
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 thing’. The real reason isn’t
We all know academic writing “shouldn’t quote Wikipedia”… but what we often get wrong is why it’s not ‘the done thing’. The real reason isn’t
(I hope you sang the title to the Friends’ theme tune.) It can be a challenge to juggle lots of different projects and tasks. One
Not only is Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond now in to my publishers, but we have a publication date and a preorder link.
People often think hobbies are for kids, or retired people; for people who have holidays that aren’t really conference travel, or weekends that aren’t spent
Last weekend, the blog underwent a serious overhaul, with a new look, new design, updated content and a sign-up for a newsletter if you want even more from Research Degree Insiders! I’m really lucky to have worked with Dr Bronwyn Eager of Ivory Tower who did all the design and technical work. This post tells you about Ivy Tower, about Bronwyn, and about our design process. As always, it’s about the insider tips!
Writing has technical aspects, sure. You need skills, and training. And you need to be organised and disciplined about keeping up with deadlines and juggling projects. And writing has physical challenges, you have to sit and use your back and wrists and neck and eyes. But, you also bring your weird, inner, non-rational self to the desk when you write. The inner self that has views about what music you can listen to, or that you need to enact your writing rituals before typing a word. There are good reasons why you might like what you like, but a lot of it just is personal preference, and that is totally a great reason to take it seriously.
So How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble has just arrived in the publisher’s warehouse, which means it’s nearly ready to send out into the world! (Want
All of this works because we start doing the work. By not delaying the real work through endless reading and procrastination, we start working towards our end goal, in ways that actually contribute to our goals. That is, we start making words on the page that can be added to and refined until you have enough good enough words to submit a passable PhD thesis.
A couple of weeks ago, I actually did that thing on a Monday where you look at all your emails, turn them into to-do items,
In 2019-20 I was writing 3 books with other people (publication ranged from Nov 2019 to March 2021, but this does not reflect the writing or editing period of the books.) The books took between 9 months and 3 years to finish, and all of them overlapped in a great crash.