Last night our #Acwri Twitter chat took on the subject of 'writing with others'. Thanks to all those who took part. You can find a short summary of the chat here, or look at all the tweets here. Our next chat is on Thursday 20th September. Topic to be announced shortly!
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Today's #acwri task is to not write. Or more accurately, to get rid of writing, and a fair bit of it. If writing is hard, trying not to write too much, or to reduce what you've already writte, can be even harder. The journal article that had fitted nicely within Journal A's word limit, is now oversized for Journal B by a massive 900 words. 900 words! How on earth do you cut that from 5900?
In getting this paper under Journal B's word limit I've learnt (or probably re-learnt) three things. First, it can be done, even if it's difficult. Second, yesterday's final version (which I did not feel could be improved on) can today be revised and strengthened. And third, it is amazing how many words you can lose when you try, without affecting the core arguments of your paper. There are always challenges, especially if using excerpts from qualitative interviews. But sometimes more is less. Editing helps you to make choices about what's really important in your paper, where the repetition is. And sometimes less words make a stronger argument, because you have to be direct and explicit. As Henry James once said, "In art economy is always beauty." An academic researcher by day (and sometimes by night) my other interests in life are all thing public transport - particularly trains and buses (hence the name of this blog). I don't normally write about railways or buses on here, but recently I've become interested in how train and bus companies are using Twitter to interact with their customers. And I wonder if it highlights something new and different about how social media is transforming the social relationships between providers and passengers.
I can remember the days when to find out your train times you'd consult a printed timetable or call up your local railway station. There really wasn't any other source of information with which to plan your journey. Then came the Internet which meant you could plan your journey without the need to locate a paper timetable. Eventually the internet also gave you the ability to see realtime information - if your train was on time, late, and even which platform to catch it from But even a relatively short time ago the internet was a fairly unidirectional tool. The company provided the information they thought was important, and then you read it. But the rise and rise of Twitter seems to have changed all that. A few years ago Twitter was perhaps an 'add on', but now it appears to have become an integral communication tool which companies use to disseminate information and receive it (see this BBC article on South West Trains for instance, and an RAIB report which noted how passengers used Twitter to communication with another train company during a train breakdown). Some companies seem to really have taken Twitter on board and worked out how to use it well - I'm thinking of people like First Great Western who have an excellent Twitter presence (@fgw). Their Twitter account is now manned from 7am until 9pm with the hours having recently been extended, and the BBC report on SWT illustrates just how important it's become for that company Especially at time of disruption these companies can get information out to thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of people in a matter of seconds. But passengers also seem to be using Twitter to communicate with companies in ways that seems different. Firstly communication is often two way - with passengers asking directly for help, information, or complaining, and expecting a fairly much instand response, with subsequent tweets going backwards and forwards in a conversational manner. Passengers used Twitter to pay compliments as well, or to inform companies of faults at stations. Secondly, Twitter seems to have given people a way (and permission) to seek individualised information ('Where's MY bus?') in a way which the traditional website or phone line does not facilitate. I like the informality of interacting with companies via Twitter. But a third thing I've noticed (and been taken aback by) is the way in which people can use very strong language in their tweets, and some could be regarded as offensive. Certainly I cannot imagine many people using this kind of language in a formal letter of complaint, and if you were to use some of the words in a face-to-face encounter you might well end up being dealt with by the Police. And yet many (maybe all) of the tweets I've seen like this have been answered politely by the company in question. I wonder how the company tweeters deal with this kind of thing - it certainly seems to call for new kinds of professional identity and performance - providing information in quite a formal way, interacting through conversations, but yet also dealing with some fairly hostile tweets. And whilst sometimes people are complaining to the company in their tweet, other times they're compaining about it, mentioning the company by using its Twitter account name. So, whilst trains and buses are full of people in their own little bubble (headphone on and engrossed in their book, tablet or smartphone) it seems that these travellers and the companies which carry them around are a good example of why Twitter is a form of social media. Today was the day. After many months of work, we submitted our paper for publication. I wasn't going gome until I'd completed the online submission and pressed 'submit'. A simple click, and it was gone. A strange feeling - one of achievement - all that work has come together in a piece of written work, but also a sense of nervous anticipation. What will the editor think when he/she sees our paper? Will it go out to peer review, what weaknesses or gaps will they see which we didn't, and does our writing read as clearly as we thought it did?
The truth is, we can't know. We've tried to make it the best paper it can be: an introduction which describes previous research, how this study contributes to the literature, and what the aims of work are; a clear description of the the methods used; findings with a logical structure, based on and drawing on the data and our analysis; and a discussion which highlights how our findings relate to, and add to what's already known in the field. But still, I know that despite all this we cannot forsee everything that reviewers will identify as the paper's weaknesses, nor guess ahead of time what might make the difference between a published or rejected paper. Somehow though, there comes a point when you 'know' that a paper is ready to face its critics - that you've reached the end of what you can do to improve and refine you work. It's the best you can do now, and to improve it you need some critical distance, and the impartial, honest opinion of a cold reader who's not spent the last few months working away at it. Critical friends are of great value, but at some point it has to be submitted. Nervous anticipation is just part of the process I guess, and I'd rather have that than a paper that's been 'almost ready' to submit for as long as I can remember, but which is never quite good enough. It’s five months since we started #Acwri, and this week we took some time to think about what it’s achieved and how it could be developed in the future. For those of you who don’t know much about #Acwri you can read about us here. But in a nutshell, the aim is that once a fortnight, we invite academic writers at any stage of their career to discuss a particular aspect of the writing process. The aim is to share problems, ideas and solutions, and provide a supportive peer network. So far we have discussed a range of topics including writing journal articles, writing conference papers and writing research proposals. The summaries from these talks are posted on both PhD2Published and Jeremy’s website.
The group seems (from our perspective) to be meeting the aims we set out with, and we’re proposing to continue running the group every two weeks without any major changes. But we have a few ideas about to make it run slightly better, and would welcome your thoughts and ideas. One change we’ve already made is to create a dedicated @acwri Twitter account, which we’ll use to publicise our meetings, chair the discussion, and spread awareness of the group. This should hopefully help give #Acwri a clearer, more visible identity. Our meetings will continue to be on alternate Thursday evenings, but we’re going to change the time from 6pm to 8pm, to make it easier for UK folks to join in, as the current 6pm start clashes with many people’s evening commute and family commitments. Do let us know what you think! Over the summer we’ll be meeting on 2nd August, 16th August, and then taking a break until Thursday 6th September. The 16th August meeting will be an ‘open house’ – a chance for anyone to share what they’re writing about, problems/challenges they’re facing, and tips on how to keep the motivation and the writing going over the long hot summer. For all our other meetings we’ll be taking on a particular theme. We need people to suggest the kinds of things they’d like to discuss. From these ideas we’ll create a poll with a choice of topics for each meeting, and the most popular one wins. We’ve used this system for some of our previous chats, but it will now be something we try to do for every #Acwri session. The two of us (@DrAnnaTarrant and @DrJeremySegrott) will continue to take turns at chairing the sessions and summarising the discussion on our websites (here and here), but we’ll also invite the winner of the topic poll to kick off each session by telling everyone why they chose the subject, and highlighting some of the key points they think are important. Plans are also afoot to set up a parallel #Acwri group for Australia and Asia, as the current #Acwri group takes place in the early hours of the morning there. Let us know what you’d like #Acwri to discuss, and any other ideas about how we should develop the group. Just back from the annual Public Health Centres of Excellence Conference at the Fuse Centre in Durham, I've been reflecting on what I learnt, both from the talks themselves, and from meeting people working in the field. Conferences are full of etiquette, rituals and socially learned ways of 'operating', and some of these take time to learn.
One art which I am still mastering is that moment at the end of a talk, when the chair gets up and announces 'OK, we'll open it up for questions and discussion'. Some people's hands immediately shoot up, and they make their point with confidence in relaxed style. For me, putting my hand up can be a nerve-wracking affair. You have to wait until it's your turn, rehearsing the question over and over again in your mind. And the thought process is often 'What if this question sounds daft?', 'Maybe they covered the point I'm asking about and I missed it?', or 'Maybe they explained X clearly, and I'm the only one still left thinking about it.' And then, even more frustratingly, sometimes you have your question, go through the thought process above, conclude it's not worth asking, and then somebody two rows in front asks the very same question. 'But that was my question' you think. So now, if I have a question, I'll usually ask it. The more I ask, the more confortable it gets. If the talk is on a topic I know very well I might make a comment, but most times, I prefer to ask a question when the presentation itself raises a question that I want an answer to. And if at all possible, I keep my question succint. As Eugene Delacroix said, "Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." |