20th March 2023

WRITESPACE STUDIO 20th March 2023

Please introduce yourself by telling us where you live (country, city/state/region) and what kind of writing you do.

Jose Alcaraz: hola, Jose from berlin…. next months are gonna be about cases studies on sustainability in the Dominican Republic

Nicola: Kia ora everyone.  I'm Nicola and living in Adelaide on Kaurna land. I do academic writing in optometry

Vicky: hello! Vicky in Essex, UK - historian, working away on my second monograph (due September!)

Lynne: I'm Lynne, a linguist in Brighton, England, who writes about language for both academic and non-academic audiences. (And I got my copy too—it’s at the office though)

Roula: Hi, this is Roula from London - working on a grant application

Anita: Anita from Cape Town, academic writing on student thriving

James: James, Stockport, UK, I write about design education, studios, corridors, sofas, power, things, peoples, policies…

Eva: Hi, I am Eva, based in the North-West of Germany. I do academic writing (education).

Stephanie: Hello, I'm on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people (Sydney, Australia). I'm in the last few months of my PhD on the Triumph of Death in 14th-century Italy.

Momoyo: Hi I'm Momoyo in Japan. I'm writing in the field of sociology.

Marie: Marie, Austin, TX. I mostly do academic writing. Currently writing a book.

Creative warm up: How would you “sharpen the saw" of your writing skills if you had an hour or two free and an expert to help?

Nicola: I would like someone to help me situate my work within the larger academic conversation to make my argument clear and coherent throughout an article

Helen: I wrote a long list of things I'd love to learn more about: creative tools for artmaking and writing; AI tools; other languages (eg Māori, Greek)

Lynne: One thing I realized at the end: I use this time to do the things that I wouldn’t otherwise take time to do. E.g. today my project is to reverse-outline a paper I’ve been working far too long on. I tell my students to reverse-outline, but I never do it myself!

Vicky: Marie, you should read Sasha Handley's book on sleep --which includes a discussion on what people did in their waking hours during the night.

Anita: If I can make writing the long middle part of a project as enjoyable as the start or satisfying as the end, then I will be closer to being a real writer.

Marie: I would probably want to talk to them about their thoughts on comma usage.

Stephanie: I would love to talk about the somatics of writing... how writing lets thoughts leave the body and become something independent of you. I feel like I have support with almost every other aspect.

Eva: I am concerned with how to make elegant transitions between paragraphs/ sections/ chapters. One piece of advice I was given is to interweave the overview/ structure of the writing with the argument.

James: The rules of grammar – it’s not so much that the saw needs sharpening, it actually needs some teeth first …

Vicky: my issues connecting words: Similarly etc

Roula: Better ways to communicate my argument- be more confident, relaxed and focus less on the details

Momoyo: I would read a well-written book or article as a model.

Pre-pomodoro: What do you plan to work on?

Marie: Draft a paragraph

Stephanie: Incorporate my supervisor's feedback on a scholarship application.

Vicky: editing a chapter (by hand)

Nicola: Participants sub-section of my methods

Eva: I plan to work on the draft conception for a special issue.

Roula: restructure my presentation

Lynne: I have to resist working on the half-done jigsaw puzzle that’s right next to me

Jose: I plan to work on reading some sketches of an early early early draft of a case study

Momoyo: I will rewrite the statement of my research question for an article.

Anita: An article on GeoGebra presentations and rubrics

James: reworking a paragraph on the urban realm – responding to advice from the last

WINDOWS session – Wow – it’s been a while since I have looked at the bookshelf on your site Helen – you have curated a fantastic collection of books.

Post-pomodoro: Please tell us one thing that you accomplished

Marie: Drafted a very short paragraph

Vicky: thorough editing of a paragraph

Nicola: I wrote a draft of the participants’ subsection - the words aren't great, but I sketched the basic information that needs to be there

Stephanie: I addressed all of my supervisor's edits and suggestions for the scholarship application

Eva: re-structured the conception and added some literature

Momoyo: I revised the research gap section (a few sentences).

Jose: cleaned a bit an early early early early draft of Case and its Teaching Note

Anita: A lovely expansion of the first section of a paper.

Roula: re-structured the first four slides

James: a drafty but just about shareable paragraph that introduces the urban realm

Lynne: Got about 2/3 through reverse-outlining paper; noticed some little things that could improve and that I mostly have a 3-paragraph-per-subsection structure

WINDOW session:  One thing that you discussed, noticed, or learned…

Marie: Paragraphs!

Vicky: titles are tricky!

Stephanie: Plain language is (almost always) better than clever language

James: “Verbs of transformation” and a bit about Death : )

Lynne: we had sentence-level, paragraph-level and behaviour-level conversations 🙂

Eva: catchy titles versus editors' preferences

Roula: sentences that light up!

Jose: Including a question in a sentence - eg "but was it needed?"

Vicky: we compared writing to long-distance running. prep is key!

One word poem

Lighting up: sword restaurant cleave outline fireside running people fitness question