Get Enough Writing Exercise
On Friday I was the guest speaker for the Academy of Management Strategy Division’s monthly writer’s retreat, coordinated by Eunice Rhee and Vivian Guo. It was a really enjoyable event, where I had the opportunity to speak with over eighty people from around the world about the structure and techniques of storytelling. You can see the video on their YouTube channel. During the Q&A I received questions about things folks can do, and books they can read (besides mine) to improve their writing. I recommended several people’s work they could look at as exemplars of good academic writing, books I’ve found helpful (I provide a slightly expanded list at the end of this post), and encouraged them to engage in more fiction and creative non-fiction pleasure reading to avoid cognitive entrenchment (Dane, 2011). I also recommended they check out the writing exercises I have developed. One thing I forgot to mention was deliberate practice, so that’s what I’m discussing today.
Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson, who died last June, developed the concept of deliberate practice to explain why individuals become extremely good at a wide variety of activities. In 2008 Fortune editor Geoff Colvin and social science translator Malcolm Gladwell wrote books (Talent is Overrated and Outliers, respectively) that built heavily on Ericsson’s work. Both are accessible, interesting reads. Deliberate practice is different than just having “experience,” because experience can be unfocused, and you can repeat the same mistakes over and over, without ever really improving. There are plenty of “experienced” scholars with many years submitting papers under their belts who have not improved much as writers or increased their ability to get their research published in top journals. With deliberate practice you engage in tasks beyond your current abilities and comfort level; it is “characterized by several elements…activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is intellectually…or heavily physical…and it isn’t much fun” (Colvin, 2008: 66). The last point is, in my mind, debatable; it’s not always fun, but it can be. Regardless, deliberate practice is also how we become better writers.
Let’s look at each aspect of deliberate practice, and how you can implement them. First, constant feedback is readily available in academia. Every review you receive from journals, colleagues or advisors is an opportunity to learn and practice getting better. However, this means you have to be open to their suggestions, not argumentative about why they are wrong or don’t get it. Having papers rejected repeatedly early (and not so early) in my career, and figuring out how to improve my papers for the next outlet certainly helped me become a better writer. It was definitely arduous, and leading papers early in my career was beyond my ability, but it helped my learn how to do it by studying and improving on my mistakes. If you can take a writing course or have other sources of mentoring, that helps, too. But even if you don’t, reading books on writing can fill some of the same roles, at least with respect to advice giving. And don’t just read the easy ones— there are good, accessible books about grammar and punctuation that you should read, too.
My wife started college as a music major, and played saxophone in ensembles throughout college. She spent hours practicing etudes to develop her skill and technique. It wasn’t fun, but it was valuable. You can do the same. engaging in activities that are arduous, perhaps beyond your current capabilities, but that help you push yourself are also readily available. You can do sentence by sentence analyses of papers you admire to see how they are put together. I have also developed several exercises that are available on my website you can use to hone your skills writing different parts of papers, and employing different storytelling techniques. A little searching will no doubt yield others. These are activities you can repeat a lot, and are mentally demanding.
Reviewing for conferences and journals, and taking the activity seriously, is another great source of deliberate practice. It is also something you can do a lot, and if done well it is mentally demanding. When you review others’ work don’t just identify problems; identify and recommend potential solutions for addressing them. This is where the real deliberate practice occurs. Problem solving the issues others’ papers face is a great way to develop your skill at diagnosing your own work and coming up with ways to improve it. The more skill you develop at solving problems and enhancing the theoretical and empirical rigor of research studies, they better your own work will become.
These activities are not all fun, or fun all the time. However, if you engage in them regularly and push yourself to get better at them, you’ll be engaging in the types of deliberate practice that make you a better academic writer.
Recommended Readings
On Writing, Stephen King
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword
Do I Make Myself Clear? Harold Evans
The Elements of Story, Francis Flaherty
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
Sin and Syntax, Constance Hale
The Best Punctuation Book, Period, June Casagrande
The Reader’s Brain, Yellowlees Douglas
The Elements of Style, William Strunk & E.B. White