The problem with writing is that it’s an invisible activity. All we see people do is sit behind a screen, typing on a keyboard. Consequently, most students (and supervisors) don’t have explicit language for the different writing activities. Yet writing encompasses a number of different cognitive modes.
Roughly, I divide writing into two major activities:
- Writing for yourself: this includes understanding the research, making sense of the findings, building the knowledge so to speak
- Writing for an audience: this includes communicating what you’ve found, explaining for an audience (you can think of it like a PhD defense, but on paper)
Writing for yourself: building knowledge (a.k.a. thinking)
Writing for yourself in the context of scientific papers means making meaning of your findings. This doesn’t even have to be done on paper, it can also be simply thinking about your work while you’re going for a walk, talking it over with a peer, or presenting your findings during a meeting.
In written form, thinking is often done in the form of generative writing or discovery drafting (same thing, different name). It simply means: getting ideas on paper and see if they make sense.
Writing for an audience: communicating knowledge
Writing for your audience means communicating your findings in a way that makes sense (and convinces your reviewers). This includes:
- Structuring your ideas: Presenting your research in a logical order within sections and paragraphs.
- Editing language: Writing clear, readable language that matches the style of your target audience (see also Language conventions).
- Polishing: Proofreading grammar, spelling, abbreviations, citations, etc.
Why this matters
Trying to carry out multiple writing activities (and therefore cognitive modes) simultaneously is exhausting and counterproductive, and often the reason why scientific writing can feel so overwhelming and frustrating. Activities I often see students mix up:
- Trying to figure out what the research means and trying to structure the text at the same time
- Trying to edit sentences while still generating ideas
- Trying to work from a structured outline when still trying to figure out what the research means (see also: Bottom-up vs top-down writing)
Writing is not linear
Writing is more like doing a logic puzzle than following a recipe. You learn something about your findings, which reshapes the question you posed, which in turn changes how you must present the findings (x).
The phases kind of ping-pong back and forth until everything aligns. In practical terms, you’ll often find that you need to tighten the Introduction after working on the Discussion.