You’ve just published a research article – why should you bother writing a blog post about it? Patrick Dunleavy argues that if you’ve devoted months to writing the paper, dealing with comments, doing rewrites and hacking through the publishing process, why would you not spend the extra couple of hours crafting an accessible blogpost? Here he breaks down in eleven easy steps […]
Category: AcWri2016
Write As If You Don’t Have the Data: The benefits of a free-writing phase.
When researchers reach the point of actually writing up their analyses, the writing can often centre around the data itself. Howard Aldrich argues this kind of “data first” strategy to writing goes against the spirit of disciplined inquiry and also severely limits creativity and imagination. Literature reviews and conceptual planning phases in particular would benefit if researchers explored the range of ideas associated […]
Writing the introduction to a journal article: Say what the reader is going to encounter and why it is important.
An introduction has a lot of work to do in few words. Pat Thomson clarifies the core components of a journal article introduction and argues it should be thought of as a kind of mini-thesis statement, with the what, why and how of the argument spelled out in advance of the extended version. Writing a good introduction typically means “straightforward” writing and generally […]
Conversing with ghosts: Prefigurative talk and the shifting contours of intellectual debate.
Next in our #AcWri2016 series is a reflection on conversational writing and academic thought. Academic discussion typically appears as clustered conversations. Davina Cooper focuses on the dilemma posed by prefigurative contributions, where academics respond to a discussion as if it is taking place, treating it as if it were the one that ought to be taking place, even though speakers know the actual […]
Five strategies to get your academic writing “unstuck”
To help fight off the January blues and to further inspire a productive year ahead, we have coordinated a series of posts on academic writing for this week. To kick-start the series, here are some general tips from Raul Pacheco-Vega on what to do when the words just aren’t flowing. From conceptual maps to short walks, here are some practical ways to […]