I am currently working on three book projects with three different teams, and that has led me to think carefully…
Should a PhD be ‘hard’?
On the one hand, of course a PhD is ‘hard’–as in ‘has a high difficulty setting’ and also ‘is a…
Getting your head in the game: the pause before you start work
When I started going to the gym (see Exercising Like a Girl parts 1 and 2), one of the things…
Planning vs. panic: 5 strategies for success
Someone whose work I really appreciate is Jo Van Every (@JoVanEvery). She has written a lot of blog posts (for…
How do you get from “pre-research” to search, and then research?
Last time I posted about “pre-research”, I talked about moving from pre-research into searching and then researching for a literature review. I…
Start making Done lists instead of To-do lists
I’ve mentioned ‘done lists‘ before, but as it’s the beginning of the year, I thought it was time to remind…
Wikipedia, Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and “pre-research”
We all know academic writing “shouldn’t quote Wikipedia”… but what we often get wrong is why it’s not ‘the done…
How to edit book manuscript final proofs
So How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble has just arrived in the publisher’s warehouse, which means it’s nearly ready to send…
How to start conversations without offending/excluding anyone: Top tips from 4 decades of Very Polite Conversations across 4 continents
Back in September, I did a thread on Twitter that a lot of people found helpful about how to start…
A thesis has shape as a tree has shape: Imperial Gardens, legitimacy and editing
This is a reflection on the form of a writing genre and what that means. I started thinking about it…
