Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.
MICHAEL MICHALKO
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Creativity Is Paradoxical (quote)
5 Ways Blogging Has Made Me a Better Writer
Academics spend considerable time writing: dissertations, journal articles, books, reference letters, memos, and even blog posts. But most of us receive very little training on how to write well. They teach us how to find good information (research) and how to record that information in our footnotes and bibliographies. But everyone seems to assume that if you’ve made it all the way to “academic” status, you must know how to write.
That’s what I used to think. I was wrong.
I’ve begun reflecting on what I’ve gained from blogging. And some of the most important lessons so far have been about writing. To be honest, I’ve learned more in the last two years about how to write well than I learned in any of my college or seminary classes.
What to Put in Your Dissertation
I recently ran across this fun description of what you should include in your dissertation. So, if you’re working on yours now or will be in the future, here’s some great dissertation writing advice.
The Ph.D. thesis usually begins with a pithy quote, after which there will sometimes be a dedication to one’s parents, life partner, and/or pet tapir.
Following this is probably the most important part of the dissertation: the acknowledgments section. This is the only section that everyone who picks up your thesis will read. They will happen upon your dissertation in the library and flip through the first few pages, looking for a juicy acknowledgments section. This is your chance to make obscure references to secret loves, damn various faculty members with faint praise, or be very mysterious by having no acknowledgments section at all so that everyone wonders what you’re hiding.
The Manifesto of Done
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
That’s my favorite quote from the Manifesto for The Cult of Done. The Manifesto offers 13 rules for getting things done. Although they apply to people from every walk of life, I think they’re particularly relevant to students and writers.
Now I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m encouraging sloppy writing/thinking. Some students could use a little more striving for perfection in those areas. But some (and I’m one of them) struggle more with the ideal of perfection, an ideal that can prevent us from finishing anything. If that’s you, feel free to laugh at perfection every now and then.
Here are some other gems:
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Done is the engine of more.
So, if you’re working on something, great. If you get it done, better.
How to use Wikipedia and other online sources for research
In every syllabus, I tell students to use “quality sources” in their research papers. But that only raises the question of what qualifies as a “quality source.” One student wanted to know if he could cite the Bible as one of his sources. After all, you can’t get much more quality than that! Another took things a step further and asked if individual books of the Bible counted as different sources. Talk about a quick way to pad your bibliography.
But the question everyone wants to ask: what about Wikipedia?
Before I say any more, let’s be clear about one thing: I like Wikipedia. When I want to learn about something new, Wikipedia is usually my first stop. It’s a great place to surf for entry-level information on almost any topic.
8 Things Authors Need to Look for in Their Contracts Today (ETS papers)
The publishing industry is in the middle of a radical transition. The shift from print to electronic media is reshaping the industry, bringing new players to the table, and raising questions and concerns for both new and experienced authors.
At ETS, Bill Mounce presented a paper on “What Every Author Should Know about Electronic Publishing.” he argued that this is a great time to be an author if you stay informed about the industry and the chaining dynamics.
KEY PLAYERS
He began by making a few comments about the key players in book publication.
- Publishers. The best part of this section was the helpful reminder of the risks that publishers take when publishing a new book. In many ways, they put both their money and their reputation on the line every time they publish something. (Unfortunately, Bill didn’t address the question of self-publication. He seems to assume that traditional publication will be the path forward for most Bible/theology authors.) And he of course commented and the shift to electronic publication, which will be the focus of his comments in the next section.
- Distributors. Two key shifts to be mindful of here. First, there’s the shift from smaller book stores to the big box stores. And then there’s the shift from physical stores to online stores. Both have impacted the industry tremendously.
- Software. This was one that I hadn’t considers, but Mounce pointed out that distributing books through software programs (e.g. Logos) raises its own issues. Since these books are more likely to come bundled in a package with other books, contracting and licensing is more difficult than with stand-alone products.
- Authors. Bill’s primary concern here is that authors aren’t staying up on these issues. he also commented that authors need to be aware that publishers don’t always (or even often) make decisions about electronic rights with the authors best interests in mind. And he thinks that software companies are often the worst offenders here.
- Others. During the Q&A one person commented that he would have liked to hear more about editors and their role. And I’d echo this for agents as well. What do authors need to know about how the changing context has affected them?
8 Things Authors Need to Look for in Their Contracts
Given all of these changes, Mounce identified eight things relative to electronic publication that authors need to be looking for in their contracts.
- Sub-licensing. This gets a bit complicated, but here’s how I understand it. If you sign a contract with Publisher A, you receive a certain percentage of the book’s sales as your royalty. But, if Publisher A decides to sub-license the book to Publisher B for some reason, Publisher A only receives a portion of the sales price from Publisher B. And, since the author only receives a share of Publisher A’s money, the author gets much less in return for books sold by Publisher B. Mounce’s recommendation, then, is to check sub-licensing clauses very carefully and avoid them if possible.
- Agency Model. What percentage of the book is kept by the “agency” (e.g. Amazon), and how are the author’s royalties calculated. For example, if Amazon keeps 30% of the book’s sale price, and the author is supposed to get 30% of the royalties, is the author’s share calculated only off the 70% that remains after Amazon’s cut, or is it based on the full sales price? He didn’t indicate that he thought the former model was a problem, only that authors need to know enough to find out what the actual arrangement is.
- Digital Marketing Plan. He strongly recommended finding out how the publisher intends to use digital marketing (e.g. website, social media) to get the word out about the book. Although the author will need to be highly involved, don’t let the publisher convince you that it’s all the author’s job.
- Discounting. If the book ever gets offered at a discount, how does this impact your royalties? Do you get paid off the full or discounted price?
- Electronic Development Costs. Assuming that the book is originally published in print form, who will cover the costs of converting it to an electronic format? Mounce pointed out that this is becoming less of an issue as electronic publishing becomes the norm, but he still recommended looking into it.
- The Unknown Issue. He skipped the sixth one.
- Minimum Royalties. I missed some of this section, but the general idea was to pay attention to any “minimum royalty” clauses in your contract and perform some “what if” calculations to see how they might actually impact your take home.
One last note that I found interesting. Mounce pointed out that it’s more important than ever for authors to pay attention to their contracts. Back in the olden days (i.e. up until a few years ago), if a book stopped selling enough copies, it would no longer be cost-efficient for the publisher to keep the book in print. So, the publisher would let the book go “out of print” and the publication rights would be returned to the author. But in the age of electronic and on-demand publication, there’s not really any reason for a publisher to let a book go out of print. This means that the publication rights may not ever be returned to the author. So watch your contract closely.
This was an interesting paper. As I said, I would have liked to hear a bit more about some of the other players in the process. And I’m curious to know what number six was. But otherwise, this was a helpful inside look at a complex industry.
To Write Better Papers, Kill Unnecessary Clutter
Pack rats fascinate me. I know people who have two or three storage units to house all their stuff. And that’s not counting garages, spare bedrooms, attics, and all their other nooks and crannies. They tell me that they’re holding onto everything “just in case.” You never know when that electronic potato peeler might come in handy. But, of course, when they really do need to find something, it’s almost impossible. They’ve got some good stuff, but it’s hidden in all the clutter.
Writers are amazing pack rats. (Students are too.) We’ve accumulated so many important sentences, paragraphs, footnotes, and research. We just don’t want to let go.
So, we end up with papers and books that feel like they’ve been stuffed full with all the accumulated debris an academic pack rat can find. There’s probably some good stuff in there. But who can tell? Who can find it?
So, today’s advice is: kill the clutter.
Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. It is comprehensible when I write: “The man sat on the grass,” because it is clear and does not detain one’s attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: “The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully.” The brain can’t grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously. ~Anton Chekhov (HT AdviceToWriters)
This works in non-fiction writing as well. Unnecessary modifiers deaden prose; they numb the reader and make it difficult to figure out what you’re saying. Of course, adjectives usually aren’t the problem in academic writing. Even simple adverbs are too prosaic for us. We prefer to use entire clauses to muddy our writing.
Here’s an exercise for you.
- Take any paragraph from the last paper you wrote.
- Identify the main idea of the paragraph. (If it doesn’t have one, pick a different paragraph and remember that paragraphs should have a purpose.)
- See how much you can eliminate and still have the paragraph communicate that main idea. Make it a game. See how short you can make it and still deliver the purpose. This is the core of your paragraph and it’s what your reader needs to know. Anything that you add to this core has the potential to muddy the waters and make your reader miss the point of the paragraph.
- Go back to the original paragraph and look at the extra words/clauses one at a time. Ask yourself whether they really contribute anything. If you left them out, would the reader really miss anything important? If not, leave them out. If they’re not helping, they’re hurting. There is no middle ground here.
Now, I’m no minimalist. Brevity can be bad. Short sentences get boring. Variety is good. This is choppy.
So, feel free to mix things up a bit. Just make sure than when you do, you have a reason for doing so.
It’s the beginning of another school year, so it’s time to clean house. Set your pack rat ways behind you and commit to using your language carefully, your words wisely, your prose purposefully. (How many adverbs should I cross out from that sentence?)
Kill the unnecessary clutter.
[This post is part of our Tips for the Th.M. series, offering suggestions on how to survive and thrive in a postgraduate program.]
How to destroy your own research paper in one simple step
Some words should never find their way into research papers. Wikipedia is pretty high on that last. So is anything that is not technically a word (e.g. IMHO). Fortunately, though I’ve heard from others who’ve experienced the terror of encountering these in papers, I have not yet experienced it myself. That’s a good thing. (Note to my students: for your sake, please keep it that way.) But, there are some other student favorites that I’d like to see disappear forever.
“So, I would like to try to explore the possibility of….”
Just stop.
This sentence and its ilk taint the beginnings of far too many otherwise good papers. Using a sentence like this to describe your paper is like building a solid table and then ripping one of its legs off. It may still be standing, but no one will want to use it. With one sentence, you’ve cut the legs out from under your own research paper.
Here’s why.
1. Explore (investigate, consider, etc.): Really? You’re handing in a 20-page research paper and the only thing you’ve done is “explore” something? I’m going to assume that you didn’t actually find anything interesting, otherwise you would tell me. Right? You wouldn’t keep that a secret, would you? Because if I thought that you found something cool and were just keeping it from me, I’d be pretty upset. And that wouldn’t be good. So, as your reader, I only have to options here: (1) you didn’t find anything interesting and I shouldn’t bother reading your paper; (2) you found something interesting that you’re hiding from me, and I should be angry with you. Neither option ends well for you.
So, I’d suggest that you go ahead and tell me what you found. If Indiana Jones goes on an expedition and finds some ancient and extremely valuable treasure. He doesn’t come back and tell people that he just explored for a while. He tells them what he found! So, start with that. And, by the way, not finding something is still a discovery. If you went looking for X and didn’t find it, that’s worth reporting. If nothing else, you’ve demonstrated that it’s not there.
2. Try to (attempt to, seek to, etc.): This just makes it worse. With “explore” you’re telling me that you just wandered around for a while exploring without actually finding anything. Now you’re telling me that you’re not even sure you accomplished that! You didn’t explore, you just tried to. Was it hard? Did you encounter monsters along the way that made it difficult for you to complete your expedition? Whatever the obstacles were, I appreciate that you put further the effort. But, your paper would make much more compelling reading if you gave me some reason to believe, especially here at the beginning, that you may have actually succeeded. Otherwise, I think I’ll just stop here.
3. Possibility: This just keeps getting better. Now we’re not even sure that this thing you’re going to try to explore even exists. And, what’s worse, I’m reading this after you’ve supposedly tried to explore it. So, all I can conclude is that even though you’ve already tried to explore it, you’re still not sure whether it exists. I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do with my time that read about somebody who tried to explore some non-existent thing.
So, with one sentence, you’ve completely undermined my confidence in your argument. And, you’ve done it by making it exceptionally clear that you don’t have any confidence in your own argument.
Nonetheless, I find sentences like this in papers all the time. Why is that? Why are so many students eager to destroy their own papers at the very beginning?
1. Fear: Students use language like this as a shield they can hide behind. If I say, “I am going to argue that X is true or not true,” I’ve backed myself into a corner and I’d better make my argument. But, if I just say that I’m going to “explore” something, I’ve left an open door for escape. I haven’t really committed to anything, so there’s nothing to worry about. Fear is a powerful motivator for creating weak beginnings.
2. Beginning with the beginning: This introduction reads like the student wrote it first and then never came back to revise it later. I can understand how you might think at the beginning of the journey that you’ll just be exploring some issue. That makes sense. You don’t know yet how things will end. So, if you want to sketch an introduction from that perspective at the beginning to clarify in your own mind what your purposes are, fine. But that’s not the end of the story. When your paper is done, you should have something more interesting to report. And, since I’m obviously reading the paper after it’s all done, why not go ahead and tell me what that is? Revise your introduction!
3. No argument: Of course, it’s entirely possible that the problem is with the paper, not the introduction. Maybe you don’t have anything more interesting to report. If your paper just wanders around and “explores” or “summarizes” a lot of information, there’s not much your introduction can do to jazz that up. Unfortunately, if this is your problem, you’ve got some work to do. Simply re-writing your introduction won’t be enough.
4. A “student” mentality: I think this lies at the heart of the problem for many. Growing up, we’re told that the student’s job is to learn. So, we create papers from the perspective of the learner, writing tentatively and cautiously rather than confidently and authoritatively. That may be fine earlier in our academic careers (though I’d question that as well), but not in graduate or postgraduate research papers. If you haven’t already, it’s time to give yourself permission to be a teacher. You’ve done the research. You’ve (hopefully) constructed an argument and drawn a conclusion. Now, you’re the teacher. Inform me.
Let the words of the master guide you here:
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda was a very wise man…person…goblin…thing.
[This post is part of our Tips for the Th.M. series, offering suggestions on how to survive and thrive in a postgraduate program.]
Writing tip of the day: How to Reverse-Outline Your First Draft
I’m big on outlining. It’s a great way to make sure that everything in your paper fits together and works toward the same goal. If you have stray elements, things that don’t really contribute toward your argument, they’ll really show up on an outline.
So, I think the first step of writing a good research paper is putting together your outline.
It can also be very effective as one of the last steps.
Here’s an interesting article on reverse-outlining: going back over your paper and outlining it as you’ve actually written it. It’s amazing how far your first draft can slip away from your original outline. So, reverse-outlining is a tool you can use to see if your argument still hangs together and if every section/paragraph still works toward that end. It can take a little time, but it’s well worth the effort.
Writing quote of the day
