Having a Voice in Your Writing: What it Means and How to go About it

Wemimo B. Jaiyesimi, Consultant

I remember receiving feedback on one of my class papers from an esteemed professor during my graduate studies in the UK. She appreciated my work and the research I had done but wanted to hear more of my voice, more of my ideas, and more of my critical reflections on the research I was documenting. In another paper I wrote for her, she commented that “my voice came through” – although not in all parts of the paper. However, there was improvement! My advisor here at Baylor has also emphasized voice, pushing me and my colleagues to honor our voices in our writing. I once heard him speak of a scholar friend of his who, as he put it, came to realize readers of his books were interested in reading him. To have a voice in one’s writing comes from the realization that your readers are interested in your writing and not simply how well you have succeeded in cataloging other people’s voices (however authoritative those other voices may be).

Having a voice means effectively communicating in one’s writing a confident sense of the unique contribution(s) that a piece of writing makes to the discursive academic field(s) in which one locates or aspires to locate it. The voice is what grounds the writer’s originality, and being original is a crucial feature of good research writing. To have a voice is to take ownership of the writing as one’s own, to show throughout the piece of writing that one is not simply repeating what has been said. It is not paraphrasing the insights of others, nor is it masterfully referencing the sources employed. I want to suggest the following four practices that can help to hone and maintain voice as we write.

  1. Have a clear thesis statement from the outset. We have all been told how important a strong thesis statement is to a good research paper, article, or essay. Without a clear thesis, the paper lacks a defensible argument. Having a clear thesis, however, is even more crucial when it comes to being able to maintain one’s voice. Why is that? A clear thesis statement helps drive your writing forward, helping organize its various elements, and keeping all of the parts interrelated. Without a clear thesis (which should also be interesting and original), the writing is likely to be jumbled, with no argumentative thread running through it.
  2. Employ quotes sparingly. Employing too many quotes in your writing can cause your voice to be muted. You should only use quotes when necessary. Paraphrasing is better, as it helps translate the words into your own, restating them in your terms. Yet, even in paraphrasing, one is still primarily relaying the ideas of others. To maintain your voice, don’t simply paraphrase, but engage and interact with the paraphrased ideas. Why is the author whom you have quoted important? After quoting or paraphrasing, say something that helps establish to your reader how you understand the connection between the quote and your argument.
  3. Take the evaluative stance. This point is connected to the above point about linking paraphrases and/or quotes to the program of your argument as stated in your thesis. By the evaluative stance, I mean ensuring in your writing that you are not simply reporting ideas, but critically evaluating those ideas, including yours.
  4. Do not feel the need to justify your authority. As new and emerging scholars, graduate students may feel overwhelmed by how little they know about their chosen areas of research. But too often, we underestimate how much we know! While intellectual humility is crucial to good research, you shouldn’t feel afraid to believe in the importance of your ideas to the community of scholars you belong to. Through practice, develop your original insights, and communicate these in a way that doesn’t cede ownership of their originality to authorities.  

Having a voice is important for stamping your authorial identity on your writing. Although it might seem daunting, as with most things in life, it grows with practice and experience. The four points noted above are by no means the only ones that can help, but if practiced, they can go a long way in helping us get a handle on that often-elusive idea of writing in a way that maximally incorporates our voice.

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.

Unraveling Why we Procrastinate and How to Conquer Writer’s Block.

By Madhur Wyatt, Consultant

“I promise to start tomorrow.” “I can’t really start writing till I have researched enough.” “I don’t even know what to write!” Sound familiar? Procrastination and writer’s block (a feeling of being stuck or unable to generate ideas for writing) can be real barriers to your life as a grad student. However, there is always a reason you procrastinate, and if you can understand the psychology behind it, you can reclaim your writing productivity.

The three reasons you may be procrastinating:

  1. Running from the bull: When you find a task daunting, your brain is super clever at escaping it or delaying the task for momentary relief. But this can become worrisome – especially when deadlines get closer. If you find yourself doom-scrolling, watching Netflix, or finding fall recipes, you are satisfying your brain’s search for instant gratification. These attractive distractions can further reinforce procrastination. So, my friend, when you find yourself running away from tasks, acknowledge that it’s your brain playing tricks on you to escape writing that research project.
  2. Waiting for the stars to align: Let’s be honest, most of us have perfectionist tendencies (otherwise, how did we get into grad school). Perfectionism is paralyzing. You may fear that your work will not meet standards. You may find yourself constantly editing, revising, re-writing, or erasing it all–ultimately slowing down the progress of your work. This perfectionism can come in the way of you making substantial progress, perpetuating writer’s block.
  3. Lost in transition: Grad school writing is not your typical chit-chat with a friend at Starbucks. It follows a certain style, structure, and organization. Additionally, writing for academia demands skills and conventions that may not be intuitive. Scientific writing, for instance, may not be second nature to you. This unfamiliarity can be very uncomfortable and make writing feel like an uphill battle, leading to further procrastination.

So, now that we’ve acknowledged three drivers of procrastinating. Let’s discuss some practical writing strategies that you can use in your next writing project:

  1. Pen the ponderings: So, if you are running from the bull or waiting for the stars to align, try setting a timer for 10 minutes and free-writing whatever comes to mind. The goal is to get words on paper and remember there are no judgments. This will kickstart your writing process.
  2. Map your mind: Create mind maps: a visual showing the central concept branching out with related concepts. This will help you organize and contain your thoughts and identify connections, ultimately helping you with the flow of ideas. This is exactly what you need when you find yourself dodging the bull or waiting for those perfect constellations.
  3. Setting the stage; Painting an outline: Imagine you are dealing with a mammoth-sized writing project or a paper that includes the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. You can get overwhelmed just by thinking about it. So, the trick is to start with an outline for the project. This outline will include breaking down each section into subpoints or guideposts. These sub-points will keep you on track and will provide goals for each writing session. Bull-evasion!
  4. Eat the elephant (or the bull), one bite at a time: Attack your writing in bite-sized portions. Once you have an outline of the project, you can start elaborating on these sub-points one by one. This way, the bite-sized writing session will not overwhelm you and slowly you will see your writing flow.
  5. Sprint writing: Up for a challenge to sidestep the bull? Try a writing sprint! Set a timer for 20 minutes and write. No editing is allowed in this period. Unlike free writing, writing sprints intentionally attack each section of your mind map or paper outline one by one and start writing about it. But, since you are not allowed to edit, you will make progress on your research paper as you start writing about it.
  6. Two heads are better than one: Grab a writing buddy! Either write together or exchange writing assignments and provide a critique. An accountability partner will get you going on the project and an additional set of eyes will help refine it.
  7. Textual Navigation: Referencing the pros: Navigate through the complexity of writing by opening up several journal articles on your browser and analyzing the writing styles, formats, and word choices. This will serve as a valuable guide as you compile your work and mitigate loss in transition ensuring smooth and cohesive writing. 

With these strategies, you will not only overcome procrastination and writer’s block but also hopefully enjoy the writing process. Happy Writing!

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 to Write a Good STEM Lit Review without Losing Your Sanity: A 5-step(ish) Guide for the Modern “Work Smart, Not Hard” Graduate Student

Photo by Karl Solano on Unsplash

by Grace Aquino, Consultant

The age-old aphorism, “publish or perish,” rings particularly loudly for graduate students in STEM. As soon-to-be Ph.D.’s, M.S.’s, and experts in our subject matter, the pressure to publish impactful papers that advance both our field of study and our career as independent researchers can be overwhelming at times, especially since we receive little to no guidance on how to write scientific papers, let alone impactful ones. (To learn more about how to write scientific papers, read “Scientific Writing: How to Write Papers that Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded” by Joshua Schimel!) One such type of impactful paper and the cornerstone of a good dissertation is the literature review. What is a lit review? Besides being the one paper you repeatedly quote to make yourself sound smart, a lit review is a paper that systematically evaluates dozens if not hundreds of published peer-reviewed papers on a defined topic or question, and then summarizes them in a useful way to synthesize new information, identify new problems and questions/knowledge gaps, and ultimately offer new insights and areas of research for the wider scientific community to learn from and address. In fact, we’ve all stumbled across the one or two lit reviews in our field that not only have enlightened us on a subject but have also revolutionized how we think of a problem and/or springboarded us into research action. While reading a good lit review can be academically catalyzing, writing one, on the other hand, can be academically soul crushing. With the right tools, however, it doesn’t have to be!

This blogpost is a 5-step(ish) guide on how to write a good STEM lit review without losing your sanity, designed specifically for the modern “work smart, not hard” graduate student, like you.

 

Step 1. Define the research topic and identify the central question(s) you’re asking.

Before you even start searching for papers to evaluate in your lit review, you need to define your research topic and identify the central question(s) you’re asking. Specifically, your research topic should be the “big picture” problem or need in your field, and the question(s) you choose should be narrow enough to be answered (at least in part) by evaluating the existing body of literature on said topic. For example, if your research topic is evaluating the psychosocial effects that COVID-19 has on a certain group of people, your central questions might be: how does/did the COVID-19 pandemic affect grad students’ mental health and general outlook on post-graduate life? If your research topic is more methods-flavored, like improving protocols for extracting COVID-19 viral particles from different environmental matrices, your question(s) might be: what methods currently exist to extract viral RNA from waste-water samples and what are their advantages/disadvantages? The types of questions you can ask are infinite. But remember to choose a question that is large enough in scope to move the field forward but small enough in scope that you can answer it given limited resources (like time, available peer-reviewed papers, and coffee).

 

Step 2. Search for relevant literature and make a list.

What is relevant literature? What is irrelevant literature? And where do you even begin to search for it? Deciding these things can be tricky, which is why the first thing you’ll need is a predetermined list of keywords related to the research topic and/or question, and clear selection (i.e. inclusion) criteria. To use the same example as before, if your topic is on the psychosocial effects of COVID-19 on grad student mental health, you might use all of these words as keywords and then include a few more tangentially related or synonymous ones to ensure your search is broad enough (like “college student”, “psychological effects,” “social effect,” “stress,” “quality of life” and “COVID19 pandemic”).  Don’t forget to use the Boolean operators “and,” “or,” and “not” in your search.

The second thing you’ll need is your university’s and/or public scholarly search engines to help you find papers. Baylor University Libraries’ One Search is a good place to start (especially since you have access to most if not all scholarly articles via the university’s academic journal subscriptions and interlibrary loans) but you’re not limited to this search engine. There are other great search engines likes PubMed, PubChem, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate, Springerlink, JSTOR, Web of Science, PLUS ONE, Scopus, Google Scholar, and the list goes on. (For a comprehensive list, see Top 100 Best Websites to Find Academic Journals, Articles & Books – Quertime). One tool I’ve found useful for finding related papers and staying abreast with my academic reading in general is the online visualization tool, Connected Papers. This impressive mapping tool gives you a visual overview of the literatures in the academic field you’re interested in, based on keywords you input, and it shows connections between new relevant papers and prior and/or derivative works.  I highly recommend it!

Finally, don’t let your initial shock at the overwhelming or underwhelming number of papers that your search returns deter you. Instead, use your clearly-defined selection criteria (e.g. papers no older than X amount of years, studies including both male and female participants, clinical and/or nonclinical studies, etc.)  to choose the papers you will evaluate and then store them in your preferred reference manager (EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, etc.). Read the abstracts of the paper and look through their reference section, which oftentimes is a goldmine of references. Add papers to your list that pass your initial criteria check; you can always come back and edit this list after reading through the abstracts. Your list may be long or short, depending on the abundance of papers that match your criteria and/or addressing your research topic. If your research topic is fairly new, you may not find many papers (but hey, that’s less reading for you and more opportunity to make a significant contribution!). Nonetheless, the selection criteria is important for your review to be considered systematic, so make sure you take the time to decide what the selection criteria are before you start your search.

 

Step 3. Read the papers to answer your central question and keep an annotated bibliography!

Shockingly, yes, you’ll have to actually read the papers you chose for your lit review. But you don’t actually have to read them in their entirety (unless you’re OCD like me). Since you’ll have read the abstracts at this point, focus on reading the papers in a given order (chronological, alphabetic, or another reasonable order) and smartly – i.e. to answer your central question. Be sure to keep good notes on the themes, knowledge gaps, debates, problematic findings, new insights, etc. that you discover as you read. Don’t underestimate the power of the annotated bibliography. For each paper you read, keep an annotated bibliography with these notes, which will significantly increase your ability to organize your lit review later and significantly decrease the crippling anxiety that comes from disorganized lit review processes. One tip to expedite the reading process is to briefly skim the introduction, skip the methods (unless your central question is about the methods), and spend a designated amount of time on the results and discussion sections, which are where you’ll likely find the answer your central question. If you find yourself spending an ungodly amount of time reading a single paper, use a productivity tool (like the Pomodoro technique) to help keep yourself on track. You can always come back to a paper if you need to clarify something later, but remember, you want to maximize your productivity from the beginning by finding ways to read and note-take more efficiently so that you can get to the meat of the lit review, the writing, sooner rather than later.

 

Step 4. Write an outline.

Based on your reading and notes, decide what lit review structure works best to write in light of the central question you’re asking. Use the central question explicitly as your thesis statement at the end of your introduction, after you’ve described the background of the “big picture” problem you’re addressing and highlighted the specific knowledge gap(s) in your field of research that further warrant your lit review. For the body of the lit review, the four main lit review structures typically used are:

  • Chronological – This is the simplest approach to map the development of your topic over time. If you choose this approach, avoid simply summarizing papers or listing them in order. Instead, focus on analyzing patters, key events, important debates or opposing views, etc. that have shaped the field and/or address the central question.
  • Thematic – This strategy uses recurring themes to organize your lit review into subsections that address different areas of the topic. For example, if you’re evaluating the psychosocial effects of COVID19 on graduate students, you might have several psychosocial parameters you’re evaluating, so you can use each of these as thematic sub-headers throughout the paper.
  • Methodological – If you’re comparing research methods from different fields or disciplines, you can use this approach to group similar methods together and juxtapose different ones. You can also discuss advantages and disadvantages of the methods in this strategy.
  • Theoretical – Oftentimes, the lit review is the foundation for a theoretical framework. This strategy allows you to discuss existing/new theories, definitions and key concepts, test models, etc. Like the methodological strategy, you can discuss the relevance of one theoretical approach over another, advantages, disadvantages, etc.

End the outline of your lit review with the conclusion/future direction section, where you will highlight the most important insights you’ve learned and offer new questions for the wider scientific community to address.

This outlining step is perhaps one of the hardest aspects of the lit review because putting an effective outline together can feel much like putting together a blank puzzle. However, once you’ve decided which outline structure works best for your topic and you’ve written out the outline, writing the paper will be easier (not easy!) than writing without a strategy in mind.

 

Step 5. Write the lit review.

There’s not much explanation needed here. For more help on writing the specific parts of the lit review, visit Scribbr’s “What is a Lit Review: Step-by-Step Guide and Examples”.

Consider joining a writing group to keep yourself accountable and writing routinely (and sane!). The GWC starts new ones every semester. Look out for our email! Remember, writing IS thinking, and writing CREATES knowledge, so make sure you give yourself time everyday to sit down and write something.

 

Step 5.5. Revise and edit, and send it to the GWC!

Once your first draft is done, have someone you trust in your professional circle review it and offer constructive criticism. Additionally, the GWC is always happy to help! You can send you papers direct to gwc@baylor.edu and we will pair you with a consultant to serve as an outside expert reader and offer feedback over a brief meeting.

If you’re writing the lit review for your dissertation or thesis, be sure to incorporate it following the guidelines and requirements given by your advisor/program. If you’re writing the lit review as a stand-alone paper or as part of a manuscript for an academic journal, follow the journal’s stylistic formatting and requirements, and ensure your citations are correct.

 

While writing a lit review can induce high levels of academic anxiety, we hope that this guide helps demystify the process and put some of that anxiety to rest. Remember that you are capable and that there are people here to help you! Email us at gwc@baylor.edu for help with your lit review (or any other paper) at any stage of completion.

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.