Greg Skutches  0:02
I’m Greg Skutches and I am Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at Lehigh University. I think writing needs to be approached like any other skill, right? And that’s just you do it regularly and make it easy. So, we’ve discovered a lot of things about how I think it should be a habit. And we discovered a lot of things about habits. If you want to learn the guitar, you don’t put it in a case under the bed, you put it on a stand in the living room, right? So, it’s successful, you pick it up. And I think writing needs to be done regularly and you need to make it easy. You need to have a place where you write – maybe a place where you do nothing but writing and you sit down and write. But even bigger than that, I have a new thing I like to say. I like to say, “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly”. Okay. And what I mean by that is that, yes, strive for excellence, by all means. Strive for excellence. But for most of us, there’s no path to a great article, or a high level of skill that does not go directly through doing poorly. And if we don’t have a stomach for that, to get through the poor part, we’re never going to excel. And we’re always going to hold ourselves – once again, this feeling of shame .Like this is the way I write, like, if anybody knew this, they would never even let me into this graduate school to begin with. So, you have to cultivate a taste for doing it poorly, and realize that that’s okay, and that’s where you find the good stuff. So, what would be kind of an addition to that would be it’s so much easier to work with a draft than it is to sit before a blank screen trying to craft the perfect sentences. And also, I would say the other thing is that, to me, writing composition and research are two sides of the same coin. In other words, when you’re doing research, you’re actually composing an understanding, right? You’re saying this makes sense, this that these two things include that doesn’t, you’re making selections about what to include, which is the same thing you’re doing when you’re writing. So, that should keep the writing quite close to you. Work out your ideas in writing, or in words, you know, a recorder. An idea comes to you – boy ideas are so rare. Don’t let that baby get away. Record it, scribble it, whatever, you know, don’t think I’ll remember that later when I need it because you probably won’t.

Audrey Bryan  3:49
Audrey Bryan, Associate Professor of sociology in the School of Human Development at Dublin City University Institute of Education.

Will Brehm  3:58
How do you approach your own writing?

Audrey Bryan  4:02
Not nearly as systematically or methodically as I would like but I suppose it is that issue of refinement. I think momentum is so important. It’s so key. I’m currently trying to finish a manuscript on emotion and education and it has been really challenging. I just haven’t been able to find the time and keep the momentum going. But that is absolutely crucial. And not being afraid to draft and redraft and just thinking of writing as a process, and using critical friends, all of that stuff, and talking about your writing. Reading aloud, reading it to other people, getting feedback. It’s so vital because otherwise it’s just too lonely. It’s just too isolating. It’s too solitary. I think it is very much about allowing everything to flow from your research question. If you can craft a research question that is actually researchable. But that is the thing that kind of everything else hinges upon that, you know. So, not being afraid to kind of step back from the actual writing to really reflect on that core idea, that core question and then building your argument around that.

Anatoly Oleksiyenko  5:25
My name is Anatoly Oleksiyenko, I’m Associate Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Comparative Education Research Center in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. I will probably draw on the same recommendations that I just mentioned in regard to my postgraduate students – critical thinking, selective reading, and collecting data. So, I just try to develop concepts based on what’s happening in my field, what’s happening in the world, and how I can learn in terms of interdisciplinary connection. Before, I would sit more firmly in the higher education field, as a good farmer, I would grow carrots or onions of a certain kind, and they would say, I specialize only in these products. So, I was committed to that kind of field. But then I decided that I’m not really in the farming or industrial development, business. So, I began to think more broadly taking myself out of that type of frame, bounded type of commitment, reality, and so on, and to travel conceptually, to learn more from others, as well as to understand what I contribute in a more informed way, a more intellectual way. So, again, writing is pretty much commitment. So, we have to write every day a little piece, an essay, or if it’s a project. Very often it’s an eclectic arrangement of different assignments, you writes, you review some papers for your colleagues, you edit a book or special issue. And the pipeline can be quite big. So that over time you feel you can be overwhelmed, and you have to be selective again. So, it’s kind of that struggle between being open and being selective. Usually, it’s in the afternoon, I think, when I had enough of reading done, and when I had my walk after lunch, oh, they’re when I have some of this reflective thinking accomplished, that I can just sit down and write something in a more accurate way. Before I used to really start from the beginning of the day, and write whatever might be coming, I suppose. And as part of my data project, if I had data collected, I would be driven by accomplishing some of the analysis, or reflection or rewriting or revising some of the writing projects. But the more I just go into the philosophical discourse, I feel that I have to engage more with these other unknown fields and learn from that, read more from that before we go back to the writing project. I guess to be fair enough, sometimes you are overwhelmed by teacher responsibilities, emails from students, requests from colleagues, and sometimes you plan to write but then suddenly, there is something emerging on the horizon and you feel like okay, you can’t really say no, or you don’t want to say no. In fact, it’s quite interesting to be engaged in some projects. When you said the FreshEd podcast is something that you feel might be important to do or interesting to do, I said, “Yes, it is and certainly its a priority”. So, sometimes you don’t say, “Oh no, I have my pipeline I have to do on this particular kind of work”.

Jessica Gerrard  9:12
Hi, I’m Jessica Gerrard and I work at the University of Melbourne. It’s interesting to reflect on how engaging in scholarly work and becoming an academic actively changes you and sometimes rewires you. And for me, I know what’s happened is that I now think through writing, which is something that I could not say before doing the PhD. But now, I have to write in order to think – to the point that I’m in meetings with people and I’m typing notes just in order to process and to think just the events of discussion that’s happening in the meeting. So, for me writing is a practice that I feel like I’m continuously engaged in, often discarding and sometimes keeping, and I feel very comfortable about that. I keep lots of files that I cut, which is where you put all the bits that you don’t like. But the advice that I would give, which is something that I can’t remember who told me or how I came upon this sometime as an early career person was that you can disagree with yourself in the future, and that nothing you write is a finite representation of yourself or what you think about the topic. And I found that incredibly freeing. And I still find that incredibly freeing: that what I say is never going to be the final thing that I have to say about something, or the final thing, of course, about whatever that thing is, because a gazillion other people will have something else to say about it.

Jamie Martin  10:29
My name is Jamie Martin, I’m an Assistant Professor of history and social studies at Harvard University. I try to write every day. I obviously don’t succeed and that’s become more difficult now that I have a small child. But I try to write as much as possible. And I try as much as possible not to worry about it. Like just to put words down on the page and do that as much as possible. One thing to keep in mind, if you do choose to lead your life in this way, is that the vast majority of what you write is going to be thrown away at the end of the day. And I think that that can be quite daunting. But it all adds up that the process is what matters. And you know, out of that process, you will generate a lot of final works. But if you avoid that process, I think the whole kind of lifestyle of writing, which is what being a scholar is in many ways, it’s just like being any other writer, becomes manageable if you just think of it as something you have to do very, very often and not worry about so much. As I mentioned, make time almost everyday to write. Even if it’s just writing some particularly well crafted tweets on Twitter, or a beautiful email with complex thoughts, and get feedback. Get feedback as much as you can from editors or from family members or advisors, whoever it might be. And just do it. Just don’t worry about, just write. The more you worry about it, the more difficult it will be. Just do it.

Jusso Nieminen  12:00
I’m Jusso Nieminen, I’m an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, Australia. Writing is my one thing in this life that I’m capable of doing. I wouldn’t be capable of doing any other job. That’s who I am. I write. That’s how I express myself. I’m not a musical person. This might seem counterintuitive, but it’s not, but my advice would be to read and read a lot. We do way too much writing in academia. We should be reading much, much, much more. So, read. And when you think that you know your field very well, read some more. You probably don’t.

You Yun  12:35
My name is You Yun. And I’m now an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at China Normal University. Probably, what I’m going to say would sound very basic. But as a Chinese native speaker and a former PhD student in a British university, I benefited a lot from this advice from my supervisor. So, he used to tell me that just try to start from writing simple, short and clear sentences as if you were writing a textbook for primary school students.

Sean Drake  13:07
My name is Sean Drake, and I’m an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University, and I’m also a senior Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research, also at Syracuse. I think, for me, it’s a challenge. I’m easily distracted by things. And so one thing that helped me – when I was in grad school, I had a couple of writing buddies, and one of them was in a comparative literature program and the other was in philosophy. And they were a couple of years ahead of me. So, they were writing their dissertations when I was writing up a dissertation proposal. And so I would hang out with them when they were in very intense periods of writing. And what they would do is they would set timers on their phone. So, they would write for 50 minutes, and then take a 10 minute break. And they’d write for 50 minutes and take a 10 minute break. And they would maybe do three sets of that, like these intervals. And I would do that with them. And I found that I could get so much done in just two or three hours if I follow that schedule. So, you write for 50 minutes, no distractions. Just writing, just focusing on that. Sometimes that could be just thinking. I still like to write outlines, like on note, paper longhand. So, I would write notes out with pen and paper – that’s part of that 15 minutes. Sometimes you might only write a couple of sentences, but that’s that kind of intense writing time. And then during the 10 minute breaks, get up, eat, stretch, you can go on YouTube, you can do something more distracting, and then you can get back to another 50 minute block. Sometimes you can do this in shorter blocks, you know, 30 minutes or 45 minute blocks of writing with a break depending on this schedule, how much time you have, how you work. But for me, sort of parceling it out like that really helped me to stay focused and I found that I could get a lot of writing done in a relatively short amount of time, instead of kind of spending periods intermittently throughout a day trying to get stuff done. And then sort of running out of steam in the afternoon, which is what would happen to me. So, I would typically do this in the morning. Try to make myself get up early, which is hard for me and then write. And so, by 11am, or noon, if I’m in an intense period of writing, and I follow that method, I can have a lot of writing done, which is really nice, because then there’s less pressure on my afternoon, I might even take the afternoon off, or I can just kind of edit some things or polish some things up. I don’t feel like I have to do my best work because as I’m starting to maybe get tired later. And that tends to be my my advice would be: set timers, find out when you work the best. For me, ironically, it’s early in the morning, even though I’m kind of a night owl. So, I just force myself to go to bed, get up, set timers, get a lot done in two or three hours.

Michael Rumbelow  15:45
I’m Michael Rumbelow, and I’m a PhD student at University of Bristol’s School of Education. I think, I tend to write maybe a little bit too much at the last minute. But I find that often is the time when I’ve got the most thoughts gathered, I suppose. But I do find it very helpful to be jotting things and writing things down, and noting things as I go along as well. And then sort of using those pieces as sort of jigsaw pieces to put together in a longer piece of writing. I think the idea of starting small has worked for me anyway. So, express ideas in tweets, in memes, maybe in vlogs, podcasts as well. And also to use dictation, I think that can help. Like there’s lots of software now that can really transcribe quite well what you’re saying. So, it’s sometimes a lot easier to get your writing flowing by talking into dictation. And I think finding a way of compositing things. So, being aware that sometimes ideas take time to kind of compost in your mind, and allowing them to do that. And then the writing will sort of flow from that sometimes, I think.

Kehaulani Vaughn  17:13
Kehaulani Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Pacific Island Education, and Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. I think about how I pushed through my dissertation, oftentimes, and it was really re-reading, re-listening to stories, and thinking about how grateful I am that folks trusted me with their stories, and then thinking about the responsibility, I had to document these stories. And so like knowing that why I’m in this place, there’s a greater cause. Because as I talk about Indigenous students feeling isolated, I feel that myself as a faculty member. And so like also thinking about mentoring as a genealogy of mentorship, and how we can create kinships that are not bound by biology but also creating more faculty members to join me in the ranks. And thinking about the research in which people are left with – not just reading an article, but also like feeling like, oh, wow, I think there’s something that I need to do because I read this piece. Keep at it, seek help, because it’s a type of practice that sometimes doesn’t come naturally to folks because we often speak differently than academic writing. And so, really thinking about trying to get the story or what you want to say across and then there’s always a process of editing.

Prem Kumar Rajaram  18:47
My name is Prem Kumar Rajaram, I work at the Central European University. Find your voice, find your style, don’t listen too much to people who tell you you have to write like this or you have to do it in this particular way, and deal with the insecurities that come with writing.

Mir Abdullah Miri  19:05
My name is Mir Abdullah Miri. I’m an Educational Researcher now in the UK. I was a faculty member, and researcher, and a trainer in Afghanistan, but I had to leave Afghanistan after the collapse of the goverment in Afghanistan after the goverment fell after the Taliban. I look at writing as a process, and I believe even good writers need feedback. And when it comes time to writing – because we not only deal with language, we deal with ideas – we need to ask for feedback from others because they will look at the writing from different perspectives and can have better ideas, especially with organization. I would encourage them to, again, ask for feedback and look at writing similar to research as a process. So, when I say ask for feedback, they can even ask for feedback from themselves. They write in the morning, and then later in the evening, if they look at their work, I believe they can bring changes because there’s always room for improvement when it comes time to writing. And I encourage them to ask for feedback even if the feedback is really small, they will help them to identify the restraints.

Sophie Rudolph  20:28
Hi there. I’m Sophie Rudolph. I work at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. I approach writing – for me, it’s usually a really slow process. I do a lot of thinking before I start to write. And sometimes when I’m stuck, I have to go and move. Like I get a lot of my ideas riding my bike. I ride my bike a lot and a lot of it comes through movements. But I think it also depends a little bit on the project, it depends on the context, it depends on the other pressures that are part of what’s happening in the moment. But I think a piece of advice that I’d give for writing is to find your groove, and it’s gonna be different for everyone. And that’s okay to recognize that everyone writes differently, and that you might have different phases where you write in different ways. So, experiment and find what works for you.

Nazmi Anuar  21:27
Hi, my name is Nazmi Anuar. I teach architecture in Taylor’s University. Usually, if I’m writing a paper or a piece, I usually lay out the structure of it. Let’s say, what is the first part going to be about what I say. So, I don’t usually write in a sequential manner. I will fill in each topic and then tie them together. Maybe it also goes like that, as an architect, right? You’re thinking about designing a building in parts, you know. You think about the structure, you think about the material elements, you think about the walls and the floor, and all those things that comes in between. With designing a building, you’re also thinking about it as separate parts that you need to eventually put together. So, I guess in a way, the way that I approach writing is similar to the way that I would design a building, where you think about different parts that eventually have to make sense together. That’s usually how I approach writing. I think having structure is good, because it sets a certain limit, which you can then transcend, or go beyond. But in the same way that if you write music, and you need to have a certain chord sequence that will set up the foundation of the thing. And then you can of course, embellish it with other elements. I think that having structure, and having a framework, is very important. Again, I guess that goes back to the whole framing as an architect. Maybe it doesn’t work for everyone, I guess.

Ian Cook  22:48
My name is Ian M. Cook. I am the Director of Studies of OLIve, which is the Open Learning Initiative, which is based at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Trying lots of different things. So, I’ve tried sitting, you know – I think like many people that have moments of writing that were really uncomfortable, like and a real slog, like especially the last chapter of PhD, which I finished writing in 2015, I didn’t enjoy that at all. But over time, I found quite a lot of joy in writing, especially now. And that’s by trying different methods and different styles. So, sometimes it really is maybe sitting down and writing lots of notes on a piece of paper and then typing them up. Sometimes it’s done co-writing where we co-authors basically sat down for one hour, and said, “Okay, we’re going to write on this topic. You write for 20 minutes, then we swap the text and you write for 20 minutes, then we swap the text and you write for 20 minutes. And we end up with a common piece of writing that we produce in an hour where we’ve all worked in different sections. And we don’t know who’s is who’s. And that was a great way of doing writing as well. It’s a great way of getting ideas down on the page that no one feels ownership over. So, that’s like another way of doing it. Or sometimes it’s just nice to write in a way that’s I guess a bit more standard, which is you know, sitting with your field notes, or your readings and just assembling things together. I also did a super interesting for one of the chapters of my PhD in 2013, or 14 or something, where I put all the things I wanted to put down on a piece of paper on little, not post it notes, but these library index cards, and then I just sat and arranged the whole thing to try and find a different way of structuring the ethnography that I wanted to write rather than just following the standard thing. So, I guess with experimentation is how I tried to do it. Try different things. Try like just saying, okay, I’ve got to take a bus into the university and I’ve got 25 minutes. So, sit down, pull open your laptop and write for 25 minutes. And just write that whole time one time. Or try the thing where you’re writing together with other people. Where you send people stuff, people that you trust, that you can be vulnerable with and expose yourself and get feedback as well. So, I would just keep trying different ways of writing for different types of writing to find the one that helps you express what you want to express in that particular moment.

Seu’ula Johansson-Fua  25:04
Seu’ula Johansson-Fua. I’m at the Institute of Education at the University of the South. I would probably try as much as possible to avoid it first, and then when I’m finally pushed to do it, then I will do it. I usually think through it in my own language – I speak Tongan as my mother tongue – and then I’ll try to translate the ideas to English and start writing in English. But the ideas are usually in Tongan. So, I also try to find advice from others who speak English better, to help me make those translations. One piece of advice is that you can do it and get the help that you probably need. But don’t be afraid to just put your ideas out there. And for those, like me, who speak English as a second language, perhaps, don’t be afraid. Just put your ideas out there, find someone to help you make the transition.

Dinur Blum  26:10
I’m Dinur Blum. I’m a Lecturer in Sociology at California State University in Los Angeles. I think that really depends on what I’m writing. And if I’m excited to write about it. If it’s stuff that I’ve just got a brain itch, where I’ve just got to say, “Oh, my God, I’ve got this line of thought – I gotta write, I gotta write!” That’s easy, right? I’ve got these ideas, I want to get words on screen. Unfortunately, 98% of the time, it’s not the case. Like there are times where writing is pulling teeth, it is just brutal, until what else tell myself is I’m gonna work on this for x amount of time. I’m gonna work on this for 20. Or I want to write 50 words, 100 words, or just get something out on screen. And I know that I might not use most of those 50 words. That I might use some of them. I’ve learned to approach writing in a very unconventional way. And I’ve had to learn to be okay with being weird. And one of the things that I’ll do is I’ll record myself having a conversation about what I’m thinking of writing, and I’ll play it back for myself, and I’ll type out a transcript. And sometimes just getting in that writing rhythm. You know, it’s why don’t do voice to text? I’ll physically type it out, that gets me in that writing. Or sometimes I’ll type it out, I’ll be exhausted, I’ll go, I don’t want to think about this for a day or two, I come back and I go, “Wow! I can’t use like three quarters of this. But here’s a quarter that I can use”. Now I’ve got words on a screen. I’ve got ideas I can play with. But that comes as a result of being willing to be weird. You know, I’ve had conversations with people who were super in the know, on what I was working on. I’ve had people where I said, Hey, I’m trying to work on this project. And I kind of limited it and said, What do you think of this. And so being unconventional, I think sometimes goes a long way. And when it’s stuff that I really don’t want to work on, stuff I don’t want to write, then I just set a limit – whether that’s a word limit or a time limit for myself. Don’t be afraid to be weird. Don’t be afraid to get feedback from others. Because when we write our own stuff, we’re a little bit blind to the mistakes we made. And I include myself in this where we read the sentence the way we imagined it. And so sometimes there’s a word missing. Sometimes there’s punctuation missing, and we just skip over it. Don’t be afraid to have other people read over your work. Don’t be afraid to have other people join in your conversation and say, you know, here’s what I think of what you’re writing. As long as you trust them, whether that’s you trust them personally, or you trust them professionally, trust them, and be willing to talk about what you’re doing, be willing to let other people read. Because if they’re people you trust, they’re going to have your best interests in mind. They’re going to want you to submit the best thing possible, whether that’s for a class or whether that’s for a journal. They can only make you better, but again, I think the key element in that part is trust. Whether that’s again, someone you trust, personally, they’re a close friend or family or whether you trust them professionally, they’re someone you respect in your department and they’ve got a good reputation.

Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar  29:09
I am Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar and I am a Lecturer in Education at Keele University in the UK. I’m not necessarily a good person to ask for advice in terms of writing, particularly because I feel like my approach to writing really changes depending on the project. I tend to be the kind of person who does not do a lot of kind of structured planning upfront, which I feel it’s helpful but I felt like it’s never really been part of my my own process. I tend to read a lot before I can write something. And for me, it’s taken some time to figure out when is the right time to stop reading and to begin writing. I think reading is a good basis for writing. I guess, to read not just for content, but I feel like what makes someone a good writer is actually to be a good reader. Not just to read a lot, but to read and try to identify what makes particular forms of writing work. So, not just reading for enjoyment, which is important and also reading for knowledge but also reading for understanding structure and rhetoric and all those kinds of devices, which are helpful for one’s own writing.

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