efficient academic writing - himolde · efficient academic writing | james hayton. available via...
TRANSCRIPT
4 approaches to the problem:
- What I did- Break the thesis into discrete chunks- Analogy/ metaphor- Indentify the fundamental principles
Basic assumptions
Writing is a means of recording information
That information in it’s raw form is disordered
It takes work to impose order and communicate clearly
Some ideas take more work than others to communicate
{ for yourselforfor someone else
Don’t think too much about writing; just get words down on the page as quickly as you can, allowing your thoughts to flow without worrying about details or structure, because you can always edit later
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KEY POINT
Your pace will inevitably vary, in part because of the varying difficulty of the ideas you express
this is unavoidable
you will need to get comfortable with spending
time thinking!
Some say this is perfectionism, and that this is a bad thing...
but a degree of perfectionism is sometimes necessary
Total carelessness Total perfectionism
There is plenty of room to operate between these two
extremes
The trick is to strike a balance:giving care and attention to
the work without excessively worrying about the end result
Linking Ideas{
Top-Down Bottom-UpGet all your ideas down on the page, then cut and rearrange
There is some value to getting ideas down on paper, but we need to remember 2 basic principles...
Construct an argument by carefully piecing together individual ideas
Writing is a means of recording information
That information in it’s raw form is disordered
{ for yourselforfor someone else
Once you have a stock of ideas, you can select which points you
want to write about
The challenge is to lead the reader from one point to
another, taking time to express each point clearly
You don’t have to include everything you know- hold some
information back!
Day to day routine
1. Turn off the internet!
2. Set targets you can beat
3. Start easy
4. Don’t work to exhaustion
5. Finish things
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