4$$H0L3.

A polite RTRAE is much more likely to be well received than any document where you basically call reviewers (another thankless unpaid job) absolute 4$$H4TS. Anyhow…

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

This is the process I follow when I receive reviews:

1) Wallow in self-pity (this is standard procedure) for about 48 hours (sometimes more time is needed).

2) Cool-off and remember that people aren’t out to get me and that any negative reviews do not reflect on my own worth.

.. a Letter of Response to Reviewers and Editors.

This is my process, you can adapt as you see fit.

1) I say something to the effect of “thank you for taking the time to read and review my work”, because really, we ought to acknowledge that this is a thankless job.

2) Using my DRM, I respond point-by-point to suggestions made by reviewers and editors.

It is important to comment that most journal editors will tell you how they prefer this response. Some may accept a DRM, others may want a letter, others may want a letter AND A REDLINED redlined = marked up with track changes) version, etc.

If the suggestions are a tad generic, I respond with comments that are similarly generic. If the reviewer is very detailed, I respond with the same degree of engagement.

3) It’s not a requirement that you accept every suggestion. If you are not going to change something, make sure to explain why you’re not making these edits, and the supporting rationale. IF you disagree with a reviewer, politely state why and respond so that they can engage with the substance of your comments.

Rough reviewers are going to exist anywhere, so it’s important to take the criticism as a critique of the work, not an assessment on the value of a person. I have heard (and personally experienced) of very nasty editorial and reviewer comments.

Nobody is exempt from these. (at least in my experience!)

AcWri highlighting and scribbling while on airplanes

To the extent that reviewers do their job (suggest ways in which the article may be improved for publication) and editors do theirs (make a judgment call on the reviews and the actual contribution an article may make to their journal and the field) we can expect a relatively straightforward process. Obviously having an R&R never means that there is a guaranteed publication coming out of the process.

Revise-And-Resubmits DO get rejected after one, two, three or even four rounds of revisions.

We all have read #HereOnTwitter about nasty reviews, mean editors, etc. These things may happen, but I think all we can do is take those in stride and push back where/when necessary in a polite yet firm way.

I follow the same process for every round of revision. And yes, I often have had four or five rounds of R&R. Yes, I’ve had experiences of doing multiple revisions and yet get rejected in the end. Such is life, whatever.

Anyway, in short, I use the DRM and the Backcasting an R&R techniques to help me write the RTEARs. I hope this depiction of my process will be helpful to some of you.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 7, 2020

An expansive framework to go from idea to abstract to introduction to table of contents to full paper/dissertation/thesis/book

Because I’ve been thinking about research all the time over the past few years (the mechanics and strategies of doing research, different methods to frame, design and answer a research question, how to effectively design a research project, etc.) I’ve also been wondering how can I craft a single, unified framework that can help writers develop their papers, book chapters, dissertations, theses, books. After a lot of thinking, I think the model I’m presenting here should be helpful.

Writing while in Berlin

I have the firm belief that every larger document you write can emerge from an abstract. That’s the sequence I use to write my own documents:

  1. Develop an idea
  2. Write an abstract (4-7 sentences’ model)
  3. Based on the abstract, develop an introduction.
  4. From the introduction, craft a table of contents
  5. Using the table of contents, write individual chapters/components of the paper

This sequence is expansive because with each step, you expand each component of the previous element. For example, an introduction can come from expanding an abstract. The introduction can serve as a template for outlining a table of contents as well, expanding each component of the introductory section, which may often take the format of a 5-7 sentences’ paragraph. In this Twitter thread, I explain my process in more detail.

I call this an expansive framework because I think about the process of writing a paper, a book chapter, or a book manuscript, or a journal article, or a thesis, as an expansive process.

1) Have an idea
2) Write first the abstract based on this idea (hence the Tiny Text)
3) Based on what you wrote in the Abstract, EXPAND it into a full-fledged Introduction (to a paper, or a chapter)
4) Based on what you wrote in the introduction, develop a Table of Contents.
5) Expand the Table of Contents into separate documents (chapters)
6) Repeat expansions.

Even the empirical or theoretical chapters can follow the same model (with adaptations). IMRAD-type journal articles can also follow a similarly expansive strategy. For the dissertation chapters, you can follow a similar strategy – each chapter has introduction, content (theoretical/empirical chapters, literature review), conclusion.

Hopefully, this blog post and my expansive framework will help folks develop their papers, book chapters, books and theses/dissertations more easily.

Posted in academia, research, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 7, 2020