The Risktaking Walk
Transcript of Helen Sword’s podcast episode The Risktaking Walk
Hi, I'm Helen Sword from HelenSword.com and this is Sword Swings, my podcast series for writers in motion. Whether you're driving a car, riding a train, out for a walk, or just pottering around in your kitchen, this recording is designed to help you move yourself and your writing someplace new.
In today's episode, we're talking about how to take risks in your writing, whether you're considering writing in a different language or moving your writing career in a new direction or challenging the academic conventions of your field. David Goyes, a Colombian scholar and criminologist based in Norway, leads by example. So let's jump right in and listen to his advice on how to overcome fear and produce bold, engaging, even risky academic prose.
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Helen: So David, I'm going to start the way I always start with my special guests, which is just asking you to introduce yourself by telling us how you got to where you are right now. So I call it the ‘intellectual autobiography’.
David: Well, I'm originally from Colombia, from Bogota. So it's been a long trip all the way to Norway. And that trip has been mainly because of academic writing and taking risks. So, I am a lawyer by formation, but then I became interested in other academic fields, specifically criminology.
And I just started looking for ways to expand my knowledge, to expand what I was doing, and to expand my field in a way. Through that, I got in contact with a professor at the University of Oslo. Since then, I just kind of started cooperating with people in Norway and working on criminology, doing criminology until I ended up here now as a senior researcher.
Helen: All right. Fantastic. So, yeah, that's a journey across continents and also a journey across disciplines, which is really interesting. Was it a shock then moving or was there a big difference moving from legal writing into academic writing?
David: There are many differences in these movements I've made. So first and foremost, moving from Colombia to Norway, starting with weather, with language, with the culture, but also moving from legal writing, just writing like a lawyer, thinking like a lawyer, to start thinking more like a sociologist, a social scientist, a criminologist, just trying new things.
So, those elements took some adaptation and some exploration to understand and enjoy the new processes and the new languages.
Helen: And moving across languages, of course.
David: Exactly. It's languages of different sorts that I was learning, and that was part of the excitement here.
Helen: Part of the excitement. So doing your PhD in Norway, that was in English then?
David: Yeah, I did the PhD in English. So the dissertation was in English. And at the time, I think I learned both English and Norwegian when I moved to Norway, because Colombia is not the most proficient country in English. And at least my formation was not the best in English. So it was kind of a learning curve that was quite steep. But at the same time, it was quite exciting, the whole process.
Helen: It's really cool that you say that because it's certainly something I hear all the time from people in our WriteSPACE community who, of course, are from all over the world. And the challenge of writing about really complex subjects in an engaging, stylish sort of way in a language that is not your own, however we want to call that, but not one that you grew up with. It just adds another layer of difficulty on top of all these other difficult things. And yet I have had people who have told me that it's made them better writers and usually the narrative is it makes everything too hard and you feel like a child. But I have had people say, ‘no, I had to become a better writer because I had to really think about it and learn.’ I don't know. How's that been for you?
David: So, one of the reasons why I moved to Norway was because of this professor who I admired from before, Nils Christi. He was one of the ones who welcomed me, and he chatted with me all the time. He is in criminology and is well known for his writing. He has this writing style that is simple, but it's deep. So the texts flow and you can read them easily, but those texts get you to think for days. So, kind of… easily conveyed message, but very deep. And what he told me is that his native language is, of course, Norwegian. He said I started attending conferences, and I had to express myself in English. And I felt like a child. Then I had to kind of come up with these very short, simple sentences with the shortest and simplest words. But I think that helped me because I could not camouflage my lack of knowledge. I just had to be very direct with what I wanted to say. And I started that conversation with him as well. And I felt the same. I felt this sort of frustration with not kind of knowing all the words that I know in Spanish, but at the same time, having to use the words that I know and use them in the right way to just say what I want to say and not a mantle of words that hide something else. So I think the challenge and the same happens in Norwegian whenever I have to lecture or when I had to lecture in Norwegian some years ago, I had to use the few words that I knew to convey a message, and the message had to be super clear. So in a way, you're forced to go back to the basics and express what you really want to say with the simplest words and the simplest structures. So I think in a way, that kind of shapes the writing style also.
Helen: That's really interesting. And I've also had people say that if you write well in one language, you will transfer those skills to another, skills like clarity and depth, certainly. I know in my research and when I run workshops and things, when I ask people what they value most in other people's writing, the thing I've come to think of as the gold standard is clarity and complexity. So being able to express complex topics, not in a simplistic or simplifying way, but in a way that is clear and that illuminates the complexity for the reader. So clarity and complexity, and it's the hardest thing.
It's almost impossible to teach as a skill. You know, you can teach clarity, but you can't really teach complex thinking quite as easily, I suppose you can. I have to say, I love running workshops for people who are not native English speakers because I can talk about nouns and verbs and they actually know what I'm talking about. Whereas when I run things in New Zealand for people who grew up here or went through the schooling system here, they all just stare at me with panic in their eyes and they say, ‘we didn't learn grammar!’, right? So I never hear that from the people who had to learn English.
Okay, risky writing. I'm going to throw a question at you, which is how would you define risky writing? What's that mean to you?
David: I think it means basically defying the conventions of and exploring territories that are not usually explored in academic writing. I don't think it means doing something that nobody has done before, because there's always good examples, there's always people trying out stuff, but I think it's kind of when you go against the stream, when you challenge how people usually do things I think that's risky writing kind of trying to incorporate elements, trying to incorporate tools, techniques, approaches that people usually refrain from using because they believe that that goes against the standards. So I think to me, that's risky writing, yeah.
Helen: So what's the risk?
David: Well, the risk people think is: if I deviate from the conventions, then either my texts will not be published or I'll be criticized, or I'll not be taken seriously. So I think all three of those risks are connected.
I see a lot of fear and a lot of weariness, kind of, 'we cannot say this that way. We cannot express ourselves in that poetic way. We cannot come up with this story at this point. We have to use more academic language. We want our book to be taken seriously.’ I have heard that from, you know, colleagues, co-authors. I have heard that from editors, peer reviewers. So there's always this idea that you have to follow the conventions to be ‘academic’. And then some people are not willing to take the risk to try different approaches to express their ideas.
Helen: Right. So I'm going to repeat that because it was so beautifully said.
The risks are... I won't be published, I'll get criticized, I won't be taken seriously.
And so all of those together are pretty massive, but each of them, even individually, is quite scary.
I wrote about this, of course, in stylish academic writing and the kind of afterward to it. One of the things that I learned, I guess, along the way writing that book is that writing stylishly — which to me just means writing in an engaging way, you know, that is paying attention to your reader and trying to pull them in — But that writing to communicate in that kind of way takes tremendous courage for academics, precisely because of those risks! Because it's like sticking your head above the parapet and asking to be criticized. Why do you think that is? Aren't we supposed to be creative and original and to be communicating clearly?
David: Well, what I have seen is that people try to reproduce what they have seen, what they have seen in academia. So I'm also acting as editor-in-chief for an international journal. And what I noticed is that many times the harshest reviewers are the youngest authors, basically because they take the work seriously. And that's something that's very good. But sometimes, they see they want to reproduce the type of comments that they have gotten when they first submitted their first articles. And it's some sort of vicious circle there that people reproduce what they see others are doing. And then they think, ‘okay, to be a serious academic, then I have to express myself in this way. And because others told me that I should express myself in this way, I'm going to pass on the message and ask them to express themselves in this way, because this is how academic writing is done.’
But no, there's no kind of that reflection about, ‘okay, is this what we need? Is this the only way to express yourself, to express your ideas, to convey your message?’ So I think many times it's just by example, by reproducing how the way the academic community behaves and the famous ‘reviewer number two’. So sometimes people think: ‘oh, I want to be that harsh reviewer. I want to be a serious academic, a strict one.’ So I think many times that can lead people to try and force others to use that straight jacket of academic writing.
Helen: So it's imitative. Basically imitating what you think you're supposed to do. Yeah, I read this book on social evolution. I want to say Richardson and Boyd, but don't absolutely quote me on that. But they talked about how the way most of us learn is by imitation.
You learn to use a fork by watching other people use a fork. And if everybody around you is using a fork, you think that's the only way. Then you travel someplace else where they're using chopsticks or eating with their hands and you realize that it's not the only way. But if you're surrounded only by one kind of norm, that's what you're going to continue to imitate unless something happens to change that. And the things that they talk about that change it:
One is social influence. So, ‘I'm gonna change my style of sunglasses because Beyonce is wearing them’—that's one way that we change. Somebody we respect or admire has done it differently.
One is if there's a crisis, you have only grown one kind of food and there's a drought or famine or something, you become quite original quite quickly about finding other ways to eat.
And then the third way is education. Right? So that's being taken through a process where experts get you self-reflecting, basically. And so if you're not taken through that process as an academic writer, as most of us aren't, and we're certainly not taken through it as reviewers, so what's left we imitate. And you've described it perfectly.
You know, the young scholar who is writing their first or second review, and they remember writing nasty reviewer number two, and that's who they become. Okay, so how do we break that cycle? I guess it's by taking risks, right? And feeling empowered to take risks. So, can you just maybe talk a little bit about what makes you feel empowered or emboldened to do things differently, given the force of conventions and the fears of reprisal that you've mentioned?
David: Well, I think I was quite lucky when I started my academic career, when I first wrote articles and chapters, because I was collaborating with my colleague Nigel South, who is one of the most respected criminologists in the world. And then we're writing together and writing these ideas, and sometimes I would just kind of include the title of a song or a line of a poem or something like that. And I thought, yeah, surely he'll just delete that, kind of edit the text in a way that follows the standards.
But he always respected those small poetic or lyric pieces that were included in the texts. So I thought, ‘huh, well, maybe he's kind of fine with this! Maybe it's fine to keep doing this.’ And he was not doing that himself, but he was always respecting and encouraging, in the sense that, again, English is not my native language. So if I wanted to include something like that, he would edit the grammar, but never kind of the spirit of the idea. So he was kind of encouraging in that way.
And he said, ‘oh, this is very creative. This is very nice.’ So he never reacted to this, and he was my co-author. He was this professor, very well respected. So that was somehow kind of not entirely imitation in that way, but it was the culture, a different culture, a kind of culture that I was living. Because I saw that many others were following conventions, but I had his backup. And then I said, ‘OK, this is kind of acceptable in academia. He accepts that. Maybe I can keep trying that.’ So I kind of just kept trying that. And then I said, ‘well, I'm trying this as I go, but how about I try and learn a little bit about how others do that, how in different disciplines or in different types of writing. So I started coaching books about writing. That's how I got your books, Helen. Because I was very curious about what else can I try? How can I educate myself? How can I learn about different techniques to express myself?
Helen: So you're actually kind of following exactly this Richardson and Boyd trajectory in a way, right? You've got somebody you admire who's at least… Well, you had, when you first started, somebody you admired who you were, to some extent, imitating. You had somebody encouraging you in the risk, and then you went through a process of learning, which is what happens when you read books where other people are kind of pushing you beyond that. What you were saying about your... Did you say a mentor, supervisor, a co-author? What was the...
David: He acted as a mentor. He was not formally a supervisor, but he was kind of by my side in the formative years. So he was this kind of figure.
Helen: And more senior, so able to have your back as well. And I think that's a great anecdote. I think it's one for all of us to take on board because it shows the importance of more senior academics of enabling and encouraging risk in others. And I remember at one point when I was, you know, a head of a department and managing other academics, and I went to, you know, one of these courses on academic leadership. Fortunately, I had a learning opportunity where this one guy talked about how when he did performance reviews for the academics in his department, in each one of them, he'd talk about what they had done and what they wanted to do, but then he would say, ‘what's a risk that you would like to take in your research? What's a risk that you would like to take in your teaching this next year? And how can I support you in that risk?’
And so an example in research would be: you've published your last three articles in B journals. Why aren't you going for the A journals? Well, the A journals, I'm not so sure I'll get into and I could spend all year waiting to hear back from them. And then it's a rejection, that's risky.
And that's where the head of department would say, ‘well, let's record in your performance review that I'm supporting you in taking that risk. So if we meet again a year from now, and you haven't got published because you went for a higher journal, you know, I'm not going to then tell you off for it, you know, take you down for it. And you might get in! And then if you do, the risk has been rewarded.’
So I love that story. And I totally took it on board. I did that then for every performance review. And it was fascinating just watching people's faces when you say, ‘what risk are you going to take? And how can I support you?’ And they're like, It took them a while to get used to that idea, but then, of course, they start coming in with their own ideas about it. So wonderful! Imagine if you'd had somebody at that stage who was cutting out all of your lines of song lyrics and poetry. One could easily, you know, be discouraged.
David: Yeah, I think when you start in academia, you try to learn and absorb as much knowledge as you can from people around And I also, of course, absorbed some bad habits, just kind of using thinking that I needed to have 100 references in every article because that made the article academic and solid.
And then I thought ‘I need to keep adding references and references.’ So I think those years, those formative years are very important also because after you're done with the PhD, say you start as a lecturer, then you have all the time to reflect, ‘okay, how do I want to do this?’ That's the ideal.
But many times you keep kind of repeating the habits that you learned when you first started. And if, when you first started, it's okay to explore, to try new things, to try new methods, then that's something that keeps happening throughout the career.
So I think kind of that circle of security, just go ahead, explore new things. And if you come back to me, I'll have your back, in a safe place. I think that's very healthy in many, many realms, including the academic. Go and try this kind of top journal. If it doesn't work, well, it's not the end of the world. There are always other journals. Try this style and the editor/ previewer comments on it. Then we can always modify that. But why should you kind of minimize yourself? Just try and give all you have, and then we'll learn from that. And I think if you have someone in academia giving you that message, I think that can be very healthy for kind of a more creative and enjoyable activity as well.
Helen: It's that whole idea. I'm thinking of Carol Dweck's book on mindset. You know, it's the growth mindset rather than fixed mindset. The growth mindset encourages you to take risks because that's how you grow. And certainly with style, I will say to people, you know, if they read Stylish Academic Writing, you don't have to try everything. You don't need to change your entire writing style in one day. You could try one thing. Just try a more interesting title. What's the worst thing that could happen? Well, the editors come back and say, ‘change your title’. And I think that's a really important thing to think about with the risk, isn't it?
Somebody said to me the other day, their measure of risk was: is anybody going to die? And there are places and situations where people do die from what they've written. I mean, where writing is seriously risky, but most of us as academics, you know, don't really face that when we decide that we're gonna use, you know, an active verb, you know, or an anecdote or a piece of a poem.
Let me, just one last question before we turn and look at a bit of writing. Your work, in some ways, your scholarship is risky beyond the writing, I would say though. This is a man who goes into prisons in...Where were you the last time I talked to you when you were in...
David: The last time I was in Bolivia.
Helen: Bolivia, yeah. We're Zooming and he's just come from a day... You were either up at the top of the Andes or on alternate days in prisons interviewing people for your research. So... Is there a kind of risk-taking disposition here, you think, that then maybe underpins your risk-taking as a writer?
David: Yeah, I think whenever you learn that it's safe to try new things, then you kind of are a bit more confident to try other new things. So what I found interesting, so I'm going to tell you the anecdote of the last interview I conducted in Bolivia.
It was this high-security prison, and I was interviewing people convicted for offences like, you know, murder or drug dealing and so on. And I wasn't having the conversation with my last interviewee because I was traveling through South America, interviewing people in different prisons in different countries.
And the director of the prison said, ‘OK, be careful. This person has done this and this’. And during this conversation, he was crying saying ‘I'm feeling lonely. I need a hug.’ So in a way, many times we come with these fears, which I think are healthy, because that gets us to think, ‘how can I mitigate the risk? How can I make sure that I will be fine? Is this a risk that I want to undertake?’ But many times, those risks kind of end up being sort of myths. There's no kind of real danger.
Even in this situation where I'm in prison in Bolivia and in our country, and you might say, ‘okay, this is a risk to your life.’ But it's really not. So I'm not kind of this bold guy who just thinks I'm invincible and goes around doing anything kind of reckless style.
But I just think, ‘OK, how am I safe despite it looking risky'?’ And when I'm done with that, it's very rewarding. because I have learned many things, kind of new experiences. It's very enjoyable, and as you said, kind of this growth mindset.
I think that's what happens when you dare to take one more step. And it doesn't mean that I always do that when I think the risk is too high. I just think, ‘okay, it's not worth it.’ So I was climbing the Andes one day, but when I was in Brazil, it was raining and it looked unsafe to go up to the Redentor, to the Cristo Redentor. I said, ‘okay, this is not worth it.’ So I think it's about learning when it's worth to take the risk, when you know what the consequences can be, but we're still kind of fine. I mean, this is not the end of the world. I'm willing to do that because I think it can be rewarding. So yes, and I'm very... eager to explore new territories, but not in a reckless way either.
Helen: So calculated risk. And I think with writing as well, it's possible to have the two articles you're putting out, and the one is the safe one, and the other one is the one where you're taking a bit of a risk. So you're sort of padding the risk, enabling the risk in some of the ways we talked about.
Well, would you like to talk to us about a few examples of risks that you've taken and what the results were? And what the responses were from your readers?
David: What I really wanted to show was different examples of writing that are not entirely unusual, but not as usual as I think they could be. Because this brief story, it's just kind of one paragraph, some 12 lines. It just kind of has the entire message of the article.
Maybe you can read it for me if that's okay with you. I have this cold, so I'm not...
Helen: Sure.
“In 1961, three heavily armed men landed a helicopter in the territory of the Barí Indigenous 33 peoples. They explained that they represented Colombian ranchers and that the purpose of their visit was to negotiate peace. The Barí Indigenous peoples, historical inhabitants of the Catatumbo rainforests, had been in conflict with colonisers for centuries but on that day the Barí and the armed men representing the ranchers finally agreed an armistice. The armed men offered red milk in celebration of the newly reached concord. The milk tasted sweet, the armed men left satisfied, and the Barí were pleased—for one hour, until they started dying. ‘Almost one hundred Barí were killed this way’ through the use of a ruse presented as a gesture of ‘peaceful contact’, but really a subterfuge and murderous act reminiscent of the warning at the heart of Virgil’s Aeneid—be wary of enemies bearing gifts.”
Yes, it's the Trojan horse, isn't it?
David: So this is a very brief story at the start of the article. And this was published by the Sociological Review, which is one of the top sociology journals out there. And this just contains the entire message, the entire argument. And this is a study about COVID, indigenous communities, and health justice in Colombia. But here, the reader can know what the argument will be. And this story, I believe, was powerful.
And I also want to show the direct feedback that we got from the peer reviewers:
“The paper is well written and theorized. The main arguments are clear. And it is written creatively, something that is particularly welcome for publication in the sociological review.”
And I think this is a very important message because the people reviewing these articles in this journal are part of the editorial board. To be part of the editorial board, they usually have to be senior scholars who are very well versed in sociology and very well respected.
And I think this somehow changes that idea that, ‘oh, I cannot take risks’ because this article was creative. Beyond the storytelling, it was creative in the titles that it used. It tried to use kind of the sections of the article were the components of a body because we're talking about health and sickness.
So we wanted to resemble the parts of a body. So all parts of the article were very creative. And here, the reviewer, usually, we believe, oh, they are going to criticize our style and the risks that we take. He's actually encouraging, ‘this is very welcome for the sociological review.’ So I think that's a little bit of myth-busting as well.
Helen: Wonderful. I mean, I've heard this again and again and again from editors, and from editors at university presses as well, and also journals. They'll say we want more interesting stuff. Why won't the academics send us more interesting stuff? But then the way the peer review process works is that sometimes in between, you get these very conservative gatekeepers. And so in this case, you had whoever pulled the reviews together or whoever read this particular one, you were fortunate to have the sympathetic gatekeepers. So we hear the stories also of, I mean, I hear these all the time from people, of the risk they took and the negative feedback. But one really interesting thing I hear a lot is that it will be sort of reviewer one loves it, reviewer two hates it, you know?And then it can kind of go either way with what the journal decides to do. But it's seldom all the reviewers saying, ‘I don't like this.’ It's much more mixed than that.
David: In my experience, it's been, in all the latest articles, I incorporated some risky or creative elements. And I would say that 95% of the peer reviewers appreciated those elements. So of course, there are some times when I, experience some pushback, it's more from my co-authors kind of, ‘is it okay to include this? Can we say this? Should we not try to sound a little bit more academic and less kind of narrative?’ So I think the pushback comes usually from self-disciplining, kind of oneself thinking, ‘okay, this should be a bit more academic. This cannot be all this playful’. Because editors or peer reviewers, they seem to really like this.
Helen: You would say in your just kind of ballpark estimation that 95% of the reviews that you get have been positive when you've done these more creative things in your writing. And the biggest part of the pushback that you get is from your co-authors.
So it's actually that fear of the risk taking is what is a bigger issue than the actual taking of the risk. That's fascinating…
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That's the end of today's podcast episode. I hope that by now both your body and your mind have moved someplace new and that you may feel inspired to leap or walk or tiptoe into some risky writing of your own.
For more examples of David Goyes' risky writing, you can watch the full version of our conversation in the videos section of the WriteSPACE Library at helensword.com.
Thanks for listening, and I look forward to walking with you again soon.