Writing is never a straightforward process, and particularly so for academic writing. While we read articles from introduction through to conclusion (the first page to the last page), this is not how articles are written. Nor dissertations or books for that matter. The key to successful academic writing is embracing the irregularity of and iterations in the process.
Irregular Writing
Why? Because writing an article (or book or dissertation) from start to finish means writing about how your study contributes before you’ve written about your findings (the contributions). Research that is written from start to finish almost always suffers from a disconnect between the front end (introduction and literature review) and back end (findings, discussion, and conclusion). The front end promises answers to questions and engagement with literature or theory that then the back end does not follow through on.
Embracing irregular writing means starting to write in the middle. Data and methods sections are an easy place to start to get your writing flowing, but most important is making sure you draft your findings section(s) before any other section of an article or chapter. You need to know your findings in order to identify what literature or theory you need to set them up. You even need to know your findings to formulate accurate phrasings of your research questions in your introductions.
Irregular writing also happens within sections. I never write an introduction paragraph to a section before I draft that section. Writing the section first lets me see what I’m actually saying in that section and then write an accurate introduction paragraph, rather than a hypothetical one.
Iterative Writing
The other practice I find helpful is the repetitive process of writing in iterations. Approaching writing as an iterative process means layering in more writing in distinct stages rather than all at once. This involves visiting and revisiting the same writing not with an eye for editing, but with an eye for adding to the text.
For example, I’m currently working on a findings section from an extensive quantitative analysis that includes subgroup analyses. My first iteration was to go through and simply write a sentence about each significant finding for a subgroup. My second iteration was to add sentences that provided interpretation and analysis to the reader for each finding. I finalized each section with an irregular writing technique of writing the introduction summary paragraph for the section on the subgroup.
Using an iterative process lets me start with the evidence and build out what I want the reader to take from the evidence, while I engage with the evidence multiple times. It gives me some time to sit with a finding and decide whether the results for income and education suggest a pattern around socio-economic status that I want to impart to the reader or if each separate variable suggests something slightly distinct.
Remember, writing is thinking! Irregular and iterative writing processes help embrace the thinking part of the process. As you approach new sections and revisit drafted ones, you apply what you’ve learned (through writing as thinking) to continue to develop your manuscript.
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