Not That Kind of Doctor - Writing Process
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03/15/2024
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Writing can be one of the most challenging aspects of academic life, but with the right strategies, it can also become one of the most rewarding. In this episode of Not That Kind of Doctor, Guy and Nick dive into the intricacies of the academic writing process, from managing publication pipelines to overcoming the hurdles of time management.
đź“ť What You'll Learn:
The importance of scheduling and protecting your writing time
How to effectively manage feedback from peer reviewers
The value of collaboration and maintaining multiple projects at different stages
Tips for navigating the submission process and choosing the right journal
Strategies for sustaining productivity without falling into the trap of binge writing
Whether you're a graduate student, early-career academic, or seasoned researcher, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you maintain momentum and achieve your writing goals. Don't miss out on these insights that can make your academic writing journey smoother and more productive.
Like, comment, and subscribe for more episodes where we tackle the challenges of academic life with humor and real-world advice. 📚✨
#AcademicWriting #ProductivityHacks #ResearchLife #TimeManagement
Writing Process - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin
www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
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- [00:00:00.440](upbeat music)
- [00:00:09.810]Thinking about timelines,
- [00:00:11.040]brave, it's like you've gotta time it out so...
- [00:00:13.830]You do have to time it out.
- [00:00:15.412]And I don't think that people
- [00:00:16.530]think through that kind of stuff.
- [00:00:18.000]Like, publication pipelines are real things. Real things.
- [00:00:24.390]Yes. So congratulations.
- [00:00:25.950]Thank you. Appreciate it. That's exciting.
- [00:00:28.912]That's exciting.
- [00:00:29.745]And it's with the ex graduate student
- [00:00:31.470]who's now got a job in Illinois, so...
- [00:00:34.950]Oh.
- [00:00:35.940]So she gets a first authorship,
- [00:00:37.620]we get a paper out and exciting.
- [00:00:41.130]Oh, Tish just got her first paper out.
- [00:00:43.334]Yes.
- [00:00:44.167]Which is super exciting.
- [00:00:45.240]And we co-authored and that was super fun.
- [00:00:47.550]That's good.
- [00:00:48.383]She was very stressed about it.
- [00:00:49.909](chuckles) The first few times are super stressful.
- [00:00:54.240]And it's never not stressful,
- [00:00:57.210]but I think it does get easier
- [00:00:59.070]as it like anything else in life,
- [00:01:01.440]if you practice you get good at it.
- [00:01:04.072]Right.
- [00:01:04.905]And you also know how to gauge.
- [00:01:05.880]I think the hardest thing in the publication pipeline
- [00:01:09.120]is to gauge the information you get back
- [00:01:13.802]from the journal, from the reviewers.
- [00:01:17.550]You know, how much do you need to do? How do you respond?
- [00:01:20.970]And all of that. And it gets definitely easier.
- [00:01:23.820]And that's where I think thinking about the pipeline,
- [00:01:28.530]but also thinking about how do you manage everything
- [00:01:31.620]around the publication,
- [00:01:32.820]working with somebody who has a little bit more experience
- [00:01:34.980]has that ability to say,
- [00:01:38.317]"We're in a good place, this is what we need to do.
- [00:01:41.280]This is the next step."
- [00:01:42.330]Or "We've gotten accepted,
- [00:01:45.240]now we make the last few corrections and it's fine.
- [00:01:49.250]At this point, they will not say that we're out.
- [00:01:51.810]This is all good." Right. Right.
- [00:01:53.520]And a revise and resubmit is not a...
- [00:01:55.788]Yes. Rejection. Not a rejection.
- [00:01:57.210]Like, these two things are not the same.
- [00:01:58.950]They might feel the same.
- [00:02:00.660]So... But...
- [00:02:02.250]But that's kind of a good segue.
- [00:02:04.440]Yeah.
- [00:02:05.273]Into what we're talking about today
- [00:02:06.811]on "Not That Kind of a Doctor."
- [00:02:08.490]I'm Nick Husbye.
- [00:02:09.720]I am an associate professor of elementary literacy education
- [00:02:12.810]here at UNL.
- [00:02:14.070]And I'm Guy Trainin
- [00:02:14.903]and professor of education here at UNL.
- [00:02:17.400]And today we're talking about
- [00:02:19.787]kind of about the writing process.
- [00:02:21.480]This is something...
- [00:02:22.380]This is a, well, we're probably gonna go back to
- [00:02:26.100]on a fairly regular basis because there's a lot to it.
- [00:02:29.220]And it's one of the hardest tasks I think in academic life
- [00:02:36.600]because the horizons are long,
- [00:02:39.720]so teaching happens next week,
- [00:02:41.580]I've gotta prepare for Tuesday.
- [00:02:44.400]And service,
- [00:02:45.450]it's like there's a committee meeting on Thursday,
- [00:02:47.790]probably shouldn't have volunteered for that committee,
- [00:02:49.740]but it's too late.
- [00:02:51.870]But the whole idea about writing is the timeline
- [00:02:56.400]from if you're collecting data, if you need an idea,
- [00:03:02.100]if you need to start writing,
- [00:03:03.780]all of that just takes such a long time
- [00:03:06.330]that it's easy to put that away
- [00:03:09.660]and kind of make it your last priority
- [00:03:11.550]because it's not right in front of you.
- [00:03:13.050]Like, you are gonna face people in your service life
- [00:03:17.850]and your teaching life in the next few days.
- [00:03:23.070]With the writing,
- [00:03:24.123]you don't have to face anybody and the timelines along.
- [00:03:27.840]So you've gotta be really planful.
- [00:03:29.580]Right. And there's this weird metric
- [00:03:31.920]when it comes to the writing,
- [00:03:32.970]because what gets measured is the final product,
- [00:03:36.360]not the process that goes into it.
- [00:03:38.130]Not the this got rejected or how to revise and resubmit
- [00:03:43.740]or none of that really gets counted.
- [00:03:46.560]Yeah, very true.
- [00:03:47.880]And so that's also kind of problematic, right?
- [00:03:50.880]Like, this notion of academic writing
- [00:03:53.640]is trying to wrestle with this huge scholarly octopus
- [00:03:59.640]with your bare hands.
- [00:04:00.900]And there's just all this kind of stuff
- [00:04:04.800]that gets in the way.
- [00:04:05.880]And so we thought in this episode
- [00:04:08.130]we'd talk through some of the tips and tricks
- [00:04:11.700]that we can use to kind of navigate this a bit more,
- [00:04:18.120]not easily, but with a little bit more maybe panache
- [00:04:23.490]or some smoothness or what has worked for us,
- [00:04:27.960]what might work for you.
- [00:04:30.180]And I think that that first bit that we want to talk about,
- [00:04:34.380]like going back to your committee work, right?
- [00:04:36.540]Going back to like the teaching, et cetera.
- [00:04:38.790]Like, what are the biggest times sinks that you experience
- [00:04:42.750]when you are working with academic writing
- [00:04:45.600]and how do you circumvent them?
- [00:04:49.050]How do you avoid them? How do you work with them?
- [00:04:51.510]Like, what are some of the time management tricks
- [00:04:54.210]that you use in order to make this happen.
- [00:04:57.480]And so I think that the biggest mistake
- [00:05:01.534]in anybody you ask about, not just academic writing,
- [00:05:05.730]but the research endeavor writ large,
- [00:05:09.517]is that you need to schedule time.
- [00:05:14.160]And because some of it does not happen with people,
- [00:05:17.040]especially when you get to the writing phase,
- [00:05:19.230]you often do that on your own.
- [00:05:22.020]Then what happens is that's the first thing to go.
- [00:05:26.520]And so in a busy schedule, you don't think through.
- [00:05:30.840]A good portion of my life is about this research thing.
- [00:05:33.660]For example,
- [00:05:34.493]our appointment tends to be around 30% research,
- [00:05:37.920]which means that every week...
- [00:05:40.740]I mean, you can average this out,
- [00:05:42.330]but every week you need to spend
- [00:05:44.640]30% of your time on research that comes in a regular week
- [00:05:51.480]to about 12 hours. Right.
- [00:05:53.130]So if you haven't spent 12 hours this week,
- [00:05:56.430]we're on spring break so maybe not this week,
- [00:05:58.440]but if you haven't spent 12 hours
- [00:06:00.630]in a regular week on research,
- [00:06:03.420]you are actually not leaving out your contract.
- [00:06:06.540]And we talked about time management before
- [00:06:08.550]and about managing your time as an academic.
- [00:06:10.680]Definitely, as a graduate student,
- [00:06:12.180]if you are a graduate student
- [00:06:13.380]who is seeking to have an academic position,
- [00:06:16.020]you have to think about
- [00:06:17.550]a significant portion of your time on research
- [00:06:19.710]because research takes time.
- [00:06:21.027]And if you don't take this time
- [00:06:23.160]and if you keep doing everything else except that,
- [00:06:26.040]then you are going to have the sense of I'm always stressed,
- [00:06:31.080]nothing is happening, I'm not publishing,
- [00:06:33.450]I'm not collecting debt, whatever it is that I'm not.
- [00:06:35.730]The second piece is even within those 12 hours,
- [00:06:39.180]you have to make sure that some of it
- [00:06:41.460]goes to a actual writing and not reading for writing.
- [00:06:48.480]Important task, definitely put some time into that.
- [00:06:51.630]Not data collection. Although data collection is important.
- [00:06:54.360]If you're doing something empirical without data,
- [00:06:56.850]you have nothing, so you need to put some time there,
- [00:06:59.190]but you have to write every week.
- [00:07:00.810]And if you won't, you will get to that point
- [00:07:03.060]where you've done everything else
- [00:07:04.650]and now you have to do the writing and now you're stuck.
- [00:07:09.060]And for example, in my case,
- [00:07:11.400]the thing that I used to have as the biggest problem
- [00:07:15.570]is I love analysis.
- [00:07:17.250]So I can spend literally weeks on end
- [00:07:21.450]just running every possible way to do coding
- [00:07:28.740]if it's qualitative.
- [00:07:30.060]And then what can I learn from this?
- [00:07:32.250]Can I add a layer? What questions can we answer?
- [00:07:35.070]Or in quantitative, really refining the analysis
- [00:07:39.090]and getting a better table
- [00:07:40.980]and doing this really fancy thing.
- [00:07:44.430]And actually, I needed people who would say,
- [00:07:46.627]"Why are we doing this?"
- [00:07:47.760]And I would go,
- [00:07:48.593]"I'm not sure, but it's really nice to do that."
- [00:07:50.839]It's super fun.
- [00:07:51.672]And it's fun. And it's pretty.
- [00:07:53.580]And at the end of two hours of analysis,
- [00:07:55.830]I feel like I've done something.
- [00:07:57.690]Right.
- [00:07:58.830]Versus, like, when you are writing,
- [00:08:00.878]sometimes you write a paragraph,
- [00:08:02.640]sometimes you write a sentence,
- [00:08:03.750]sometimes you write like eight pages.
- [00:08:05.520]Like, the thing that I have internalized around writing
- [00:08:12.960]is some days I'm gonna write a lot
- [00:08:16.350]for the time that I show up.
- [00:08:17.640]For other days I'm not.
- [00:08:19.350]And that's the important thing is that I show up.
- [00:08:21.960]Yeah.
- [00:08:23.052]And I think, there's this responsibility
- [00:08:27.850]that you need to hold for yourself.
- [00:08:30.390]Like, when you schedule writing time,
- [00:08:32.640]you schedule research time,
- [00:08:34.590]like keep that appointment with yourself.
- [00:08:37.080]Yeah.
- [00:08:38.670]This makes me think of just Friday.
- [00:08:42.360]I, Liz Boyle has given me the term INOPs.
- [00:08:47.157]Are you familiar with INOPs?
- [00:08:48.690]I...
- [00:08:51.000]Do you know what an INOP is?
- [00:08:52.485]No.
- [00:08:53.318]It's the immediate needs of other people.
- [00:08:55.710]Oh, I like it. Yes.
- [00:08:57.180]I like it too, which is why I've stolen her site,
- [00:09:03.780]her INOPs, like Friday, I was super excited all morning,
- [00:09:08.400]I had like I the first massive block to do some writing,
- [00:09:17.070]do some analysis, et cetera.
- [00:09:19.740]And got this panicky email,
- [00:09:23.467]"Oh, we meant to do this." Ta-da-da-da.
- [00:09:26.760]And I allowed myself to get caught up
- [00:09:31.590]in someone else's poor planning,
- [00:09:34.080]which then threw off my planning,
- [00:09:37.368]and it just totally threw off my day.
- [00:09:41.550]And so like there is this notion
- [00:09:43.650]of when you schedule things,
- [00:09:46.410]you want to set those boundaries for writing and research
- [00:09:51.120]and all of the activity that comes into that.
- [00:09:53.760]And if your colleagues are not being good stewards
- [00:09:58.680]of both their own time and yours,
- [00:10:02.700]like you need to be sure that you hold that boundary,
- [00:10:06.870]hold the line, right?
- [00:10:10.110]Yeah. Which is difficult
- [00:10:11.370]because we don't want to disappoint other people.
- [00:10:14.299]Mm-hmm.
- [00:10:15.132]And when you set up boundaries like that,
- [00:10:17.160]someone's always gonna be disappointed.
- [00:10:18.660]It's either the other person's gonna be disappointed
- [00:10:21.000]because you did not put down your boundary,
- [00:10:24.030]you did not acquiesce your boundary,
- [00:10:26.670]or you're going to be disappointed because you did.
- [00:10:30.870]And that's where I was at on Friday
- [00:10:32.850]because I spent four hours collecting data
- [00:10:37.920]that was not a great use of my skillset
- [00:10:42.900]and could have been doing other things.
- [00:10:46.410]And this goes for graduate students and for new faculty,
- [00:10:51.450]this goes to the same place and that is...
- [00:10:54.184]Oh, I think it's all faculty.
- [00:10:55.159]Yeah, it's all faculty.
- [00:10:55.992]But I think when you are graduate student or young faculty,
- [00:11:00.510]it's harder to say no, we've talked about this before.
- [00:11:03.600]You have to stand firm
- [00:11:05.130]because the fact that you helped somebody else,
- [00:11:09.150]an advisor, another faculty member,
- [00:11:14.160]a teacher out in the schools, whatever it is,
- [00:11:16.800]it is great to help them.
- [00:11:18.120]But if you don't have boundaries,
- [00:11:19.860]then your work gets hurt
- [00:11:21.540]and they can't help you
- [00:11:23.400]if you don't graduate with your dissertation
- [00:11:26.100]because you didn't get it done
- [00:11:27.840]and you need to wait another year,
- [00:11:29.490]another semester or whatever it is
- [00:11:31.620]or you don't get enough research output.
- [00:11:37.230]Again, going back to we are judged on output.
- [00:11:40.800]And so you don't get enough research output,
- [00:11:43.200]and now your ability to get to tenure
- [00:11:46.530]or to keep your contract get hampered,
- [00:11:49.890]they can't help you at that point.
- [00:11:51.240]Even if they want to and they can attest,
- [00:11:53.100]they were helping me,
- [00:11:54.210]that's not going to be something that anybody accepts.
- [00:11:57.570]So you've got to protect your time.
- [00:11:59.670]We talked about if it's 30%, those 12 hours,
- [00:12:02.130]if you are a full-time research person,
- [00:12:03.900]that's 100% of your time.
- [00:12:05.490]You should be doing as little as possible anything else
- [00:12:08.610]because your job says this is who you are
- [00:12:11.220]and you've got to protect that.
- [00:12:13.500]And those are the things
- [00:12:15.090]that I think about when I think about those.
- [00:12:17.880]The issue of planning
- [00:12:20.100]and one of the things that I know you do,
- [00:12:23.280]obviously not as well as I thought is you turn-
- [00:12:26.070]It was one day, Guy.
- [00:12:27.270]No, no, no.
- [00:12:28.320]One day.
- [00:12:29.153]But one of the things you can do
- [00:12:30.900]is temporarily either don't look at your email
- [00:12:34.770]so you can't see those messages coming
- [00:12:37.200]and turn your messages on your phone to silent.
- [00:12:40.830]Oh yeah, the focus feature. That's something you do.
- [00:12:42.640]Yeah, that that is something that I do. Yeah.
- [00:12:44.520]And normally, I would say normally I'm fairly good
- [00:12:47.730]at, like, this is my time.
- [00:12:51.780]And what I love about the focus feature
- [00:12:53.790]is because I text you sometimes
- [00:12:56.040]is that it lets me know that you're on focus time.
- [00:12:59.430]So I know, "Oh, I'm not gonna get an answer immediately
- [00:13:02.400]because that this is on focus time, this is fine."
- [00:13:06.450]It sends the message.
- [00:13:07.500]I mean, the thing about the expectations of other people,
- [00:13:10.320]sometimes it'll be disappointed,
- [00:13:11.760]but if the boundaries are clear,
- [00:13:13.620]people will often, not always, but often respect them.
- [00:13:17.220]And so you've got to make your boundaries clear
- [00:13:20.160]and focus time on a phone is one of those features.
- [00:13:23.580]You can actually create a message on your email
- [00:13:25.770]or just turn off all the dings
- [00:13:27.510]and do not keep your email open when you're doing that.
- [00:13:30.420]Because the minute your email is open...
- [00:13:31.789]Yes.
- [00:13:32.622]Your eyes will jump there, there's nothing to do.
- [00:13:34.020]And if your email pings, that's on you.
- [00:13:36.990]People do not have your email or any of your other message,
- [00:13:39.273]Keep your email off.
- [00:13:40.740]Yes.
- [00:13:41.573]Just as you schedule writing time,
- [00:13:42.780]I would schedule email time.
- [00:13:44.880]Yeah.
- [00:13:45.713]That's the only time that my email is open now.
- [00:13:48.360]And if I don't get to everything in that period of time,
- [00:13:51.810]I don't get to everything in that period of time.
- [00:13:53.460]Like, if it's an emergency, they will come find you.
- [00:13:56.370]Oh, and just to add one more layer to that
- [00:13:58.950]because that's important.
- [00:14:01.800]And for that to happen,
- [00:14:03.000]don't use your email box as your to-do list.
- [00:14:06.690]'Cause if you do, you have to open, you keep it open.
- [00:14:09.270]Yes.
- [00:14:10.103]So, a to-do list, email is not a to-do list.
- [00:14:12.750]Email is communication, just saying.
- [00:14:15.750]Yeah, well, and so the other thing
- [00:14:17.700]that I think is so important
- [00:14:19.710]when we're talking about time management is yes,
- [00:14:24.420]block those times, keep those appointments with yourself,
- [00:14:27.690]but also set reasonable goals.
- [00:14:30.900]Yes.
- [00:14:31.921]What is the actionable object that you are working
- [00:14:34.710]toward within that amount of time, right?
- [00:14:38.040]Like, when does not simply write a dissertation.
- [00:14:40.800]Check. Right?
- [00:14:42.450]Like, that doesn't help you. Yeah.
- [00:14:44.790]So break those larger projects down.
- [00:14:50.220]Like, week to week, what is it that you wanna work on?
- [00:14:53.790]Like, are you trying to get through
- [00:14:56.850]a certain bit of analysis?
- [00:14:58.860]If you're working on a literature review,
- [00:15:00.840]how many articles are you reading,
- [00:15:03.090]and where are your notes gonna be,
- [00:15:05.119]and what are doing with that coding?
- [00:15:06.840]If you're writing,
- [00:15:07.950]what's your target for words in particular that week?
- [00:15:12.300]So get as specific as you possibly can
- [00:15:16.710]in terms of what it is you're trying to do.
- [00:15:20.220]Because if your goal
- [00:15:21.330]is simply write that 7,000 word manuscript
- [00:15:24.630]or write that 10,000 word manuscript,
- [00:15:26.970]that's not gonna happen in one sitting, right?
- [00:15:29.190]You don't wanna binge,
- [00:15:31.082]like from what we know about academic binge writing,
- [00:15:34.440]and that tends to be a really prevalent model.
- [00:15:37.230]You wait until the deadline, right before the deadline,
- [00:15:40.320]and you just plow through it.
- [00:15:43.530]Yeah.
- [00:15:44.363]What that creates though is one not,
- [00:15:47.220]it's not sustainable work, right?
- [00:15:49.290]No.
- [00:15:50.139]Because you've exerted all of this energy
- [00:15:54.120]on this one manuscript
- [00:15:55.560]and that doesn't leave you any energy for the next one.
- [00:15:58.651]Yeah.
- [00:15:59.484]And so you end up having these walls
- [00:16:01.350]that happen after that binging
- [00:16:05.190]before you engage in your next binge.
- [00:16:07.380]It's much better to schedule regular intervals
- [00:16:12.300]keeping in mind that you don't need these long...
- [00:16:16.470]I feel like you are really good at this.
- [00:16:17.970]Like, you are really good at in your schedule
- [00:16:20.070]where your pockets of time.
- [00:16:21.540]Yeah.
- [00:16:22.590]15 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour,
- [00:16:25.800]in order to do that writing work.
- [00:16:28.470]Yeah.
- [00:16:29.303]Are long periods of time great?
- [00:16:30.690]Yeah, that's part of the reason I was so salty about Friday.
- [00:16:33.270]Yeah.
- [00:16:34.408]Is because it was one of the few times
- [00:16:35.241]where I had, you know...
- [00:16:36.074]A chunk. Three-hour chunk
- [00:16:38.610]to sit down and do some work,
- [00:16:41.445]but most of the time it's half an hour here, an hour there.
- [00:16:46.500]And so don't binge if you can help it.
- [00:16:52.140]Yeah.
- [00:16:52.973]Don't think, don't fall into the fallacy
- [00:16:56.130]of "Oh, I need all of this uninterrupted time."
- [00:17:00.360]If you don't have that uninterrupted time,
- [00:17:02.700]what time do you have?
- [00:17:03.660]What time could you leverage?
- [00:17:05.820]Yeah.
- [00:17:07.001]And use it to your best advantage.
- [00:17:08.010]And then set reasonable goals and specific goals
- [00:17:14.250]for that time.
- [00:17:17.732]And think through,
- [00:17:19.043]like, does like a Pomodoro method work for you?
- [00:17:22.500]Like, set a timer and check in with yourself,
- [00:17:24.990]like what is your goal
- [00:17:25.980]over the course of the next 50 minutes?
- [00:17:28.110]And then you take 10 minutes.
- [00:17:29.730]What did you do? What's your next step?
- [00:17:31.710]Do you have another hour to go?
- [00:17:33.360]What are your goals for next hour?
- [00:17:34.950]Like, those are things that,
- [00:17:37.920]like if we're talking about research-based practices
- [00:17:41.040]have a lot of backing in terms of helping us
- [00:17:45.240]be more productive as writers.
- [00:17:48.330]And it can seem kind of silly, but is effective.
- [00:17:52.200]Yeah, definitely.
- [00:17:53.580]And the other piece, and this is the meta, so not meta,
- [00:17:58.470]but one layer above is that you want to keep,
- [00:18:04.020]at least in my case,
- [00:18:05.640]I've learned that over time
- [00:18:07.080]is to reach those goals that you need to hit
- [00:18:10.500]on a fairly regular basis.
- [00:18:11.970]You need to have more than one writing piece at a time
- [00:18:15.060]or research and writing,
- [00:18:16.980]but you want to keep them
- [00:18:19.439]at different points in the process.
- [00:18:23.730]So you want some things, I'm thinking about an idea,
- [00:18:26.910]I'm still formulating in something else.
- [00:18:29.550]I'm collecting data right now.
- [00:18:30.990]Another thing where it beginning to write
- [00:18:33.990]and we're just creating and crafting some of the work.
- [00:18:38.280]And then something is getting close to publication.
- [00:18:41.070]And there's usually, in this case,
- [00:18:44.400]when you start having a longer career,
- [00:18:46.680]you will have also a fifth one
- [00:18:48.330]that is in the revise or resubmit
- [00:18:51.120]or last corrections that kind already been submitted,
- [00:18:54.630]already been kind of tangentially accepted
- [00:18:57.480]or in that process and you're working on that.
- [00:19:00.480]And each one of these has a different sense of urgency
- [00:19:04.620]and a different time commitment.
- [00:19:05.970]Yeah. So for example,
- [00:19:06.803]towards the end, when we're like,
- [00:19:09.492]"Okay, it's a revised and resubmit,
- [00:19:11.362]I usually do a few longer sessions to just get it done
- [00:19:15.690]because we have a list of things we need to do.
- [00:19:17.970]It's a very clear task."
- [00:19:19.695]It's very concrete. Yes.
- [00:19:20.528]Which... Here are the comments,
- [00:19:22.050]we number them, we respond to each one of them,
- [00:19:25.710]we make the correction in the manuscript
- [00:19:27.360]and we send it back.
- [00:19:28.740]And that is a glorious thing because it is so concrete
- [00:19:31.920]and you are likely to get the best results.
- [00:19:34.980]Right.
- [00:19:35.813]The most likely positive outcome from this
- [00:19:39.450]based on everything else.
- [00:19:40.530]Everything else is kind of kept on lower flame,
- [00:19:44.160]you know, in the data collection time
- [00:19:46.740]we're just collecting data and we're doing initial analysis
- [00:19:50.220]and so there's...
- [00:19:52.140]It also depends on where you're collecting data
- [00:19:54.450]and all of that may interact.
- [00:19:56.580]Like, if I'm going to classrooms that just has a schedule
- [00:20:00.090]and I'll do those hours,
- [00:20:02.070]but at the same time I'm writing other pieces.
- [00:20:05.310]Right, yeah, if you're thinking about,
- [00:20:07.890]it is a bit like a juggling act, right?
- [00:20:10.048]Yeah. Very much so. Like you have to...
- [00:20:12.660]You have to kinda set up your publication pipeline
- [00:20:16.100]in ways that allow you
- [00:20:18.090]to constantly have something out under review.
- [00:20:23.280]You're ideating new pieces,
- [00:20:25.500]you're working on existing stuff,
- [00:20:27.210]you're collecting additional data, et cetera, et cetera.
- [00:20:29.430]Like, it's not...
- [00:20:32.343]It's like when Tish sent in that first piece, she was like,
- [00:20:38.467]"Okay, well, so when this one comes back
- [00:20:40.800]after we're done with this one I'll send out the next one."
- [00:20:42.870]I was like, "No, no. That's not how that works."
- [00:20:45.180]Like, you've sent this out, it is out of hands.
- [00:20:48.000]Yes.
- [00:20:48.833]So now let's get started on your next piece.
- [00:20:51.125]Yeah.
- [00:20:51.958]Like, what comes next for you 'cause this one=...
- [00:20:53.340]This one, she has a solo author, right?
- [00:20:55.800]I'll be there to support,
- [00:20:56.880]but it's her first big solo authored piece.
- [00:21:02.040]And she was like, "Oh, is that how that..."
- [00:21:04.890]Yeah, that's how that works. Yeah, you keep.
- [00:21:07.380]We keep, we set these things up.
- [00:21:11.460]Yeah. In order to...
- [00:21:12.660]There's always something coming out,
- [00:21:15.270]which helps us segue into...
- [00:21:17.670]I feel like you are really good at this next piece.
- [00:21:22.350]Like, that ideation bit where we are thinking
- [00:21:26.940]about after you've done your dissertation, right?
- [00:21:32.190]And you have your pieces
- [00:21:34.290]that are coming outta that dissertation.
- [00:21:36.840]Where do you come up?
- [00:21:38.760]Like, you might be finding yourself thinking,
- [00:21:40.440]like, what else is? What's next, right?
- [00:21:42.990]And so looking at your career,
- [00:21:45.390]and you've really done a lot of stuff.
- [00:21:51.090]Yes, in different directions.
- [00:21:52.705]Across a variety of different directions.
- [00:21:54.270]Some people said I'm scattered, but yes.
- [00:21:56.327]And so I would love to know a bit more
- [00:21:58.800]about like where do you find the inspiration
- [00:22:01.950]for new directions in your work?
- [00:22:05.580]what are some of the most unexpected spaces for inspiration,
- [00:22:09.720]and how do you make those decisions about
- [00:22:14.130]constructing a line of research
- [00:22:17.370]within all of those Pieces?
- [00:22:19.440]So I think I've a couple of answers.
- [00:22:22.470]My usual answer to everything is people. (chuckles)
- [00:22:27.330]That is, I find that collaborating with creative people
- [00:22:32.280]who think very differently than me helps me generate ideas
- [00:22:36.000]and helps us sit together and generate something new
- [00:22:38.790]that we didn't expect.
- [00:22:41.370]Years ago, for example,
- [00:22:42.990]Freddie Hebert came to me and to Kathy Wilson
- [00:22:47.010]and a few other people,
- [00:22:48.090]Emily Hayden, among them, and said,
- [00:22:51.457]"I think we need to work on silent reading fluency."
- [00:22:57.360]And I was not really interested in reading fluency per se,
- [00:23:01.350]although we did some work around that area,
- [00:23:04.110]but it's not an exciting area.
- [00:23:05.790]It's kind of an obvious area.
- [00:23:07.710]We did a large experiment, it was fine, we moved on.
- [00:23:10.860]But silent reading fluency was really, really interesting
- [00:23:14.010]because that was, let's take away that oral component
- [00:23:17.490]and that competitive component
- [00:23:18.990]and just focus on how do we measure it?
- [00:23:22.230]What are the things we need to consider?
- [00:23:24.180]I brought in my thoughts
- [00:23:26.610]around a measurement and technology,
- [00:23:29.880]and suddenly it became an exciting project
- [00:23:31.650]that we pursued for about six or seven years.
- [00:23:35.310]And so it's talking to people,
- [00:23:38.190]especially early on with people who are more experienced,
- [00:23:41.130]I think helps as long as they don't dictate,
- [00:23:43.830]as long as you have control over what you are doing.
- [00:23:47.160]And Freddie was very good at that.
- [00:23:48.660]I was actually, in many ways her goal as a mentor
- [00:23:52.110]was to get people going in their career
- [00:23:54.480]and capitalizing on ideas.
- [00:23:56.310]She did not try to hoard ideas or to say,
- [00:23:59.010]I'm a first author in anything I've ever thought about.
- [00:24:01.470]So that was good. You gotta find the right people.
- [00:24:04.080]But later in my career, it's actually graduate students
- [00:24:07.290]who bring fresh ideas and I help guide that
- [00:24:10.890]and help try to help steer them away from bad ideas
- [00:24:14.820]and create something that is original.
- [00:24:18.630]So people is a huge component,
- [00:24:21.000]just enjoying the thinking that happens.
- [00:24:24.960]And the second thing is, of course,
- [00:24:26.460]knowing what's happening in your field.
- [00:24:27.840]And that goes back to reading in your field
- [00:24:30.060]and identifying really what are the exciting questions
- [00:24:34.020]that nobody's working on.
- [00:24:35.880]Or that you have new insights
- [00:24:38.400]that you want to work on within that.
- [00:24:41.970]And there's a herding effect in research, right/
- [00:24:45.690]For a while, when I came out to the research world,
- [00:24:51.390]that's a weird phrasing, wasn't it?
- [00:24:52.950]When you came out to the research as a white guy.
- [00:24:55.362]To the research world.
- [00:24:56.223]As a researcher,
- [00:24:57.690]and I went to the SSSR meeting in Colorado,
- [00:25:03.030]in Aurora, actually, many years ago.
- [00:25:05.730]Everybody was doing phonemic awareness.
- [00:25:08.700]Everybody was correlating phonemic awareness
- [00:25:11.040]with late reading.
- [00:25:12.270]I mean, the whole conference was that.
- [00:25:14.340]I think there were two papers that didn't.
- [00:25:16.590]And that got really boring.
- [00:25:18.330]Everybody was doing the same
- [00:25:19.680]and there was no differentiation.
- [00:25:21.420]It's like, how many of these do we still need to do
- [00:25:24.090]until we're satisfied and we can move on?
- [00:25:26.820]So identifying early what's coming up
- [00:25:29.400]or what are things people aren't talking about right now?
- [00:25:32.940]And people help, publications help, and leading,
- [00:25:37.080]especially in literacy,
- [00:25:38.100]I think we have a really good history of thought leaders
- [00:25:42.180]that kind of identify the directions.
- [00:25:44.970]They're past their point of often,
- [00:25:47.610]they're past the point
- [00:25:48.450]where they're doing a lot of empirical studies.
- [00:25:50.190]I'm thinking about Pearson in the last 10 years or 15 years.
- [00:25:54.150]I'm thinking about when I was working with Bob Calfee
- [00:25:58.530]and identifying vocabularies an area that needed work,
- [00:26:01.410]although he wasn't gonna do it.
- [00:26:03.780]So there are people
- [00:26:04.680]who kind of try to paint what's on the horizon
- [00:26:08.970]or what are people not paying attention to.
- [00:26:10.920]And that's an opportunity to kind of learn from that
- [00:26:13.980]and start directing yourself.
- [00:26:16.110]But there's also that idea
- [00:26:18.240]that things are changing in the world.
- [00:26:19.680]So being in contact with schools,
- [00:26:21.919]being on the ground in classrooms
- [00:26:25.290]is critically important to understand what...
- [00:26:28.110]At least in our world where we're looking at education,
- [00:26:31.320]we need to understand what's happening in the field
- [00:26:34.170]to say, "What are we missing?
- [00:26:36.390]What are we not talking about
- [00:26:37.770]that you should be talking about?"
- [00:26:39.300]And that's a grounded aspect of the work
- [00:26:44.460]that is hard I think to do
- [00:26:47.550]because we are geographically bound.
- [00:26:50.070]So even if I go look in classrooms,
- [00:26:52.950]they tend to be right here.
- [00:26:54.510]And if it's the same district,
- [00:26:55.650]you see version of the same things.
- [00:26:57.240]It's interesting, but it's not the world.
- [00:26:59.160]So trying to see how do I get exposure
- [00:27:02.220]that is a little bit wider
- [00:27:03.750]is a critically important skill in finding out.
- [00:27:06.180]This is how I ended up working, for example,
- [00:27:08.820]more in the direction of educational technology.
- [00:27:11.340]I started seeing the gaps
- [00:27:12.630]between what the schools we were sending our students to
- [00:27:15.510]and what we were doing.
- [00:27:16.950]And it's like there's a lot more happening there.
- [00:27:19.650]Not all of it good, so we can add to that,
- [00:27:22.620]but we're not doing any of it in our backyard.
- [00:27:25.020]We need to start doing it.
- [00:27:26.220]And that brought up opportunities for research,
- [00:27:30.360]opportunities for funding
- [00:27:31.740]and opportunities for collaboration with the schools.
- [00:27:34.020]So it became a package deal
- [00:27:36.030]that became what I started doing.
- [00:27:38.370]Yeah, and I think so much of this
- [00:27:39.690]comes down to when you're thinking
- [00:27:41.790]about staying up to date in your content area,
- [00:27:45.690]also figure out some spaces
- [00:27:47.280]that you can read outside of your content area in, right?
- [00:27:50.047]Absolutely.
- [00:27:51.869]Like, ed psych, learning sciences,
- [00:27:53.790]have been really generative spaces for me
- [00:27:57.750]in terms of helping me with my core research, right?
- [00:28:02.670]In literacy, in teacher education.
- [00:28:06.090]And it's not anything that you would look at and go,
- [00:28:12.037]"Oh my gosh."
- [00:28:12.870]You must read that 'cause you're a literacy person.
- [00:28:15.030]Yeah.
- [00:28:15.930]But it's really helpful in terms of thinking about,
- [00:28:23.617]"Oh, this is what I need to do next.
- [00:28:26.415]This is really the direction that I want to start moving in
- [00:28:31.440]and how I pull all of that together."
- [00:28:34.020]And I think not limiting yourself to just the research,
- [00:28:39.390]but thinking widely and coming up with a system
- [00:28:43.230]to collect snippets that you encounter throughout your day
- [00:28:47.850]or throughout your reading or what have you.
- [00:28:52.140]So like, let's say I read a blog post by a teacher,
- [00:28:59.130]and she says or he says something really, really interesting
- [00:29:02.340]about their practice.
- [00:29:04.710]I'm gonna capture that, put it in my notes app.
- [00:29:07.500]I might not know what to do with it at the time,
- [00:29:10.410]but at least I have it somewhere.
- [00:29:11.940]And at the end of the week or at the end of the month
- [00:29:14.250]when I go in and start organizing the notes
- [00:29:16.500]that I've collected on my phone,
- [00:29:18.750]I start to get some ideas of work
- [00:29:20.940]that I could do around that.
- [00:29:22.560]But it's about capturing those things
- [00:29:25.620]that peak your curiosity or feel interesting,
- [00:29:29.910]but you can't quite understand why yet,
- [00:29:34.410]that are really fascinating to me.
- [00:29:38.010]And how do you...
- [00:29:40.980]In a world where...
- [00:29:42.810]In a world where information is everywhere. (Guy laughing)
- [00:29:48.300]But literally,
- [00:29:49.133]in a world where we are inundated with information,
- [00:29:53.190]how do you collect that information
- [00:29:57.600]in a way that can feed you,
- [00:30:00.750]and what you're interested in and you can make actionable.
- [00:30:08.430]That practice in and of itself has been really fruitful
- [00:30:11.100]in terms of "Oh, I'm gonna write about...
- [00:30:16.110]Or I'm gonna research into this
- [00:30:17.460]and I'm gonna write about it,
- [00:30:18.570]but it's coming from these little notes,
- [00:30:21.270]these little snippets that I've collected
- [00:30:23.010]from all over the place.
- [00:30:24.608]Mm-hmm.
- [00:30:25.441]And then bring together. Can pull together.
- [00:30:28.380]In ways that I might not have been able to otherwise,
- [00:30:33.602]but it does come down to building up those systems
- [00:30:38.070]where you can collect and capture that thinking.
- [00:30:41.517]Yeah.
- [00:30:42.990]And then can go back and actually do something with it.
- [00:30:46.350]Versus before I'd be like, "Oh, that's really interesting."
- [00:30:49.440]And then forget it and would never come back to it.
- [00:30:52.722]Yeah, so taking notes is really important.
- [00:30:54.810]I actually rarely go back to my notes,
- [00:30:57.120]but as we all know from research, when do you take notes,
- [00:31:01.470]the chance that it's actually sinking in
- [00:31:04.140]and being processed is much, much higher.
- [00:31:07.050]So even if I take notes
- [00:31:09.390]and they don't go anywhere,
- [00:31:10.770]I've got end note files for every conference I've gone to
- [00:31:16.110]that I've reviewed few times.
- [00:31:19.440]Once in a while, I do go back to it there.
- [00:31:21.300]I went to a conference in Finland a couple of years ago
- [00:31:24.840]that I still go back to the notes from.
- [00:31:27.077]So there's certain ideas that lodge in your mind.
- [00:31:32.460]I find wide conferences, for example, ARA,
- [00:31:37.830]as much as I'm often critical of ARA,
- [00:31:40.770]that's one of those places where you can get information
- [00:31:45.000]from people and things you haven't thought about.
- [00:31:49.590]And so because it's such a wide,
- [00:31:52.500]it's capture all kind of conference,
- [00:31:55.740]you can experiment with lots of ideas
- [00:31:59.490]and go and listen to some things and say,
- [00:32:01.627]"Hmm, this, this is really intriguing.
- [00:32:04.770]I want a little bit more of that."
- [00:32:06.360]And I write down a few citations and I follow up on that.
- [00:32:09.120]And I go to, I think almost 20 years ago,
- [00:32:12.420]I went to the chaos theory, special interest group.
- [00:32:16.560]And I was like,
- [00:32:18.367]"These people have no idea what they're talking about.
- [00:32:20.790]This is does not seem like a fruitful way to spend my time,
- [00:32:25.590]so I'm not going to come back."
- [00:32:27.060]But I found many interesting groups to belong to.
- [00:32:29.670]And so you, especially early on,
- [00:32:33.390]I think that going reading wide occasionally
- [00:32:36.330]and reading the journals that go wide
- [00:32:38.520]is really, really helpful.
- [00:32:39.780]So don't narrow your interest to just,
- [00:32:43.380]I'm interested just in...
- [00:32:45.630]Again, going back to phonemic awareness.
- [00:32:48.150]That's the only thing I care about.
- [00:32:49.780]If you write about anything else, I don't care.
- [00:32:51.348]That's all I do.
- [00:32:52.181]Because you're limiting yourself
- [00:32:54.060]and you want to think about, and that goes back,
- [00:32:57.570]and I think we talked about this
- [00:32:59.970]when we talked about research,
- [00:33:01.110]but you have to think about your academic life
- [00:33:03.120]as a program of research,
- [00:33:04.380]not just about one study at a time.
- [00:33:07.410]It does happen one study at a time,
- [00:33:09.480]kind of concurrently a little bit,
- [00:33:11.190]but you have to think about,
- [00:33:12.850]if I find this, what will be the next step?
- [00:33:16.470]Is an important way to think about this
- [00:33:18.450]so you don't get stuck
- [00:33:19.500]and you're not always fishing for new ideas.
- [00:33:22.050]You gotta be open to new ideas,
- [00:33:23.610]but you gotta have an idea of where you're going
- [00:33:25.530]in the next couple of years because it takes time.
- [00:33:28.830]You can't blame that. And thinking through,
- [00:33:30.090]like your strands, right?
- [00:33:31.590]Yeah.
- [00:33:32.933]Like, very few researchers have just one thing.
- [00:33:36.030]They have these kind of strands Of their research program.
- [00:33:39.630]And that's okay because you might get burned out on one
- [00:33:44.340]and then you switch to another, right?
- [00:33:46.501]Yes.
- [00:33:47.334]And that's also super helpful.
- [00:33:50.250]And just to finish because you asked me about my career,
- [00:33:55.920]you don't want to pivot.
- [00:33:57.720]There are critical points where you can pivot your career
- [00:34:00.750]into a very different area,
- [00:34:02.880]but those are very pronounced period.
- [00:34:05.340]I don't think you can pivot whenever you want to.
- [00:34:08.070]So for example, if you're a graduate student,
- [00:34:11.640]you don't wanna pivot while you're writing,
- [00:34:13.620]while you are working up to your dissertation.
- [00:34:16.080]Once you have a solid idea
- [00:34:17.460]of where you're going, keep going.
- [00:34:20.070]Because taking a 90 degree turn then
- [00:34:24.930]is going to prolong your pain and suffering
- [00:34:28.560]until graduation.
- [00:34:29.670]It is possible.
- [00:34:30.540]So if it's something you hate, please don't do it.
- [00:34:32.910]But once you settled on something, you stay with it.
- [00:34:35.880]And as an assistant professor in the first few years,
- [00:34:39.150]stay the course.
- [00:34:40.350]Have a robust course and start developing side interest,
- [00:34:44.070]but stay the course on the main thing,
- [00:34:45.630]otherwise you're not gonna be productive enough.
- [00:34:48.180]Right.
- [00:34:49.013]And there was a piece years ago
- [00:34:50.970]that was written about you want to leave graduate school
- [00:34:55.350]with enough to write about for the first two years
- [00:34:57.492]of your assistant professorship.
- [00:35:00.750]Just to make sure that there's momentum
- [00:35:02.490]because you're getting to a new place,
- [00:35:04.200]you've got everything else going on.
- [00:35:06.180]Again, that's that layered plan of writing,
- [00:35:09.660]of researching and writing that you've gotta have
- [00:35:12.570]because otherwise you're gonna look not very successful
- [00:35:15.900]the first couple of years.
- [00:35:17.220]So you wanna carry it with you.
- [00:35:19.080]Right after you get tenure is a really good time.
- [00:35:21.900]If you do want to pivot, this is a great time to pivot.
- [00:35:25.140]And it becomes easier as an associate professor to pivot.
- [00:35:28.920]So there are times you pivot,
- [00:35:30.240]but most of the time I think it's...
- [00:35:32.790]You're slowly moving in a direction
- [00:35:34.950]instead of just pivoting and doing completely different
- [00:35:39.600]because that requires a lot of new reading,
- [00:35:42.750]a lot of new knowledge,
- [00:35:43.800]a lot of new co connections and all of that.
- [00:35:47.250]And it's challenging. And it also gets,
- [00:35:48.930]kind of tricky in the tenure process where they're like,
- [00:35:50.880]what's your contribution to the field, right?
- [00:35:52.836]Yes. Yeah, yeah.
- [00:35:53.669]And so building up that strand of research
- [00:35:56.700]that is coming outta your dissertation
- [00:35:58.590]becomes important there, right?
- [00:36:00.589]Yeah.
- [00:36:01.422]So also don't forget that.
- [00:36:03.120]Okay, so let's switch to...
- [00:36:05.460]We've talked about one does not just write a dissertation
- [00:36:08.370]also one does not just submit a manuscript, right?
- [00:36:11.326]Yeah.
- [00:36:12.159]So like, there's the submission process
- [00:36:17.610]and I feel like the submission process
- [00:36:20.070]is one of the most discounted stages in a manuscript.
- [00:36:27.629]Yeah.
- [00:36:28.462]In the manuscript preparations,
- [00:36:29.790]like getting it ready to go, et cetera, et cetera.
- [00:36:32.580]So I would love to know
- [00:36:35.280]about what are some things that you do
- [00:36:39.300]as you are thinking about getting ready
- [00:36:42.120]to submit a manuscript to a journal.
- [00:36:45.480]And how do you make that as smooth a process as possible?
- [00:36:52.468](Guy chuckles) I dunno, just smooth ever. (Nick laughing)
- [00:36:55.860]But I think that I've start...
- [00:36:59.040]I've pushed back the time where I choose a journal
- [00:37:03.120]to where when we have an idea,
- [00:37:05.520]we already write the names of three or four journals
- [00:37:10.140]it might go to.
- [00:37:10.980]Mm-hmm.
- [00:37:11.813]So I used to first, write and then think,
- [00:37:15.427]"Okay, where does this go?"
- [00:37:16.830]I'm like, this has completely transformed for me.
- [00:37:19.740]And I do that with all my graduate students
- [00:37:21.540]or recent graduates that I write with.
- [00:37:23.280]So let's decide where it's going
- [00:37:25.950]because that dictates so much of the content,
- [00:37:28.860]the style, the length, right?
- [00:37:31.890]There's a huge difference between six to 7,000 words
- [00:37:35.820]and 10 to 12,000 words.
- [00:37:37.320]Yes.
- [00:37:38.340]That's a completely different manuscript.
- [00:37:40.230]And if you don't know that in advance,
- [00:37:42.690]you will be writing to one and then you're like,
- [00:37:45.277]"I need to cut 4,000 words."
- [00:37:48.060]And that is not a task you want.
- [00:37:51.070]No.
- [00:37:51.903]You want to know that in advance
- [00:37:53.220]and think about what goes into this
- [00:37:55.650]because I know it's going to be short
- [00:37:57.270]versus what goes into this because I know it can go longer.
- [00:38:01.080]And so I make the decision early,
- [00:38:03.720]I check everything that they do.
- [00:38:07.230]And so I go and fake submit something just to see,
- [00:38:11.010]because sometimes the requirements
- [00:38:13.590]are actually not on their page.
- [00:38:15.390]When you start submitting, you're seeing,
- [00:38:17.017]"Oh, here are a whole bunch of new requirements
- [00:38:19.170]they forgot to tell me in the regular directions page."
- [00:38:22.530]So I find that out fairly early so I know what I'm facing,
- [00:38:26.700]and I write...
- [00:38:29.400]I do the whole...
- [00:38:30.420]This is the last few years,
- [00:38:32.830]but I do the whole writing process in Google Docs
- [00:38:35.280]because I write a lot with other people
- [00:38:37.107]and this is the best collaboration platform.
- [00:38:41.310]Just I'll try.
- [00:38:42.210]Now you have to translate it to wherever they want,
- [00:38:44.760]even at the end.
- [00:38:45.810]And it changes pagination and a lot of other things.
- [00:38:48.715]Right.
- [00:38:49.548]You do have to be aware of that.
- [00:38:51.005]But that's where I work and I do not move it out there.
- [00:38:54.750]So I don't do any of the formatting.
- [00:38:56.940]I do it APA and all of that.
- [00:38:58.710]I don't do any of the formatting until we're ready
- [00:39:01.620]because that's just a waste of time.
- [00:39:03.480]Right. But at least then you know it, right?
- [00:39:05.890]Yes.
- [00:39:06.723]Like, 'cause there's the...
- [00:39:07.556]I know exactly what the expectations are.
- [00:39:09.120]Most journals will have a right for us.
- [00:39:13.650]Yeah.
- [00:39:14.781]Kind of space where they go over things,
- [00:39:17.730]like, here's the scope and aims of the journal.
- [00:39:20.700]Absolutely.
- [00:39:21.533]What does this match up? How does this match up?
- [00:39:24.570]And having referenced those
- [00:39:27.180]before you get to the writing phase
- [00:39:30.390]helps you think through in about how that manuscript
- [00:39:35.400]is gonna fit that particular journal.
- [00:39:38.160]And it also helps with thinking through,
- [00:39:40.860]like you were saying, length, formatting.
- [00:39:44.100]Don't assume that they're APA,
- [00:39:45.960]like, because they're not all like...
- [00:39:48.068]Double check that and make sure
- [00:39:48.901]that whatever citation management software you're using
- [00:39:53.331]can handle whatever citation style they're asking for.
- [00:39:59.640]There's going to be particular formatting things.
- [00:40:01.860]So knowing those things up front and keeping track of them.
- [00:40:04.980]I always like to have that, when I'm doing a manuscript,
- [00:40:08.340]I like to have that on the first page, right?
- [00:40:10.643]Yeah, I do too. Yeah.
- [00:40:12.211]Which is here's everything that I need to be aware of
- [00:40:15.510]So I can refer to it fast.
- [00:40:16.890]I don't have to look it up every time
- [00:40:18.720]because that's a waste of everybody's time.
- [00:40:19.860]Exactly. Yeah.
- [00:40:21.090]And then the other thing that I do
- [00:40:22.320]is I get my submission credentials upfront.
- [00:40:27.795]Yes.
- [00:40:28.628]I don't wait. Yeah.
- [00:40:29.663]Like, I don't do, I don't run through a...
- [00:40:33.150]I don't have a dry run of that submission process normally.
- [00:40:36.000]Yeah.
- [00:40:37.332]But I will go in and if I need an account,
- [00:40:38.940]I make sure I have that account, I make sure it's ready,
- [00:40:40.920]I make sure I know where my password is.
- [00:40:44.850]Yeah. All of those details.
- [00:40:46.440]But the other piece, and that is I think about goals.
- [00:40:51.210]Who do we want to talk to? So who's our audience?
- [00:40:54.000]You've gotta think about this. Is this a practitioner piece?
- [00:40:57.180]I'm gonna send it to this kind of journal.
- [00:40:59.640]It's gotta sound, it's gotta have a certain tone,
- [00:41:01.980]and a certain set off criteria around it versus I want...
- [00:41:07.110]There's a recent piece
- [00:41:08.310]where we decided we want to talk to school administrators.
- [00:41:11.220]Well, there are journals for that,
- [00:41:13.110]but there's also a style associated with that.
- [00:41:15.540]So you don't want to get to the point where you're done
- [00:41:17.730]and you're like, "This is too researchy.
- [00:41:19.320]Now I have to rewrite it for this audience.
- [00:41:20.760]Right.
- [00:41:22.033]You want to know in advance.
- [00:41:23.610]And it's also about what are your personal goals
- [00:41:27.180]and what are your...
- [00:41:29.730]So what is your audience versus who do you want to talk to?
- [00:41:35.880]Other researchers, practitioners,
- [00:41:38.040]administrators, whatever it is.
- [00:41:39.600]But there's also the personal goals,
- [00:41:41.250]because I work with a lot of scholars
- [00:41:42.840]who are building careers or have specific requirements.
- [00:41:47.790]For example,
- [00:41:48.623]their institution considers only top tier journals.
- [00:41:51.840]However, it's defined, then that changes the calculus.
- [00:41:55.350]Right. And I'm like,
- [00:41:56.422]if this is what you need,
- [00:41:57.255]we're gonna work with what you need.
- [00:41:59.130]And so we are lucky to be in an institution that counts,
- [00:42:05.760]but that's not an absolute requirement.
- [00:42:08.220]Mm-hmm.
- [00:42:09.053]And so we don't have to be,
- [00:42:10.747]"Oh, it's only the top quartile or whatever.
- [00:42:13.050]The top five in the field or however it's defined."
- [00:42:15.660]It's a hard definition for sure.
- [00:42:18.120]And so, and there's impact factors
- [00:42:20.040]and all of these things to consider.
- [00:42:21.270]But if you have something to consider
- [00:42:22.920]or if immigration is, for example, on the line,
- [00:42:25.830]then you need to have to make an excellence argument.
- [00:42:29.910]And for that you need top tier journals.
- [00:42:31.980]I find that out in advance and we plan with that in mind.
- [00:42:35.790]That requires a different kind of attention,
- [00:42:38.310]a different style and all of that.
- [00:42:39.900]So you consider both personal goals
- [00:42:42.690]and then the goals of the research
- [00:42:43.950]and who do you want to talk to with your results?
- [00:42:47.100]Yeah, and I think the important thing
- [00:42:48.390]is to frontline that plan, right?
- [00:42:49.637]Yes. As much as possible.
- [00:42:51.390]As much as you possibly can.
- [00:42:53.530]Don't wait until you're done with the manuscript to go,
- [00:42:57.397]"Oh, where am I going to put this?
- [00:43:00.600]Where am I gonna submit this to?"
- [00:43:02.010]Like, start with that information
- [00:43:04.620]and then work your way back...
- [00:43:06.510]Or start with that information
- [00:43:08.040]and work your way backward from there,
- [00:43:10.544]I think is really important.
- [00:43:13.410]Also, submit if there's a deadline 'cause there's open call
- [00:43:18.330]and then there's like themed calls, right?
- [00:43:20.886]Yeah.
- [00:43:21.719]And so with either of them, there's typically like,
- [00:43:25.080]get your manuscript in by this date.
- [00:43:27.930]Plan a bit ahead, right?
- [00:43:31.310]Yeah.
- [00:43:32.143]Like two days ahead, three days ahead,
- [00:43:33.780]because all that formatting stuff,
- [00:43:36.690]all of the details that are going to take time.
- [00:43:39.664]There are. Yes. Your editorial letter
- [00:43:40.560]is going to take time.
- [00:43:42.180]The other thing that I would recommend for all of this
- [00:43:44.550]is as you're looking at the place
- [00:43:48.180]where you are thinking you are going to submit this,
- [00:43:51.030]write your abstract now.
- [00:43:54.150]That should be the first thing that you write.
- [00:43:57.480]I write the abstract last.
- [00:43:59.550]Yeah, well, so here's why,
- [00:44:00.840]here's why I say you write it first
- [00:44:02.880]is it gives you the outline
- [00:44:07.350]for what you're going to do next.
- [00:44:09.120]And it really, for me,
- [00:44:11.850]helps me ensure that I'm not deviating away
- [00:44:16.770]from what I want that manuscript to be about.
- [00:44:19.050]Do I have to sometimes edit it?
- [00:44:20.460]Yes. Always. Yes. Yeah.
- [00:44:22.110]But it helps me think through,
- [00:44:24.840]this is what I want this manuscript to be about.
- [00:44:27.060]Here's the data that I'm using, here's how I'm using it.
- [00:44:30.600]And the manuscript that follows that abstract
- [00:44:36.780]feels more kind of substantial
- [00:44:40.800]because I've given myself some boundaries-
- [00:44:43.763]Mm-hmm. Yeah. To work within
- [00:44:46.110]from that abstract, right?
- [00:44:48.030]And I think that the key for me is...
- [00:44:51.630]So I use outlines in exactly the same way,
- [00:44:55.050]but the key is, I think have boundaries.
- [00:44:58.200]Yeah.
- [00:44:59.033]Because you are likely, especially in my case,
- [00:45:01.170]I have a lot of large scope research project
- [00:45:04.200]to collect a lot of data.
- [00:45:06.720]And there's no one paper
- [00:45:08.310]that could contain all of that data,
- [00:45:10.590]so creating very clear guardrails
- [00:45:15.360]saying this paper is gonna focus on this feature
- [00:45:18.900]is critically important.
- [00:45:19.980]And you can do that through the abstract,
- [00:45:21.420]you can do that through creating an outline,
- [00:45:23.550]but you have to adhere to that.
- [00:45:25.620]So for me, that goes right after.
- [00:45:27.570]And that the abstract, that's the same thing.
- [00:45:29.430]Right after...
- [00:45:30.263]These are the demands by the journal, first page.
- [00:45:32.250]The second page is, here are the guardrail.
- [00:45:34.230]Here's how meeting those demands.
- [00:45:35.670]Yes.
- [00:45:36.503]And this is what we're gonna write about.
- [00:45:38.430]And if it goes beyond that,
- [00:45:40.230]we've gotta correct and say,
- [00:45:41.737]"This is going to something else, which may be next, right?"
- [00:45:46.050]Again, thinking about the multiples,
- [00:45:47.730]but it's not all the same thing.
- [00:45:49.620]And we talked about this a little bit
- [00:45:51.060]when we talked about how to turn your dissertation
- [00:45:52.920]into potentially multiple papers.
- [00:45:54.443]Right.
- [00:45:55.276]It's like you've gotta decide on the guardrails,
- [00:45:57.060]because dissertations sometimes
- [00:45:58.350]are unwieldy and have a lot of data.
- [00:46:00.570]And so it's like, how do you contain this?
- [00:46:02.820]So it's manageable and it can be done in a six to 12,000.
- [00:46:06.990]I mean, there's nothing more than 12,000 out there
- [00:46:09.240]unless you're publishing a book, right?
- [00:46:12.300]Words that is.
- [00:46:13.710]And so you're not making money. I'm just making sure...
- [00:46:17.070]Yeah, no, no.
- [00:46:17.903]We do not make money off of this.
- [00:46:20.040]Unfortunately, maybe or not directly make money out of this.
- [00:46:24.210]So you have to think about those boundaries.
- [00:46:26.830]And I think that's critically...
- [00:46:28.980]And you want to do that early
- [00:46:30.630]and you want to always ask yourself,
- [00:46:32.257]"Did we veer off the path and added one more thing
- [00:46:36.300]into this already very complex piece."
- [00:46:39.270]And research has to be inherently, it simplifies.
- [00:46:45.350]By creating those boundaries,
- [00:46:47.730]we can actually tackle something
- [00:46:49.470]and not get lost in too much complexity.
- [00:46:53.820]Right. Like, how complex is complex enough?
- [00:46:56.100]Yes.
- [00:46:57.090]You always wanna make sure that you are...
- [00:46:59.520]You've determined the importance
- [00:47:01.800]of whatever is in your manuscript
- [00:47:04.710]to ensure that the function of the manuscript,
- [00:47:08.670]what you want the manuscript to do
- [00:47:09.840]in the wider world is met, right?
- [00:47:12.390]You don't want complexity
- [00:47:15.030]for the sake of being complex, right?
- [00:47:18.480]Like, that's just...
- [00:47:20.820]How complex does it have to be? Are you just showing off?
- [00:47:24.210]And if you're just showing off...
- [00:47:27.000]And also are you communicating something
- [00:47:29.310]that people can act on,
- [00:47:30.450]whether it's on next research or in practice.
- [00:47:33.660]It's gotta be simple enough
- [00:47:34.920]that people can follow your argument and act on it.
- [00:47:37.620]This is maybe the difference, especially in our field,
- [00:47:42.180]we're communicating a lot of times
- [00:47:44.070]with people who act in the field.
- [00:47:45.450]If you're doing a paper on physics
- [00:47:48.000]and you're communicating only to researchers,
- [00:47:50.820]that kind of simplifies things.
- [00:47:52.170]Mm-hmm.
- [00:47:53.003]Because you can be as complex
- [00:47:55.230]as long as they can understand your complexity
- [00:47:57.810]and there's an understanding around how that works.
- [00:48:00.960]But in our world,
- [00:48:02.130]you eventually want to have an impact on the world.
- [00:48:04.830]And you have to make sure
- [00:48:07.890]that you're communicating something
- [00:48:10.110]that people don't just get lost in and then say,
- [00:48:12.457]"Okay, I read all of this.
- [00:48:13.590]It was really interesting. What do I do with this?"
- [00:48:16.080]Right. Which happens at times.
- [00:48:17.487]Oh, it totally does.
- [00:48:18.450]And I would argue that any, regardless of of the field,
- [00:48:22.230]any research articles
- [00:48:23.340]try to make an impact on the world, right?
- [00:48:25.200]Yes.
- [00:48:26.033]But the question is always about who's that audience
- [00:48:31.260]and are you meeting that audience...
- [00:48:33.180]Needs.
- [00:48:34.296]Where they would be, right?
- [00:48:35.640]So writing is hard.
- [00:48:39.840]It is hard.
- [00:48:40.860]And then you get their reaction
- [00:48:42.930]from the journal and from the reviewers.
- [00:48:45.659]Yes, yeah, which like, you know, rejects are hard.
- [00:48:51.090]Yes.
- [00:48:52.320]But it's also, like...
- [00:48:55.830]Normally when you get a rejection,
- [00:48:57.840]you've got really good feedback
- [00:48:59.310]on how to make that manuscript tighter,
- [00:49:02.775]better, elevate it. Yeah.
- [00:49:05.610]And that's really kind of a gift, right?
- [00:49:12.150]If you give yourselves, Larry McCleskey at Indiana,
- [00:49:16.350]always used to say,
- [00:49:18.037]"You can be salty about a reject for like two days."
- [00:49:22.202]Yeah, absolutely.
- [00:49:23.320]You should be. You should be salty about the reject.
- [00:49:25.245]Right? Like, you should be salty about it
- [00:49:26.078]for like two days. Yeah.
- [00:49:27.630]But ultimately, like if it's good feedback,
- [00:49:32.520]you can then turn that around, integrate that feedback
- [00:49:37.920]and send it out to as good or better of a journal
- [00:49:41.970]because you've already responded to the feedback
- [00:49:44.381]of that journal at whatever tier it's at, right?
- [00:49:47.790]So, like, rejection is hard but common,
- [00:49:53.190]revise and resubmits are not rejections.
- [00:49:56.100]They're an invitation to make it better and be considered.
- [00:49:59.130]Exactly.
- [00:49:59.963]You're closer than you would be
- [00:50:01.890]if it was a rejection, right?
- [00:50:03.602]Yeah.
- [00:50:04.435]And if you get an acceptance or provisional acceptance,
- [00:50:09.690]those are always...
- [00:50:10.523]That's a celebration. Yes. Those are always delightful,
- [00:50:11.850]but they're not as common as we think.
- [00:50:14.402]No.
- [00:50:15.235]Like, most of the times, a revise and resubmit,
- [00:50:18.660]I would argue is like the lay of the land.
- [00:50:22.050]Yes. That's a positive, the most likely positive outcome.
- [00:50:25.830]Remembering that many of the journals we send things to
- [00:50:30.330]have an acceptance rate of somewhere between five and 15%.
- [00:50:33.870]Right. Which means,
- [00:50:35.310]85 to 95% of things get rejected at least in first read.
- [00:50:40.890]Mm-hmm.
- [00:50:41.807]And so it takes time, and again, knowing your audience,
- [00:50:45.630]so all of these things help,
- [00:50:47.100]but you have to be ready for that.
- [00:50:50.130]And you have to be ready to pivot,
- [00:50:52.980]learn from the feedback, better feedback.
- [00:50:56.460]If the feedback is, especially if it's a rejection,
- [00:50:59.400]if you do not like the feedback,
- [00:51:01.230]not like it personally, emotionally,
- [00:51:03.000]but you think they're actually wrong,
- [00:51:04.710]you don't have to respond to it
- [00:51:06.180]in a way that you do have to respond
- [00:51:07.980]to a revise and resubmit
- [00:51:09.270]because it's not going to be the same people.
- [00:51:11.490]And so, well, and you have to think through it,
- [00:51:14.700]but if you're, like, I actually really disagree,
- [00:51:18.660]then what I you need to do
- [00:51:20.100]is probably bolster your argument, right?
- [00:51:23.340]And add a layer there
- [00:51:25.020]so you would not get the same critique again.
- [00:51:27.000]But you do have to remember
- [00:51:28.170]that these are sent to three people usually
- [00:51:32.250]who read it late at night, sometimes not super carefully.
- [00:51:36.300]I hope they do.
- [00:51:37.530]But, you know, having received a lot of feedback in my days,
- [00:51:40.590]I know that it's not always super careful.
- [00:51:42.900]So sometimes you get comments, you're like,
- [00:51:44.617]"I think I've done that, I probably need to highlight it."
- [00:51:47.670]But that work was actually done
- [00:51:50.280]and somebody may have skipped over it,
- [00:51:52.920]and then that's something to consider.
- [00:51:55.410]Well, but also it's important to not fall
- [00:51:57.900]into the trap of "Oh, they didn't read this carefully."
- [00:52:01.344]Yes. "Oh, they didn't..."
- [00:52:02.589]Yeah.
- [00:52:03.422]If you're getting feedback from peer reviewers,
- [00:52:06.750]assume goodness, you're always gonna have...
- [00:52:09.184]Yes. Yeah.
- [00:52:10.017]You know, the dreaded reviewer to commentary
- [00:52:12.480]of, "Oh, this wasn't capitalized, this was a incomplete."
- [00:52:16.230]That's actually my favorite
- [00:52:17.730]because those are things that are easy to act on.
- [00:52:20.040]That is my least favorite because I can easily go back.
- [00:52:25.800]Yes.
- [00:52:26.833]And think through grammatical stuff.
- [00:52:28.020]And normally, my manuscripts are fairly grammatically solid.
- [00:52:32.250]But if you're not paying attention to my ideas.
- [00:52:35.400]Yes. Then, that's not helpful.
- [00:52:37.260]That's not helpful, right?
- [00:52:38.310]But I try to ensure, I try to assume goodness
- [00:52:43.590]that peer reviewers have put good faith effort into that.
- [00:52:48.270]And if there's something that...
- [00:52:51.420]We know that there are three kind of triggers
- [00:52:54.120]that distort feedback, right?
- [00:52:56.580]This idea of identity. Yeah.
- [00:52:59.370]Where the feedback seems so antithetical
- [00:53:02.460]to who we view ourselves to be, that we discount it.
- [00:53:05.720]Yeah.
- [00:53:06.960]Where it doesn't feel true. That can distort.
- [00:53:10.800]And then where it feels like
- [00:53:15.690]there's a relationship kind of distortion,
- [00:53:18.300]like, "Oh, these are blind reviewers.
- [00:53:19.770]They don't know me, they don't understand my work."
- [00:53:22.830]And so when you're looking at that feedback,
- [00:53:27.510]being careful of your own biases
- [00:53:30.870]and what kinds of things get triggered within that.
- [00:53:34.521]Yes.
- [00:53:37.200]Because if it gets distorted...
- [00:53:40.770]Yes.
- [00:53:41.603]Then chances that it's gonna make your writing better
- [00:53:43.380]are minimal.
- [00:53:44.460]Yes, and the trick for me and this is how I work,
- [00:53:47.430]especially being young authors, is reframing.
- [00:53:52.500]So if it seems to really hit a nerve,
- [00:53:57.180]I use reframing mechanisms to say what the really saying is,
- [00:54:02.160]we didn't make our point clear enough.
- [00:54:04.170]It's not that our point is necessarily lost
- [00:54:07.560]or it is that our point is lost.
- [00:54:09.420]That is, we try to make that point, it wasn't clear enough.
- [00:54:12.090]Let's try to use a better language.
- [00:54:14.340]So you have to create a distance
- [00:54:17.760]from those points of we're interpreting intent
- [00:54:21.900]and all of these things and create a way to manage.
- [00:54:26.280]And they're not making claims about you.
- [00:54:27.780]Yes, absolutely not.
- [00:54:29.040]Right? Like...
- [00:54:30.286]Yeah, because they don't know you.
- [00:54:31.119]Right, they don't know you.
- [00:54:32.214]All they have is text in front of them.
- [00:54:33.270]And sometimes when you look back at your text
- [00:54:35.350]and I was like, "Yeah, I did forget to do that."
- [00:54:38.132]Oh yeah. In my head I did that.
- [00:54:39.680]On the paper, not so much. Yeah. Exactly.
- [00:54:42.900]So yeah, writing is hard. Yes. It is. (chuckling)
- [00:54:46.710]But we love it, eventually.
- [00:54:48.360]I mean, I don't know that I love it.
- [00:54:51.240]I enjoy it when it's done. It's kinda like running.
- [00:54:54.090]Yes. Okay. I enjoy it, past tense,
- [00:54:57.360]but active tense, it sucks. Yeah.
- [00:55:00.540]And it's painful at times and frustrating.
- [00:55:03.017]Right? Like, particularly...
- [00:55:04.405]Yeah, particularly when I'm working through things
- [00:55:07.050]around really refining ideas that I have not yet explored.
- [00:55:14.230]Like, it's rough.
- [00:55:16.920]Yes.
- [00:55:17.753]It's not this like palatial, "Oh, I'm at a coffee shop
- [00:55:21.450]and I'm just typing away and everything's going so good.
- [00:55:25.560]Look at me drink my coffee and just write brilliant stuff."
- [00:55:28.290]Like, that's not how it works.
- [00:55:29.400]No, it is not. Although you do get better over time.
- [00:55:33.000]It does get easier over time. I mean, does it get easier
- [00:55:36.300]or does it get more habitual?
- [00:55:41.670]Even more habitual is easier.
- [00:55:43.620]It is considerably easier for me
- [00:55:45.690]if I look at the last 20 years
- [00:55:47.820]and how hard it was for me at the beginning
- [00:55:50.910]and how much easier it is for me to construct the sentence.
- [00:55:53.760]Okay, there's also a second language thing for me,
- [00:55:56.760]but I am less fearful, I am less procrastinating,
- [00:56:04.530]I have multiple strategies
- [00:56:08.700]that can get me out of a jam faster.
- [00:56:10.740]That makes it easier.
- [00:56:12.030]I mean, it's not that the writing itself is easy
- [00:56:14.400]because it isn't. Right.
- [00:56:15.600]But I have ways to make it flow that make it feel easier,
- [00:56:20.520]whatever you wanna call it.
- [00:56:21.720]But as a result, I can produce a lot more than I did
- [00:56:26.670]at the beginning of my career.
- [00:56:29.520]Yeah, and I think part of that is just experience.
- [00:56:32.220]Yes. And I just worry about...
- [00:56:33.870]I always worry about that easy thing.
- [00:56:35.160]Like, my personal trainer's always like,
- [00:56:36.937]"This is our big...
- [00:56:38.100]This is easy, this is gonna be great and it's easy."
- [00:56:40.290]It's like, no, this is a lot of work
- [00:56:41.910]and I am afraid that this bench is gonna fall on me
- [00:56:45.060]and I'm gonna get beheaded or something.
- [00:56:46.440]Like, it's not easy.
- [00:56:48.150]Yeah.
- [00:56:48.983]It takes effort.
- [00:56:50.220]But I think through some of these strategies,
- [00:56:53.610]some of these hacks that we've shared around writing
- [00:56:57.210]that hopefully you can incorporate some of this,
- [00:57:01.110]like, into your day-to-day writing practice.
- [00:57:06.120]And the emphasis was day-to-day writing practice.
- [00:57:08.190]Day-to-day. Try not to binge if you possibly can.
- [00:57:13.080]What we know about writing practice,
- [00:57:14.820]particularly in academia,
- [00:57:16.380]is binging leads to less productivity,
- [00:57:21.090]actually, and more stress.
- [00:57:23.010]And so that daily practice becomes really, really important.
- [00:57:27.480]Also because it's spring break, we're here on spring break.
- [00:57:31.320]Giving yourself time to think is also important, right?
- [00:57:34.137]Yes.
- [00:57:34.970]So that downtime,
- [00:57:36.660]don't constantly work yourself to the point of exhaustion
- [00:57:40.890]because then...
- [00:57:41.850]Then you're not productive. Then you're not productive.
- [00:57:44.430]There's a point where you can't force writing.
- [00:57:46.560]You need to feed your writing,
- [00:57:48.960]you need the care and feeding of a writer is important.
- [00:57:53.040]So I think with that, we've covered all of our wisdom.
- [00:57:57.210]Yeah.
- [00:57:58.348]Wisdom? Might be overselling it.
- [00:58:00.000]Accumulated experience.
- [00:58:01.230]Leave peer reviews in the comments.
- [00:58:03.639](Nick sighs) (Guy laughing)
- [00:58:04.920]Find wisdom.
- [00:58:06.330]But, happy writing.
- [00:58:08.520]Happy writing.
- [00:58:09.353]Happy writing.
- [00:58:11.061](upbeat music)
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