Reverse Outlining for Effective Revision

By Reilly Fitzpatrick, Consultant

Perhaps even more than the actual drafting process, revising your writing can be challenging and intimidating. As a writer, I feel pretty confident about my ability to go over my sentences with a fine-tooth comb and correct typos, resolve grammatical errors, or improve my word choice. However, trying to make big-picture edits—things like paper organization, cohesive argumentation, paragraph structure, and the ever-elusive pursuit of “flow”—often seems much more overwhelming to me. Is this true for you?

One of the strategies I have implemented in my own writing process, as well as when I teach revision practices to undergraduates, is reverse outlining. Reverse outlining is exactly what it sounds like: it is the process of creating an outline of your paragraph or paper in reverse, once you have already written it. Most of us use an outline when we write our original draft, but reverse outlining helps you to identify and analyze the specific goal of each paragraph and sentence in light of your overarching objective for the paper and evaluate how effectively you are accomplishing those goals. Reverse outlining is a practice that allows you to revise your writing on both a paragraph and sentence level, but more importantly, it gets you to think about your writing choices, not just what you are arguing.

While the writing process is rarely formulaic, reverse outlining is a strategy that works best with a checklist. Here’s a step-by-step guide to reverse outlining and revising your writing that I’ve created based on my own writing and teaching experiences. You’ll notice that most of these steps prompt you to answer questions about your writing, which means that your progression through the reverse outlining process will vary based on your answers and you will end the reverse outlining process with reflection and revision that is tailored both to your project and your individual writing style.

  1. Choose a paragraph to reverse outline. Usually this process works best if you make your way through your paper chronologically, but you can also jump right to a problem paragraph if you’re short on time!
  2. Start a page of notes where you will answer the following questions. These notes will ultimately constitute your reverse outline and help you identify strategies to revise.
  3. Without re-reading the paragraph you’ve chosen, write down what you think the main idea of this paragraph is. What are you trying to explain, argue, or persuade the reader of?
  4. Next, write down how this paragraph connects to your thesis as a whole. Why is it important to include this paragraph? How does it help you accomplish your overarching goal in this paper?
  5. Now, let’s look at the paragraph itself. Start with the topic (or first) sentence: what does it communicate to the reader? Write this down. Remember, topic sentences need to articulate 1) the main idea/claim of the paragraph, and 2) how it relates to your thesis. Hint: You just identified both of those goals in steps 2 and 3, so make sure they match up with your topic sentence! If they don’t, think about how you might rewrite your topic sentence to more effectively meet these goals.
  6. Move on to the next sentence in your paragraph and identify the goal of the sentence. Remember to think about the goal of the sentence not in terms of content (What am I saying here?) but rather structure (Why am I saying this here?). Here are some possible goals for sentences in your paper. Does the sentence…
    a. Provide context for the main idea of the paragraph to my reader?
    b. State my sub-claim and how it relates to my thesis?
    c. Summarize my stance on the topic?
    d. Explain what a scholar has to say about this idea?
    e. Provide evidence (like a quote, statistic, or example) to support a claim I am making in this paragraph?
    f. Explain how a direct quote or paraphrased idea from a source is relevant to my claim?
    g. State how my claim is different from other scholars’ arguments?
    h. State how my claim relates to an idea I discussed in a previous paragraph?
    i. Something else?
  7. Once you have identified the goal of the sentence, ask yourself these questions:
    a. Does the sentence actually accomplish its identified goal?
    b. Does this sentence directly connect to the main idea of this paragraph as I have identified it in the topic sentence, or does it contain ideas that are irrelevant or tangential?
    c. Does this sentence fully explain an idea, or does it need to be developed further (either by expanding the sentence or adding another sentence)?
    d. Is this sentence necessary in this paragraph, or could it be combined with another related sentence or deleted altogether?
    e. How can I revise this sentence to be clearer, more relevant to the main idea of this paragraph and my thesis, and more persuasive?
  8. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for every sentence in your paragraph, answering each question for the sentence in your notes.
  9. Once you reach the final sentence of your paragraph—the transition sentence—ask yourself these questions. (Remember, sometimes you will need more than one transition sentence at the end of your paragraph in order to accomplish all of these goals!)
    a. Does this sentence sufficiently summarize the main idea of this paragraph and remind the reader of what I have argued in it?
    b. Does this sentence connect the main idea of this paragraph back to my thesis?
    c. Does this transition sentence guide the reader from the main idea of this paragraph to the main idea I will discuss in the next paragraph?
  10. Now that you have finished reverse-outlining your paragraph on a sentence level, answer these questions about the paragraph as a whole:
    a. Is this paragraph accomplishing what I need it to in this paper? Does it clearly connect to my thesis? Is it necessary to prove my argument?
    b. Do I have one main idea in this paragraph, or do I jump around between several ideas? Does my topic sentence reflect this main idea and remind the reader of how this idea connects to my thesis, or does it just generally state the topic?
    c. Do I fully explain, argue, and support my sub-claim in this paragraph? What do I need to add in order for my paragraph to be persuasive—more explanation of my stance, more evidence from sources, or more background information?
    d. Does this paragraph repeat any information or ideas I have already talked about in another place? Which place makes the most sense for me to include that content?
    e. Does this paragraph need to be combined with another paragraph or split into 2 or more paragraphs? Does this paragraph need to be longer or shorter?
    f. Where is this paragraph placed in my paper? Does it work where it is, or does it need to be earlier or later in the paper?
  11. Repeat these steps to reverse outline your next paragraph!
  12. After you have made a reverse outline of every paragraph in your paper, think about the quality and quantity of paragraphs you’ve written. Do you feel confident that your thesis has been effectively explained, argued, supported, and proven? Have you noticed any gaps in your argumentation or methodology? Do your introduction and conclusion accurately predict and reflect the actual content of your paper? Have you considered all the perspectives on your topic and sufficiently surveyed the scholarly conversation related to your claim? As you became the reader (or the audience) of your own writing, what did you notice about your clarity, persuasiveness, and tone? What are some aspects of your writing that you would like to change or improve as you revise this paper and work on other projects?
    Space

Once you’re done reverse outlining your paper, take a step back and reflect on what you learned. What have you noticed about yourself as a writer? Are there specific writing strategies or skills that you are especially good at? Are there patterns in your paper that indicate a skill you need to develop? How might you adjust your writing or revision processes in the future based on what you have learned? While you might want to jump right into revisions, spending some time reflecting on your writing personality and processes will help you become a more competent and confident writer in the future.

How to Write Better by Not Writing: Setting Boundaries in Your Personal Writing Process

By Reilly Fitzpatrick, Consultant

Wouldn’t it be magical if your paper could write itself? I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly dreamed of walking away from my laptop after hours of struggling over a Google Doc and coming back an later to find an eloquent, polished, complete draft. Unfortunately, I have yet to discover the technology or magic that will turn my jumbled thoughts into articulate writing. One way that I have become better at this challenging writing process, however, is by learning to set boundaries with myself as I write. For me, these boundaries range from allowing myself to write badly at first to taking intentional breaks as I write. Essentially, we’re talking about writing better by not giving yourself space to not write at all—which itself seems kind of magical. 

It might seem a little counterintuitive that my recommendation for becoming a better writer is to focus on not writing. As graduate students or faculty, most of us probably feel like paper-producing machines, required to constantly spit out brilliantly written articles/seminar papers/studies/grants/insert whatever project makes you the most stressed here. These kinds of academic and career expectations can—and do—take a toll on you, not only as a scholar and a writer but also as a human being. This is where the not writing part comes in. By intentionally setting boundaries for yourself in your writing process and releasing yourself from the expectations of perfection and production, you’ll actually become a better writer and, more importantly, a healthier person.

This sounds great in theory, but how do I set those boundaries for myself in practice? I’m so glad you asked! Here are some ways I work to cultivate boundaries in my writing process. Think of them as inspirational bullet points that you can adapt and rethink based on your personality and your process.

  • When you sit down to start writing (or brainstorming, editing, etc.), set a limit for how long you will work. My brain functions best in hour-long increments, but it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours for you! Telling yourself that you will write for a set amount of time instead of just working until you’re exhausted or done allows you to see this writing project as a manageable task rather than a daunting multi-step process.
  • Let yourself write badly. Whether you throw some key ideas into a rough outline or you handwrite stream-of-consciousness thoughts about your project into a journal, release yourself from the expectation of writing something brilliant and just write something. Anne Lamott refers to a crappy first draft, others call it word vomit. As mildly unpleasant as all these metaphors may be, the practice of writing badly does several helpful things. First, it frees you up to just get your thoughts out of your head without worrying about details like syntax, organization, or word choice. Second, it allows you to see the big picture of your writing without getting bogged down in sentence-level concerns. Lastly, it gets something on the page that you (and your GWC consultant, of course) can reword, rethink, and revise.
  • If you’re feeling overwhelmed in your writing process it may seem like an obvious recommendation to take a break, but our impulse is often to push through and get the thing done instead of honoring the ways that our minds and bodies are telling us to rest. This can look like anything from going for a 10-minute walk (you have to un-hunch yourself from your desk eventually!), taking a shower to reset your nervous system, stretching, eating a snack, cuddling your cat, texting a friend, or setting aside your project for the day and going to bed.
  • Whatever you choose to do as a break, resist the urge to think of it as slacking off, procrastinating, or wasting time. Letting your brain relax after a period of hard writing work will actually help you write better when you return to your project, so it is just as important of a step in the writing process as research or revision is! Even more importantly, rest in your writing process reiterates to yourself that you aren’t a good person because you write a good paper: your value is in who you are and not what you do.

If the list seems overwhelming, try implementing one practice at a time the next time you sit down to write. Reflect on what is or isn’t generative for you and think about how you might tailor the practice to your individual needs. Writing is hard! Don’t make it harder by forcing yourself to do something that isn’t helping you. Ultimately, these are meant to be liberating practices, not confining checklists—the goal is not only to be a better, more competent writer, but also a more rested, well-rounded, and whole person.

Book Review: Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

“Academic writing, like university teaching, is what sociologist Paul Trowler calls a ‘recurrent practice,’ one of the many routine tasks that most academics perform ‘habitually and in an unconsidered way,” with little thought as to how or why things might be done differently.” – Helen Sword (2012, p. 23)

This book is a culmination of several years of research on the conventions of academic writing, how academics feel about the writing process, and how students and early-career academics believe that academic writing must fit in a particular box to achieve any measure of professional success. Helen Sword is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland. She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Comparative Literature and has taught in higher education for several decades. By all accounts, her prestigious credentials certainly lend themselves to a traditional academic, yet her life’s work has been in the pursuit of breaking down barriers for writers who seek to infuse their academic work with elements of humanism outside of the conventional norms.

Upon first read-through, Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing feels like a response to Strunk and White’s highly acclaimed Elements of Style, a quintessential text on traditional academic prose in the English language. Several chapters address topics similar to Strunk and White, such as structure and syntax, that are presented in new and innovative ways, pulled from Sword’s research on interdisciplinary writing components. Ever the professor, Sword’s chapters always conclude with “Things to Try,” offering the reader helpful ways to incorporate the chapter’s suggestions into their own practice. Examples include the following:

In the chapter Structural Designs: “Make an outline of your article or book based only on its chapter titles or section headings. How well does that outline, on its own, communicate what your work is about? Are you using section headings to inform, engage, or direct your readers, or merely to carve up space?” (p. 133)

In the chapter Jargonitis: “Ask yourself hard questions about your motivations. Do you employ jargon to impress others, play with language and ideas, create new knowledge, signal your membership in a disciplinary community, or communicate succinctly with colleagues? Retain only those jargon words that clearly serve your priorities and values.” (p. 121)

I found several suggestions particularly helpful as a Writing Consultant who works with clients in multiple disciplinary fields each week. I often feel like I’m a polyglot of academia – speaking several languages and trying my best to translate them into the same dialect of academic writing. During my first read-through, I found myself highlighting prompts and leading questions to retain for consultation use with clients. Some items also convicted me to discover blind spots in my own research.

Sword also strikes out against the “conventional” use of the word “style,” commonly understood in academia as the style guides assigned to respective disciplines. Instead, Sword argues that academics must strive to become “stylish academic writers” (p. 9), a persona embodied by the idea of actively pursuing engagement with an audience, clear communication of ideas with concise examples, and observation of interdisciplinary writing methods that might lend a humanistic quality to our work.

Three primary characteristics of a Stylish Academic Writer emerge from Sword’s work: Connection, Craft, and Creativity.

Connection – What I love most about this book was Sword’s persistence in reestablishing our purpose for producing academic work: to tell a story. Your research, dear reader, began as a response to a problem, a gap, a question about the world around us. Research seeks to connect, to create meaning out of the unknown. These are valuable stories, and Sword argues that no matter the discipline or style guide we must keep those stories and their meanings at the forefront of our writing process.

Craft – Sword encourages readers to find pleasure in the craft of writing.  The word “craft” encompasses the broader concept of writing (i.e., drafting, editing, revising, finalizing), and the smaller concepts (i.e., sentence-level constructions). She provides the following example below for the smaller concept of craft:

“A carefully crafted sentence welcomes its reader like a comfortable rocking chair, bears its reader across chasms like a suspension bridge… A poorly crafted or uncrafted sentence, on the other hand, functions more like a shapeless log tossed into a river: it might or might not help you get to the other side, depending on how strong the current is and how hard you are willing to kick.” (p. 48)

Creativity – “Numerous studies have documented the crucial role of lateral thinking in the creative process: that is, the ability of pathbreaking researchers to’ think sideways’ rather than always plodding forward in a straight conceptual trajectory.” (p. 169)

Sword takes the idea of creativity in academic writing and dissects it into three components: passion, elegance, and interdisciplinary exploration. She cautions readers not to mistake creativity as a call for writers to adopt creative writing practices. Instead, writers should be willing to explore writing strategies found in outside disciplines, especially those that promote clarity, conciseness, concrete communication, and eloquence.

Citation: Sword, Helen. Stylish Academic Writing. Harvard University Press, 2012.

How and Where I Write: Interview with Ryan Ramsey

For our first graduate student interview, we sat down with Ryan Ramsey, a third-year PhD student in Religion. Ryan studies World Christianity and Pentecostalism. He holds a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School (’19) and a BA from Lee University (’14). He is also a fellow with Baylor’s Academy for Teaching and Learning. Before coming to graduate school, Ryan taught middle school. Ryan is husband to the lovely Ellie and father to the precocious Penelope. In his free time, he loves hiking, roasting coffee, and basketball. Ryan also gives a defense of Dichotomy, contra a previous post from BearTracks about the pros and cons of Waco coffee shops. Thanks so much for taking the time to tell us about your writing habits and coffee principles, Ryan!

 

BearTracks

So where do you like to write? I know you said this tends to be a lot of places, but, like, an office, home, coffee shops, outside? Where do you tend to cycle through?

Ryan Ramsey

I like to write in my backyard. I like to write, um, I have a writing group, we meet up in in the GRC, and I can usually get stuff done there. I write in the GRC a good bit, using the breakout rooms. If I have editing work to do, I will oftentimes go to coffee shops, like Dichotomy. Usually just Dichotomy. I don’t go to Pinewood because there are too many undergrads there.

BT

Yes, which is an unfortunate recent development. So it sounds like when you are in the creative mode you need more silence or less people-distraction, but when you’re in the editing mode you can have more of the buzz in the background?

RR

Yes.

BT

That makes sense. So this question is maybe for, well, I’m doing a mix of talking to grad students and professors, but do you find you still acquire a lot of books at this point in your career or has the pace slowed somewhat as you’ve gone along in your PhD?

RR

That’s a strangely relevant question because I do, I have found when I was in seminary I frequented any free bin and would take anything remotely pertaining. You know I only got books for Christmas, things like that, but I think since COVID, I have been more interested in finding digital resources and books that are available online through the library.

BT

So what would you say are the best times and places for you to write? We already kind of covered places.

RR

In the morning, probably between 8 and 11.

BT

Is that when your writing group meets as well, is that a morning group?

RR

Yeah it is. I can’t write, I’m usually fried by the afternoon. I try not work in the evenings unless I have to. Usually the earlier, my brain is better.

BT

The perk of having a family in grad school. It means better boundaries, sometimes.

RR

Yeah, yeah. If I have to do editing, I can do editing in the afternoon, but…

BT

Not the creative process?

RR

Yeah.

BT

That’s fair! How do you capture your research? Are you a notecard or journal person, do you do it on the computer?

RR

I do it on my laptop, and I try as best as I can, to either copy full quotes and keep lists of quote sheets or I just write prose, as if I’m writing something that, theoretically, I could copy and paste. Usually with full citations, and that makes that a lot easier in the long run.

BT

Do you immediately start writing on the computer, or do you have any portion of your writing process that you do longhand?

RR

Uh, no, but occasionally, if I am somewhere away from my computer and an idea comes to me and I have something to write on, I will sketch out ideas, I might jot handwritten notes down.

BT

Are you a marginalia person in your physical books, or no?

RR

Oh yes.

BT

I think you kind of have to be as a scholar. Are you a detailed marginalia person? Because I find I have become less talkative with my books. I do a ton of underlining and starring things and bracketing things, but do you “talk” to your books in the margins?

RR

Occasionally. I more often make brief, one sentence, one word notes to highlight, say, “prophecy” in the margins, so when I go back through….

BT

I think you answered this earlier, but do you read digital books and what are your feelings on digital books?

RR

Yeah, I’ll say this. I read digital books and I listen to digital books using text-to-speech as a way to, A) give my eyes a break, and B) allow me to do other stuff while I’m reading, like washing dishes usually.

BT

Out of personal curiosity, is there a program you use for the text-to-speech, or do a lot of the books just automatically have that feature? How do you get the books to talk to you!?

RR

Well, if it’s a PDF, I’ll just highlight the text and use the program on my Mac, but if you use any books on Archive.org, which is a really great resource and has many books, that has an automatic with your account; you just hit the audio button and it automatically plays, but you do have to watch out because it will read the footnotes to you in unhelpful ways.

BT

That’s helpful. What is some good advice you’ve received on writing?

RR

Keep editing your work. Edit, edit, edit. That’s kind of general.

BT

What stage, do you do the Anne Lamott “sh***y first draft” and then edit, or are you an edit-as-you-go person?

RR

It depends. It depends most on the amount of research and footnotes I’m doing and the section or paragraph. I usually find the more I spend fiddling with footnotes, the more polished that paragraph tends to be, and the more I just plop it out, like it’s the first draft, the more likely I am to cut it entirely.

BT

What do you think is your best piece of written work at this point in your career? What are you most proud of? It also doesn’t have to be academic, I know people write other things.

RR

I mean I have a published article that I like a lot of, and I’m fairly proud of portions of it, especially the introductory framing.

BT

Okay, what was the article on and where was it published?

RR

It’s called “Christ in Yaqui Garb.” It’s about Teresa Urrea, who’s a figure I study. It’s published in an open-access journal called Religions. And then some of my other work, I’ve got a work that I’m presenting at the Conference on Faith and History, again on her [Teresa Urrea], that’s like a gender analysis about perceptions of her in popular U.S. newspapers, and I’m really happy with the analysis of that.

BT

So name a few favorite authors from your field of study. Who are the people who, when you read their stuff, you’re like, “Ugh, I wish I had written this”?

RR

I think Betsy Flowers is a fantastic writer. Theologian Miroslav Volf is a fantastic writer, and he’s someone that edits, edits, edits, and edits. I really like reading Robert Orsi. One of the people who’s written a lot of Teresa Urrea, who I study, is Luis Urrea who is a novelist. And so he writes novels on her.

BT

Is he any relation to her?

RR

He is! He’s like a kinda distant great-grand nephew. He’s just a fantastic writer, so I really enjoy reading him. That’s not really in my discipline, but it’s something I read for my discipline.

BT

That’s great, cool. Okay, finally, what’s a book you should have read by now but haven’t? And you can interpret that as you will. It could be in your field or literature in general or…

RR

Oooh. I don’t know.

BT

The Bible? Just kidding.

RR

I need to think, just then I have to include what books do I say I’ve read, but I haven’t actually read them! Haha.

BT

Haha. Grad-school “read” them?

RR

Yeah. I mean there’s a lot. And the fact that I have comps studying right now doesn’t help.

BT

Is there one you’re most embarrassed to admit? We ask real gritty questions here.

RR

That’s the problem. What would I admit that I haven’t read?

BT

This is a candid interview Ryan, you can be honest here.

RR

I know, I know. I don’t think I ever made it though Mere Christianity.

BT

For the addendum, I understand you took umbrage with BearTrack’s piece on Dichotomy, and we want to give you an opportunity to give a defense of Dichotomy.

RR

Okay. The important thing to know about Dichotomy is that you have to order the right thing.

BT

Okay, getting the good stuff here.

RR

I am well aware that their drip coffee and pour overs are not what they need to be – they don’t dial in their machines well enough to get the right ratios for that, so it ends up being a little watered down. Their espresso, though, is fantastic. You have to order espresso. When I moved here, before moving here I looked on Sprudge; it’s a really hip, weird coffee website. It writes news stories on coffee shops and stuff like that, and Dichotomy was the one featured. And so Dichotomy was a place that I knew about coming in and was excited about and not disappointed with! And the only time i’m ever disappointed there is when I order drip coffee. But anyway. I’ve got a lot of good memories there. Before COVID, our little history of theology cohort would go there. And that’s a place where, when out daughter was born, that’s where Ellie and I went out to get drinks when my mom offered to babysit for two hours. And when my in-laws lived with us for two and a half weeks before Penelope was born, because Pen was ten days late, my father-in-law and I went there do get out of the house, so he could do his crosswords and I could write my papers. So, all that to say, I have lots of good memories there, but the crux of it is you have to order the espresso.

BT

Okay, we will make due notice of this and put an asterisk in the original post and say “Since publishing this, we have heard from readership that…” haha.

RR

That sounds good.

 

This post was originally published on Baylor’s Graduate School blog, BearTracks, and can be read here.

How and Where I Write: Interview with Dr. Richard Rankin Russell

For our first installment of the “How and Where I Write” series, BearTracks sat down with Dr. Richard Rankin Russell, professor of English and the English Graduate Program Director. Dr. Russell’s areas of expertise include Modern and Contemporary Irish literature, though he began his graduate career studying the literature of the American South. Dr. Russell earned his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has been on the faculty at Baylor since 2001. He has published numerous books and articles, most recently his book Seamus Heaney:  A Critical Introduction, published in 2016, but he has a new book entitled James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality coming out in November 2022 through the University of Edinburgh Press. It was a pleasure to converse with Dr. Russell about his writing habits and wisdom; we hope you enjoy as well!

BearTracks

Where do you like to write? Your office, at home, coffee shops, outside? Where is your chosen place to write?

Dr. Richard Rankin Russell

I cannot write at coffee shops and not usually in my office. I can edit, and I’m doing edits now on a book in my office, but I have a study at home. And I write on my grandfather’s desk from the furniture store that my family had started in Paris, Tennessee where I grew up.

BT

That’s really special.

RRR

I write there, and it’s usually late at night into the early morning, just as I did as a graduate student with my dissertation, and now with kids, that’s when the house is quiet.

BT

So you’re a total-silence-when-you-write person?

RRR

Yeah, or maybe classical music in the background, but yeah.

BT

I’ve recently discovered, I think, Miles Davis is going to be my go-to writing music.

RRR

Miles is good. I’ve got on repeat a five-album series by Wynton Marsalis, just instrumental jazz; it’s really good and bluesy.

BT

Yeah, something about the rhythms just kind of keeps the energy up; it’s good. Do you still acquire lots of books as your career has progressed or has the pace slowed somewhat as you’ve gone on?

RRR

I’d say the pace has slowed somewhat. I’ve been really consciously trying to give books away lately. I’ve got a lot of books in here, except for Irish literature, which takes up close to this much at home in my study. I’ve slowed down some on book acquisition, because I think I have enough but still like to get authors I like.

BT

How do you capture your research? Are you a notecard person, a journal? Do you keep a document on the computer? How does that process work for you?

RRR

I mark sections in books in pencil and with bookmarks, and I have those piled around me. I write directly to Word documents now and edit as I go, but I definitely have scattered written notes around me in those books.

BT

Do you immediately start writing on the computer or do you do anything beginning with longhand, just to get thoughts down?

RRR

I try to do a little bit of that. Maybe on a legal pad, a little bit of flow, but I’ve also done that directly to the Word file, and then I just go. I’m kind of a spur, or jag, or streak writer. I don’t believe in the hour-a-day writing thing, because when I write, I really write, and I’ll go for four or five hours at a stretch. That’s the only way I can get anything done. That’s why I have to carve out that time at night, and that’s harder than it used to be, to stay up until one or two.

BT

I take it you’re a marginalia person?

RRR

Oh yeah, absolutely! And I do write in library books – in pencil!

BT

I told that to someone once, I also dog-ear library books, and they were appalled; it was like I had just denied the divinity of Christ or something. I see it as a gift for future readers, but maybe I have too high an opinion of myself!

RRR

Haha! Yeah, absolutely, exactly! They’ll be interested in our marginalia, I’m sure they will!

BT

Do you ever read digital books?

RRR

No. The only time I ever read them was after back surgery when [my wife] had The Hunger Games trilogy on her Kindle. And I read the whole thing. It was very odd, let me tell you.

BT

What is some good advice you’ve received on writing?

RRR

Hmmm. One piece that comes to mind comes from my dear friend Dr. Fulton, down the hall, who, when I came here, said, “I know you want to get your dissertation published but try to think several books ahead.” I was like, What? That sounds impossible. I think, if you’re in a research position, you want to get your dissertation published, and you don’t think how that book is going to connect to your whole intellectual profile, but you should. And his saying that one time, in his Fulton-esque way, helped me to think that way, and I feel like my career has had some intellectual integrity because of that, and it’s arisen organically because of that comment.

BT

Do you feel like that also took some of the pressure off of individual works in a certain way because there was that holistic viewpoint?

RRR

I think so. And it also stems for an unfortunate bad habit I have, which is whatever the written version of logorrhea is. I tend to write too much, so this book here that I’m doing revisions on, this book on Brian Friel, that was a dissertation chapter originally. And I took that and got an article or two out of it, and then, I just really loved Friel, I ended up working it into a book. So the advantage of writing too much is that then you can send signals to yourself in a given project, “There needs to be work done on this!” And then you can do that work later.

The second [good piece of advice I’ve received], I had a friend in graduate school – I’ve never forgotten what she said – she said, “Think about you’re writing to an intelligent but ignorant child.” Ignorant, you know in the best sense of the word, meaning not knowing the field, but intelligent. So that’s been helpful to me to think about audience in that sense.

BT

What do you think your best piece of written work so far, or perhaps the piece of work you’re most proud of?

RRR

That’s a good question. I really like this book, the Seamus Heaney Region’s book, that won the Cleanth Brooks-Robert Penn Warren prize. I really felt like I got a lot in there.

But I’m maybe most pleased with a piece a lot of people don’t know about, which was a piece in Five Points on the Emmett Till lynching in my father’s home county. So I worked up a piece that’s part memoir, part literary criticism. Long story, but these photographs [in the piece] are from a friend of mine, Maude Schuyler Clay. His body [Emmett Till’s] washed up on her family land. I got to know her when this was done. I loved doing the literary criticism with the Hughes poems and the blues, and thinking about what it was like for my dad growing up where we go now every summer, learning about this horrible thing. But then, when I got to meet Maude, I realized that her first book of photographs ended with this, which is to his [Till’s] memory, and then, fairly early on as we talked, I realized that my grandmother was her beautician, her mom’s beautician, and her grandmother’s beautician. My grandmother ran a beauty shop in my dad’s house where he grew in the Delta. And she retired when she was 87, so she ran a beauty shop for over 60 years, so all the women in the Delta came around. So it’s not a straight academic piece, but that I think is an important for me, thinking about my family history, thinking about literature as power to remember such atrocities, but it’s hopeful too, because the Hughes poems are Christian, and there’s a lot of good things that have come out of that. So that’s been really important to me.

But I’m really excited about the Joyce and Good Samaritan book that’s coming out.

BT

Congratulations on that! I saw your email yesterday.

RRR

Thank you. That’s been important for me thinking about how literature is not some ivory tower pursuit, but it’s generative, and it can include us all as potential readers and rescuers of others.

BT

Very nicely, succinctly put. Would you name a few favorite authors from your field of study?

RRR

Oh my goodness. I’d have to put Yeats and Joyce up there near the top – and Heaney, for sure. Goodness. I love Virginia Woolf. I love George MacKay Brown. There’s so many.

BT

How about critics?

RRR

Oh. I really like Rita Felski. I really liked Denis Donoghue’s work. Those two are great. I’ve really been influenced by Helen Vendler, I think she’s one of our great living critics, and then I’d say Christopher Ricks as well. Also one of our great living critics. The biggest of all would be my own advisor, Weldon Thornton, who passed away last year on July 15th. I love that combination of rigor and close reading, but also reaching outside the text at hand.

BT

Okay, final question. And this one’s the mean one. What is a book you should have read by now but haven’t?

RRR

That’s a good question. It would have been, before this year, Dante, but I’ve read two thirds of it now. Oh goodness, there’s so many. Oh, let’s put The Aeneid. That’s a big omission on my part; everyone’s got them. People used to play that game, like, literary critics, and there’s a story that went around. Someone finally said, “Hamlet, I haven’t read Hamlet.” They laughed him out of the group.

 

This interview was originally published on Baylor’s Graduate School blog, BearTracks, and can be read here. 

How and Where I Write: A Series

Well, we’re back from Spring Break, which for grad students doesn’t mean living it up on a Florida Beach. It probably meant checking on your lab mosquitoes, editing a thesis chapter, catching up on grading student essays, or trying (we repeat, trying, not necessarily succeeding) to get ahead on class readings. But we hope you did something fun, too; like getting In N’ Out or a massage or reading for fun. Don’t think about how lame that makes you sound.

Our final series for the semester begins this week. Last year, Assistant Dean Beth Barr did an interview with Christianity Today entitled “How and Where I Write.” You can check out the interview here. We thought it was a fun idea, and since she’s one of our deans we thought we’d plagiarize all the interview questions and do our own series. 😜  Not that we advocate for unethical scholarship, of course, but the editors here at BearTracks would argue that we have some limited copyright access to Dr. Barr’s material. It’s definitely in her contract somewhere.

So be on the lookout. Starting next week, we’ll be posting interviews with various professors and graduate students from across the disciplines, asking them a number of questions about their ideal writing conditions, their growth as writers, and some embarrassing writing/reading admissions. And it won’t just be from an academic standpoint, either. We have a number of students and faculty who publish outside of the realm of academia, and in the current job market, we thought you’d like to hear from them too. We’ll still have the occasional post on time-sensitive resources, awards, and opportunities here at Baylor, but we look forward to sharing writing stories with you for the rest of the semester.

Drop a comment below and let us know some questions you’d love to hear put to faculty and/or graduate student writers!

This post was originally published on the Baylor Graduate School blog, BearTracks, and can be found here.

Book Review: Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life by Bonnie Friedman

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

Bonnie Friedman is a novelist. From the very first pages of this book, it’s apparent she has spent countless hours living in this creative headspace. Her descriptions bloom into metaphors, and those metaphors are rife with brilliant, complicated allegorical truths of writers and the difficulty of writing. It’s all very literary, if you please.

But what Bonnie speaks to with utmost clarity is that writing is nuanced. It is hard. It can make you question your sanity not only as a professional but as a human being. Through this book, Bonnie anchors these challenges in a way that makes you feel connected with all writers, no matter their proficiency or discipline. That we are not alone in this process.

Here are the main takeaways from this text:

First: Writing is terrifying, even to those who love it. In my undergraduate (and even graduate) coursework, writing was a task I studiously avoided at all costs. I felt that because I was not one of the blessed (i.e., an English major), I was not qualified or gifted enough to write with any authority. Bonnie takes this twisted, albeit common mentality and slaps it out of the air. “We are afraid of writing, even those who love it. And there are parts of it we hate. The necessary mess, the loss of control, its ability to betray us, as well as the possibility that what we write may be lousy, it might just stink…” (pg. 15). In this, Bonnie assures all who come to the altar of writing that each of us will face barriers and challenges. The fact that we hate parts of the process does not make us any less of a writer or devalue our work.

Second: Accolades and theoretical frameworks count for nothing in the face of a writing deadline. Writing doesn’t care how many post-nominal letters follow after your name. Writing doesn’t care how many classes you’ve taught as a TA. Writing doesn’t care how brilliant your theoretical framework is and how it perfectly situates your research questions within your qualitative study. It is the Great Equalizer. “Phi Beta Kappa counted for nothing here. One of the finest writers was a shaggy man without college who said he slept in a tent pitched in his living room… He spoke his stories into a tape and he paid a secretary to type them” (p. 51).

Third: More words do not equal a better manuscript. This is a particularly hard pill to swallow. When you finally dip your toe into the writing waters and are surrounded by more experienced, bigger fish, all you hear are “writing sprints”, “word count checks”, or “hitting your daily word goals”. It seems obvious that better writing is synonymous with more words. False, cries Bonnie, who also fell prey to this addictive mindset: “I wrote the same thing over and over because I didn’t trust it had communicated. And I thought, the more words the better. People read because they enjoy reading. Wouldn’t they enjoy reading more words?” (pg. 50). This hits at the crux of the issue: trusting in yourself as a communicator and trusting that your words do the job justice.

At times, this book can be difficult to get through as an academic. While Bonnie’s writing is beautiful and fragile and lyrical, this is not the traditional academic way. After all, aren’t we expected to present our writing with a prodigious level of conciseness, wrapped with a bow of footnotes, in-text citations, and proper indentations? Get to the point. What is the problem? Who is your audience? Too much fluff here. Take these four sentences and say them with one.

However, Bonnie would encourage you to step outside your academic context and see writing for what it truly is: the effort of humanity to communicate with one another despite fear, envy, or doubt. Embrace the imperfections, and let go of the all-consuming inner narrative that tells you you’re not good enough.

Happy writing, dear readers.

Writing the Literature Review: The QuiltWork Method

Photo by Dinh Pham on Unsplash

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

It is highly unusual to meet someone in academia, be it a student or professor, who genuinely enjoys the prospect of writing a literature review. Thesis, dissertation, journal article, program assessment – the medium matters not. The quintessential literature review has a singular way of unifying individuals across all disciplines and all levels of research. Someone whispers its name into the bleak unknown. All hold their breath in response, hoping it will pass over their doorstep like an academic Angel of Death.

Despite your feelings on the subject, all graduate students must write an exhaustive, cohesive literature review at some point in their academic careers. While daunting, this task need not be completed at the expense of blood, sweat, and tears. Finding an effective writing method can easily reduce your writing workload (and subsequent anxiety) from an Everest into a molehill. Or several molehills, in this case.

 

Enter the QuiltWork Writing Method.

The QuiltWork Method was born as an act of desperation while deep in the throes of writing my first dissertation draft. With deadlines looming and candidacy standing in the shadows of the doctoral guillotine, I knew that a linear approach to writing my literature review wouldn’t get me there fast enough. My topics were too broad, my sources too interdisciplinary – I found myself missing key points in articles that had already been “assigned” to other sections of my review. I was trying to create a blanket with one fell swoop, by synthesizing all of the scholarship of my topic at once. And it wasn’t working. I needed to instead step back and approach the literature review the same way my grandmother approached her sewing projects: one square bit of fabric at a time.

So I stopped. I saved my work. And started from scratch. Here was what I tried instead:

Step One: Write an Outline. It doesn’t matter if you rewrite this ten times over. Get an outline on the page. What are the main sections of your literature review? Are you following a narrative model (broad to narrow topics) or a systematic model (individual topics that together form a cohesive argument for your study)? Start there. Every project, no matter how small or large, needs a vision (or a Pinterest board).

Step Two: Prepare your Word Documents. Open a series of blank Word or Google documents. The number you open should match the number of literature review sections you outlined in Step One. If you are working on a small laptop, you may also consider keeping them minimized until needed to maximize screen efficiency. Do not include your Introduction or Conclusion, since these will be written once you’ve completed your Literature Review.

Step Three: One Source at a Time. Unlike a traditional linear writing process, you are no longer trying to spin paragraphs out of thin air. With QuiltWork writing, you go through each source one by one and read for key points and quotes. As you come across these points in your reading, open up the word doc that represents that literature review section and write. How is this relevant to your study? What does this remind you of? Do you need this quote? Be sure to include the full citation at the top of the blurb before you begin, and place in-text citations throughout. This will alleviate many headaches later when you patch these quilting squares together.

***Note for Step Three: If Source #1 has a point that works for Section A and Section D, place it in both! Isn’t the purpose of a literature review to provide an exhaustive, synthesized perspective of the existing scholarship? This method encourages this idea of scholarly flexibility, acknowledging that one source can be used in many different ways if given the right lens. Many times, I found that one source possessed data that could be applied to nearly every section in my literature review!

Step Four: Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Continue to repeat Step Three with every source you have. That’s right – every single one. Eventually, you’ll begin to make connections. Your documents might take on a note of free flow synthesis without you even realizing it.

Step Five: The Inquiry. Once you have worked through a large portion of your sources, I would recommend going back through each document and asking these questions: Which ones are filled to the brim with pages and pages of content? Which ones are still lagging behind? Do you need to shift your focus and feed the smaller ones with new sources? How many quotes have you found for each section? Do you need more? Less? Have you included citations for all of your work? Go back and check each one before moving on. These questions will guide you as you begin to refine your sections into veritable reservoirs of empirical evidence to support your study.

Step Six: The Great Gathering. You now should have 3-5 documents filled with quality content. At this point, you may see themes emerge in these documents. Identify the themes and work to craft stellar topic sentences out of them. These topic sentences are the seams that will bind the writing you’ve already accomplished.

 

At this point, you will find yourself edging closer and closer to writing a traditional paragraph. After you’ve completed Step Six, take the leap! You now have a clear idea of what you want to say in each section, which sources are key contenders in these debates, and how you plan to synthesize these works across the various sections of your literature review. You may now commence with sewing your quilting squares together to form the Great Blanket.

I do not profess to be a great seamstress, nor do I consider myself a great writer. But this small writing hack, created out of desperation and fear, allowed my brain to finally put words on the page. And as many of you know, getting words on the page is perhaps the biggest challenge of all.

You can do this. You can write this. How do we quilt a blanket? One square at a time.

Happy writing to you all!

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Set Yourself Up for Successful Writing Habits

By Jasmine Stovall, Consultant

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

More often than not, the hardest part about writing is not necessarily the writing itself, but rather the act of simply getting started. Typing just one sentence, one bullet point, or even one word on that blank Word document can break the procrastination barrier and open the flood gates of productivity. Second to starting, is finding the time to start and consistently making the time to continue as the semester picks up. One way to combat the hurdles of getting started and keeping going is to start early. Here are five things you can do right now to set yourself up for successful writing habits:

 

1. Figure out your writing style: One of the best ways to figure out your preferred writing style and environment preferences is to spend time writing and getting to know yourself as a writer. Experiment with writing alone, writing with a friend, or even a group of friends, in informal and formal settings, like a departmental writing group. Also, try writing in different environments (e.g., at home or a coffee shop) as well as during different times of the day. This will allow you to get a better understanding of your likes and dislikes. You can then use this information to set up a schedule and create an environment that will allow you to be the most productive.

2. Assess your schedule to get an idea of when and how writing will fit into your routine: Before the semester begins and your Outlook calendar fills up with meetings, seminars, teaching and other outside of class/research obligations in what seems like the blink of an eye, spend some time assessing your schedule to determine where you can schedule in writing time at your ideal duration and frequency. Then, write it in and set it in stone. Set expectations for yourself (and your writing partners, if applicable) and be protective of your writing time. If you do not take it upon yourself to prioritize scheduling writing early on and treat it like a class or any other non-negotiable obligation, it will likely fall by the wayside and never get the time that it deserves or the time you desire to devote to it. Before you know it, you will be halfway through the semester with no real, consistent writing routine and finding yourself looking for ways to fit writing in when it is convenient rather than making it a staple in your weekly schedule to help hold yourself accountable. This is especially important if you plan on writing solo.

3. Establish short-term and long-term goals: One of the most valuable pieces of advice I have ever received regarding large projects, or just feeling overwhelmed with tasks in general, is to think of the project as a big picture and divide your tasks into puzzle pieces of said picture. In other words, breaking larger things down into smaller, more manageable tasks put together over time will allow you to work on parts that will ultimately create a whole and hopefully reduce the feeling of overwhelm in the process. I am a firm believer that the same concept rings true for writing, especially for longer documents such as theses, dissertations, and research proposals. For some, breaking down the big picture writing assignment into puzzle pieces can look like planning ahead. Remember, write your purpose in pen and your plan in pencil. Life happens, so allow yourself to be flexible, but never lose sight of the goal. For others, puzzle pieces make look like setting milestone deadlines with themselves and/or their advisor to keep them on track, hold them accountable and ensure steady progress. This can help make the big picture seem less daunting if you are submitting small parts of a whole at regular intervals. Depending on the nature of your project, these deadlines may be weeks, months, or even semesters in advance. Finally, puzzle pieces may look like breaking down a document by chapter, or even by writing stage. For example, planning to have chapter one submitted by this date, or have a brainstorming session by this date followed by a rough outline by this date, and so on. Regardless of what the puzzle pieces look like for you, the key to successfully assembling your puzzle lies in goal setting. So, set a deadline (long-term goal) then work backwards by setting your milestone deadlines (short-term goals) to keep you on the trajectory of reaching the long-term goal within your desired timeframe.

4. Make a list of resources: Having a resource list handy in times of high stress writing can make all the difference. We often do not realize how many resources we have available to us as graduate students and waiting until you are in dire need typically is not the most conducive time to start looking. Being proactive in seeking out what is available to you beforehand, even if you do not need the services in that moment, will make for a smoother, more expedited process should a problem arise. This way, if/when you do find yourself in need of assistance, you already know where to look. Your resource list can consist of writing resources such as the GWC, or otherwise (e.g., Baylor Counseling Center, OALA, GRC, Career Services, etc). There are several factors that contribute to successful, productive writing, which can vary between individuals. Taking some time at the beginning of the semester to personalize your resource list will allow you the best chances of showing up to the computer as your best self to produce your best work.

5. Find (and use!) a citation manager: Graduate students and faculty alike make the claim that citation managers are a game changer, but it was something that I didn’t come to truly believe until I tried one myself. Trust me, to say that it is a game changer is an understatement. Experimenting and familiarizing yourself with a citation manager early in the semester will ease one of the many, if not the biggest, potential headaches of writing, especially when it comes to documents such as literature reviews. There are several options for citation managers, such as Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote and Citation Machine, to name a few. The options exist and they all serve the same purpose, so your only responsibility is to find one that suits you best based on your preferences and project goals. It is important to note that Baylor and/or your department do support memberships for many of these services and provide how-to workshops for beginners as well as those just needing a refresher. These workshops would make a great addition your resource list from tip #4. For more information on using citation managers, click here. Also keep a look out for upcoming GWC Zotero workshops!

 

Writing is not a task that comes easy to most. While the act of writing can be scary, sometimes even the thought of getting started can be even scarier. Hopefully, these five tips will be helpful in easing some of the anxieties surrounding writing and how to juggle it with the multitude of obligations we commit to throughout the semester as graduate students. The earlier in the semester you begin these things, the more ready you will feel to not only start writing but keep writing.

 

If You’re a Researcher, You’re a Writer

By Becca Cassady, Coordinator/Consultant

I heard a proverb recently that struck me as quite relevant to my work as a writing scholar: “There is no tale so great that it can’t be spoiled in the telling.” I thought about the dissertation writing and article collaborations that we, as researchers, are engaged in daily. We can conduct the best research, collect the best data, and make the most interesting connections, but at the end of the day, if we can’t effectively communicate our ideas, the impact of our work is greatly diminished—even misunderstood.

That’s why from chemists to historians, from psychologists to sociologists, all researchers are writers. When you reach a certain point in academia, writing is practically your job. Publications, conference papers, grant writing, and even syllabi all help establish you within your discipline and convey the important work that you’re doing. A great deal of your scholarly identity and career progress is connected to your writing.

Moreover, all researchers are storytellers. You may not think of storytelling as something that goes down in the lab or in the field or even in the university library, but your data and research are telling a story, forming a narrative. You, as a writer-research, must shape that narrative so that your readers leave blown away by—or at least thinking about—your discovery/intervention/argument.

Investing in your writing practices and rhetorical knowledge as you progress through graduate school will position you well not only for the dissertation stage but also for other publications and presentations in and beyond grad school. You’ll be prepared to effectively engage other scholars, potential collaborators, and even lay readers and build your scholarly identity in the process.

Sounds like a good plan. But how?

Shaping your Narrative

As you think about translating your research into a written document, keep in mind the following rhetorical considerations that can help you engage your readers effectively.

1. What story is the study/data/research telling?

Once you know what you want to say, all of your writing choices should serve to highlight and support that goal and point readers back to your argument. Don’t let yourself get distracted by other findings or “plot lines.” Save those for another piece and tell one story well. Your reader should leave able to clearly re-state your argument.

A related consideration is the scope of your document. Don’t try to save the world in one article, one chapter, even one book. Be realistic about the content and findings that you can cover and don’t be afraid to go deep and not wide. (Although sometimes broad is more appropriate—e.g. this blogpost!)

2. Who is your audience?

Consider who your audience is. Does your work have implications for multiple fields? If so, which field are you targeting with this piece? Different scholars will have different levels of knowledge and background—even different vocabularies—so identifying this beforehand will help you keep in mind what your audience already knows and what they need to know (and therefore what you’re responsible for explaining to them.)

On a broader scale, if this is a publication, what is your venue? Different journals, for example, have different expectations for both content and style. If you’re new to publishing, I would suggest identifying the top-tier journals in your field (through your own research or by asking a mentor) and reading the articles in those journals. You’ll get a sense of what they’re looking for, what kinds of critical approaches or methodologies their pieces often use, and what content they’ve published recently. In some fields, reaching out to journal editors can also help you (or them) decide if your work is a good fit for the journal.

3. How are you intervening in the scholarly conversation?

Your work should be engaging relevant scholarship. That doesn’t mean you have to read every piece on your topic since 1900. But it does mean you need to be aware of what scholars are saying. You also need to be aware of what they’re not saying, thus identifying gaps in scholarship. This is how you justify the need for this amazing new research you’re doing. Build on other people’s work; don’t be afraid to show connections or, when necessary, contradictions. If you’re not engaging the scholarship within your field, you’re essentially screaming into an empty echo chamber. And that’s just not a productive (or publishable) place to be.

While there are many rhetorical considerations that should guide your writing, these are just a few that I find helpful as I try to shape my own data into a narrative. I hope you find them helpful, too. And if you ever need someone to read your story, the Graduate Writing Center is happy to help.

 

Becca Cassady is a PhD Candidate in English whose research focuses on writing center studies and learning transfer. She serves as the Graduate Writing Center Coordinator as well as a Doctoral Administrative Fellow for the Baylor Graduate School.