Not That Kind of Doctor - Writing Process

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03/15/2024 Added

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Writing Process - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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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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Not That Kind of Doctor - Writing Process

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