Hi! I’m Rosanna van Hespen, PhD

Here at 10000WORDS, I help scientists hone their writing skills and make writing a more efficient and enjoyable pursuit.

My mission is to make academic writing less stressful and more engaging. I believe that everyone deserves access to good writing training, because having the right skills makes a world of difference.

rosanna van hespen in the mountains - i don't always write, sometimes i hike :)

“Science is full of great and innovative ideas”

Science is full of great and innovative ideas. And failed experiments, and so much hard work! As a writing coach, I help scientists communicate all that effort effectively to the people who need to know about it (and get published!).

As a scientific writing coach, I believe that…

You can write good, solid science.

I teach academic writing skills rooted in the academic values of transparency and integrity.

Your experience matters.

Every person is different, and every writer is different. I adjust my coaching to meet you where you’re at and find strategies that work best for your specific situation.

You can have a smooth writing experience.

Writing doesn’t have to be stressful or overwhelming. I teach how to find the heart of your scientific story and organise the work from there.

I am a scientist turned academic writing coach.

I hold a PhD and have published journal articles across several scientific disciplines. Here’s some of the scientific stuff I wrote:

My scientific publications (Google Scholar).
Establishment and survival of coastal mangrove trees under mechanical disturbances (PhD thesis, 2023).
Designing a camera trap monitoring program to detect changes in fox abundance (MSc thesis, 2015).
My favourite SciComm paper (for kids).
This old (and probably outdated) manual for writing your thesis in RMarkdown.

Rosanna van Hespen at her PhD defence in 2023 — *Defending my PhD thesis was a lot of fun.*

How I became a writing coach

I love writing. But academic writing is HARD.

After I finished my PhD, I realised I wanted to apply what I learned throughout my own academic career and make things easier for my fellow and future scientists.

So, as you do as a scientist… I researched.

I took an intensive course on science journalism and had some fun with creative writing. I also spent a year diving deep into fields that were completely new to me, like logic and linguistics, and to my shock, a huge amount of copywriting and marketing.

What I found? First and foremost, academic writing is a craft. It’s not just one skill, but more like a multi-faceted discipline that requires lots of different know-how.

By learning those skills, and understanding how they relate to each other, writing becomes easier. And I’d love to help you with that!