Reactivation?

I am reactivating the flog (fluency blog) in order to try some liveblogging (Damien should be proud of me) in a Workshop on Research Proposal & Products class (read: we are learning how to write).

Useful tool: works by Howard S. Becker. Check his homepage.

We are talking about writing projects we are working on. People are working on a combination of paper and thesis. We will be looking at samples of each other's writing and discussing them. Every week two persons will email their 'stuff' by Friday, and by Monday they will receive comments. Peer review is useful, from my experience. Be open to criticism. Even more, invite it.

Scary thought: IRB. Nobody really feels comfortable with it... so we are likely to schedule a class to discuss it.

We discussed two articles as examples of good writing. Night as Frontier by Murray Melbin and Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors by Susan Sontag. They are *nice*. They tell stories. You read them like novels... like literature. And it's surprising - and scary, again. We have this subconscious feeling that reading academic stuff (and writing is...) is painful. We know we like such articles. But can we - starting our adventure in the world of science - afford to write nice? The strategy of hiding behind lots of complex-sounding words is so tempting... 'Look, I use all of those phrases that nobody understands but I am sure you do and so I am 'one of you', too'.

If we have something to say, be brave. Don't write from the perspective that 'I am worthless student and this issue has been researched throughly....'. We can have important stuff to say - don't prostrate yourself in your writing.

When not to cite? Where general knowledge which doesn't need to be cited stops and specialized ones starts? How to avoid block quotes? Rule of thumb: you should be able to take all quotes, tables and similar stuff out and the paper needs to make sense.

Practical exercise: seek and destroy useless words. Avoid jargon, write simply. Avoid passive voice.

Freewriting activity: 10 minuts on: a) what am I trying to say? b) what bothers me about that? and c) why is my project important? Then go back see how much is usefu, mark gems. Finally, one paragraph 'clean, finished' summary of those - what is it that you are investigating?


PS. Don't forget to check Piled Higher and Deeper!

TTags: Liveblogging, Writing