Monthly Archives: August 2022
“The driving force behind science writing is that we want to tell stories. To map out my story, I often start with writing the abstract part of the paper. You don’t have to limit it to 250 words, but starting with an abstract forces you to really think about what you want to write: why you are doing these experiments, why are they important, why would people want to know this, what approach did you take, what are your main results, and what conclusions will excite people most? Often, the story is not yet complete when I start writing, but I like to do that because it makes me realize, wait a minute, we need to do some additional experiments! Because one can package a story in different ways with the same set of data, trying different versions of an extended abstract seems like a good first step in writing a paper as well as guiding the rest of a project to completion.”Writer’s Spotlight: Emily Bernhard
“I do a lot of collaborative writing, but I don’t red-pen my graduate students’ writing anymore. Instead, we sit down together and work through whole sections where one of us reads aloud and the other one edits. It’s awesome because you don’t have to over-interpret what someone’s edits mean, you’re just sitting there, together, talking about how to get the point across as clearly and succinctly as possible. Also, before we submit a revised manuscript, we always, always do a read-aloud as part of our final polish. It is amazing how many messy bits you’ll catch! It really does improve the flow of a manuscript.
I love it and think it has been a major improvement in working with my students as coauthors because when you’re having a conversation about writing, edits and suggestions seem less like attacks and more like improvements. A lot of editing and reviewing can come across as cruel because you were busy or you weren’t clear, which is problematic because writing is so much a part of people’s self-worth. I find that it’s easier to be kind by having a conversation – it’s a pleasant experience as opposed to a painful one!”
Emily S. Bernhardt, Professor of Biology, Duke University
What is involved in a 10-Day Writing Challenge?
The challenge is simple: write for at least 30 minutes every day (Monday through Friday) for two weeks. At the end of that time, we can evaluate ourselves: How did daily writing affect our productivity? Did participation in a writing community affect our enjoyment of the writing process?
The details:
- Schedule 2-weeks for the challenge
- Recruit friends, members of your lab, and co-authors to join you in the challenge
- Block off time on your calendar for the challenge and protect that time
- Each day of the challenge, you will get a reminder to log your progress (in a shared Google doc) and celebrate your writing streak
“The hardest part of writing is thinking from the mind of the reader – that is critical. I’ve gotten better at doing this by getting criticism from people and understanding why my writing wasn’t working. The more feedback I got, the more I learned how other people read, and then I started reading other people’s writing with that same consciousness and attentiveness of audience. Now, when I am reading someone else’s stuff, I’m trying to figure out why it isn’t working. A big part of becoming a better writer is reading other people’s writing critically.”