Writing

Musings On Language

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Academics love a definition. Many journal articles, book chapters, even whole books include definitions of various terms. This is sensible because words are slippery. Defining terms helps us to use language with more precision. This makes it more likely that our readers will take from our writing what we had intended it to say, rather than attributing some other meaning to our work.

People attribute meanings to our work which we did not put there because everyone is always influenced by their own past experiences and present emotions. These lead some readers to reach different conclusions from other readers about the same piece of writing. Even though they have read the same words in the same order, they have had different experiences.

Also, human memory is notoriously fallible. Think of something you read a few months ago. How much of it can you remember? Unless you are one of the rare people with a photographic or eidetic memory, I bet the answer is ‘not much’. This means that even when we define our terms, the impact of that definition will fade with time.

This has happened even to key research terms such as ‘statistical significance’. That term was originally intended to indicate how likely or unlikely a result was to have occurred by chance. However, lay people might read a newspaper article reporting that a research finding is ‘statistically significant’ and attribute the everyday meaning of ‘significance’, i.e. important or meaningful, to the findings. Indeed the journalist who wrote the article may have made the same attribution. Yet statistical significance was never intended to imply that a result was important or meaningful in everyday terms.

The statisticians who devised tests of statistical significance were careful to define their terms. Unfortunately the care they took was diluted over time, and the conflation between the use of ‘significance’ as both a technical and an everyday term caused a multitude of errors and conflicts, ultimately leading to mass calls for its retirement as a technical term.

There are examples of this from other fields too. Emergency medical dispatchers in the US used to ask callers whether the patient was alert. This caused confusion and delay, which is not what anyone wants in a crisis. Enquiries revealed that ‘alert’ has a specific clinical meaning which is not understood in the same way by members of the public. Now dispatchers ask callers whether the patient is responding normally, which is much easier for most people to answer and still tells the dispatcher what they need to know.

There is a symbiotic relationship between language and thought. Language helps us to think; many of us think in language, at least some of the time; the language we use, hear, and read influences the thoughts we have. When we need to name something, such as a new research method we have devised, it is tempting to reach for a name with pizazz, a name that will be eye-catching and memorable. Perhaps those early statisticians chose ‘statistical significance’ for that very reason. However, experience shows that it makes more sense to choose a term which offers a description that is as simple, clear, and accurate as possible. Even then there are no guarantees that everyone will understand – but at least we have given it our best shot.

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis

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I am delighted to say that The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis was published this month. It’s a chunky tome with 29 substantive chapters, each outlining a creative method and its implications, plus introductory and concluding chapters by the editors.

Here’s how it came about. I first wanted to do this book in 2016. I knew it wasn’t a book I could write myself unless I could get some funding to research it – I applied for a grant from Leverhulme in 2017, for which independent researchers were eligible, but I was unsuccessful. I didn’t think it was a book that could be co-written, either. I thought of an edited collection, but wasn’t confident of doing that well enough on my own. And I didn’t have any good ideas about who to ask to co-edit with me.

Then in February 2021 I chaired a webinar on creativity in research for Policy Press with Dawn Mannay (Professor of Creative Research Methodologies at Cardiff) and Ali Roy (Professor of Social Research at UCLan). I already knew them both and it was a pleasure to do the webinar with them. We were surprised by the number of questions about data analysis, and after the webinar it occurred to me that they would be good co-editors for the book I had in mind. Then I considered their busy academic lives and figured they probably wouldn’t be interested. Then I thought I could just send an email to ask – nothing ventured, nothing gained… and they both said yes!

We decided Policy Press should publish the book and we put together a call for proposals. At this stage we were envisaging a standard-sized book with maybe 12 chapters. What we weren’t envisaging was around 60 proposals, most of which were really good. So we asked Policy Press if we could do a Handbook instead and they said yes. (Around this time I had also been asked to edit the Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods. Fortunately I was able to divert a lot of the good proposals we couldn’t fit into the Policy Press Handbook to the Bloomsbury Handbook, so we didn’t have to reject too many outright.)

The process of editing this Handbook was a joy for several reasons. Dawn and Ali were great to work with – we named ourselves ‘good cop’ (me), ‘bad cop’ (Dawn), and ‘ambivalent cop’ (Ali)! I wanted to say yes to as much as possible, Dawn had a keen eye for quality standards, and Ali was great at seeing the merits of, and balancing, different arguments. And the combination of those three attributes was, in practice, greater than the sum of its parts. Then our contributors were, without exception, terrific, responsive, collegial people to work with. And Policy Press were thoroughly supportive throughout.

The part I liked best, though, was the learning. Each individual chapter held fascinating lessons and made me want to have a go at doing analysis with emojis, or reflective stitching, or word clouds. But there were some overall learning points, each made by several authors, that I found particularly interesting. The first is that any data can be analysed creatively: quant or qual, conventionally collected or creatively generated. The second is that analysis is not a discrete phase of research which falls between acquiring data and reporting results. Analytic work begins at the design stage of research and continues through dissemination and beyond. The third overall learning point is that doing analysis differently helps us to find new insights, learning, and understanding. The fourth is that analysing data often requires creativity, whether or not this is explicit.

Researchers use tacit as well as acknowledged creative practices to support their analytic work, and this is highlighted in several chapters. These tacit creative practices have always fascinated me. When I get stuck in the analytic mire, I write poems or create diagrams to help me move forward. Sometimes only half a poem or diagram, and my analytic poems never see the light of day though occasionally my diagrams do. But these techniques help my analytic thought processes. I was interested to discover other tacit creative practices, such as visual arts (doodling, drawing, collage etc), making (models, installations etc), music (to accompany and promote thought), and embodied practices such as walking, running and swimming. No doubt there are others too.

The fifth overall learning point is that analytic processes do not need to be fixed or rigid. This book demonstrates, in many ways, that analytic work can be experimental, playful, and fun.

At present the book is only available in hardback and digital versions. The digital version is much cheaper than the hardback, and you can get a 25% discount on either version by signing up to the publisher’s e-newsletter. If you are at college or university you should be able to get hold of a copy from the library. And there will be a paperback in due course. I am so happy that this book is out in the world because I think it will help a lot of people.

NCIS Guide for Independent Scholars 

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NCIS stands for the National Coalition for Independent Scholars which is in fact a global institution that includes independent researchers as well as independent scholars. I have been a member for some years and was very grateful when they supported the inaugural International Creative Research Methods Conference with sponsorship plus a conference chairperson and someone to manage the online chat.  

I am grateful to them again because they have produced an open-access Guide for Independent Scholars which is free to download. It is a full-length book with 17 chapters in five sections (full disclosure: two of the chapters are by me). The Guide was edited by Amanda Haste and Linda Baines, former and current Presidents of NCIS, and they did a fine job. 

The main reason I am grateful is because I think now people will stop asking me to write a book about and for indies. Or at least, if anyone does ask me, I can say no because it’s already been done – and done very well. I think it is a much better book than I could have written, because independent research and scholarship is an incredibly wide and varied profession, and multiple voices of people from around the world give a much clearer view of this breadth and variety than I could have done alone. I think this is part of the reason why I didn’t want to write a book for indies. I have a strong instinct for which books I can write by myself, and which need a pair or team of authors or to be an edited collection. I guess maybe I could have edited a collection of chapters, but Amanda and Linda are far better placed to do that, with their extensive NCIS networks, than I would have been. 

Also, I have been glad to be able to read this book! It contains a lot of valuable stories and nuggets of information, useful even for someone like me who has been independent for 25 years, and invaluable for someone starting out or early in their independent career. I recommend this book if you are independent yourself, or you work with indies, or you know an independent researcher or scholar, or you are considering moving into independent work. I am pleased to be able to tell you that it is a good read – at least, the chapters not by me are; you will have to judge mine for yourself. 

The Importance of Checking

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Recently I was talking to a friend about the exercise routine another friend is using to recover from a serious illness, which involves a lot of walking. My friend said, “He should try bricking.” 

I asked what bricking was, and my friend said, “You put a brick in a rucksack and wear it while you’re walking. After a while, you add another brick. It’s really good for strengthening your legs and core.” 

I was intrigued so I did a quick search online. 

“You mean rucking,” I said. 

“Rucking?” he said. “Sounds a bit rude. What’s rucking?” 

“What you’re talking about – putting weights in a backpack and wearing it while walking. It comes from military training.”

“It’s called bricking! I invented it, 30 years ago!” my friend said, in mock indignation.

This conversation reminded me of a Guardian column by Julie Burchill which made an impression on me when I first read it almost 25 years ago. Julie was pleased with herself for inventing the phrase “They married in Hastings and repented in Leicester”. While I can’t find that column, I have found a follow-up article from 2000 in which she acknowledges the readers who wrote to tell her that “her” phrase was not original.

The Bible tells us that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Although there are debates about the origin and authorship of the Bible, nobody contests the fact that it was written a very long time ago. So, this concept is evidently not a recent phenomenon. But why is it relevant for research and scholarship? Because when one of us has an idea, which feels like a good idea, it also feels as if we are the first person ever to think of that idea. But clearly, we may not be.

I see this in the creative research methods literature where there are examples of people in separate parts of the world devising the same method as each other and each claiming its invention. Which is fair enough because they have both – or all – invented it. But in Euro-Western cultures, people regard these kinds of ideas as the property of the person who had the ideas, and this leads to all sorts of problems.

So, if you have a good idea, it is important to check whether you really are the first person to have that idea. Look online, use all the search terms you can think of, and try your hardest to make sure nobody else has had the same brainwave. This is not a fool-proof process. I only can read the English language so I can’t search for work in other languages. Also, people use different terms for the same thing which makes searching difficult. I see this often where people in separate locations who have coincidentally devised the same method, each call it something different. But if you check as best you can, then you have done all anyone could ask of you.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov

How to bring creativity to your research

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Last year I wrote a post to announce this forthcoming series. Now, I am delighted to say, it is no longer forthcoming – it’s here! 

The first book in the series, Photovoice Reimagined by Nicole Brown, is published today. There are three others scheduled for publication this year. Fiction and Research, by Becky Tipper and Leah Gilman, will be published in July; Doing Phenomenography, by Amanda Taylor-Beswick and Eva Hornung, will follow in September; and Encountering The World with i-Docs, by Ella Harris, will be available in December. Three more are currently in the writing phase, two proposals are out for review, and I am in discussions with eight or nine other authors or teams of authors about possible future publications. Potential topics under development include enhanced interviewing, poetic inquiry and decolonisation, sandboxing, using comics in research, creative sonic research methods, zines in the research encounter, mapping, journey mapping, inclusive creative fieldwork, creative evaluation, visual scribing, urban exploration, visual methods in practice and emoji coding. 

I decided to edit this series because I knew there were not enough publication opportunities for people writing about creative research methods. That meant students and researchers wanting to learn more about these kinds of methods were struggling to find relevant information. The books in the series are short, practical how-to books, designed to help researchers learn enough to try out the methods for themselves.

This kind of initiative also helps to establish the legitimacy of creative research methods. Now, in the first half of the 21st century, creative research methods are following a similar trajectory to that of qualitative methods in the second half of the 20th century. It may surprise you to know that economists began adopting qualitative methods as early as the 1960s. After much debate, psychologists began using qualitative methods in the 1980s and engineers joined in in the 2010s. Other disciplines also expanded their methodological repertoires and, as a result, academic journals publishing qualitative research were set up for areas of study formerly thought of as quantitative. For example, the journal Qualitative Health Research was founded in 1991, though Qualitative Psychology was not set up until 2013.

At present, creative research methods are perhaps most firmly established in the discipline of education, I suspect because it is such a creative profession. But I am seeing creative methods being used and promoted in a very wide range of disciplines, such as facilities management, health and the politics of fashion. This is reflected in the doctoral students I teach on courses for the National Centre for Research Methods, doctoral training partnerships and universities. Students come to learn about creative methods from arts and humanities and social sciences disciplines. So far, so unsurprising. But I also get engineers, physicists, business students, computer scientists – all sorts in fact. 

In the Euro-Western world we think of creative research methods as new. However, the work of Indigenous methods experts such as Bagele Chilisa from Botswana, Margaret Kovach from Canada and Linda Tuhiwai Smith from New Zealand shows us that creative methods are in fact very old indeed – tens of thousands of years old, in some cases, so very much older than the ‘scientific method’ which has only dominated research in the Euro-Western world for the last few centuries. ‘Older’ does not necessarily equal ‘better’, but in this case I think it does. The scientific method has its place but is not the be-all and end-all of research. Creative methods are more likely to treat people holistically, take context into account and produce rich data and analyses. The scientific method assumes a level of universal consistency and uniformity, while creative methods make space for individual particularities. 

Creative Research Methods in Practice is a small but tangible step on our journey away from the dominance of positivism and post-positivism. These stances emphasise objectivity, which is unachievable, and usually consider experiments to be the ideal form of research. Again, there is a place for experimental methods, but there is also a role in research for all sorts of creative methods, from participatory approaches to autoethnography, board games to computer games, apps to zines. And these are the kinds of methods I aim to showcase in the series. If you would like to write a book for this series, please do get in touch.

Can You Help?

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Dear Friends,

If you are not an academic and my work has had an impact on you, I would like to hear about that. Also, if you are, or were, an academic and my work had an impact on you at a time when you were not an academic, I would like to hear about that too. I am specifically interested in the impact of any of the following:

    • Open courses on Creative Research Methods and/or radical Research Ethics that I have run for NCRM in the UK, online, or in person.

    If you can help, please use my contact form (or my email address, if you have it) to send me a message about which of the above resources had an impact on you and the difference(s) made to you – whether to your thinking, work, career, life, anything at all. Your message can be as short or as long as you like. 

    Many thanks and kind regards,

    Helen

    Why Did I Edit Such an Expensive Book?

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    The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods, published last month, is at present only available in hardback at a recommended retail price of £140, or as an ebook at £126. Regular readers will know that I have ranted on this blog before about the iniquitous prices charged by some academic publishers, and advocated working with not-for-profit university presses. So, it is reasonable to ask me, as some people have: why did I agree to edit this expensive book for Bloomsbury?

    The backstory is this: Maria Brauzzi, an editor at Bloomsbury who I did not know, emailed me in late 2021 to invite me to edit a Handbook of Creative Research Methods for them. At the time I had started work on editing a creative data analysis book for Policy Press with Dawn Mannay and Ali Roy, and chapter proposals were landing in my inbox. We received over 60 proposals, most of which were good. We had originally intended to produce a normal-sized book with around 12 chapters, but with so many good proposals to choose from, Policy Press agreed to produce a Handbook of Creative Data Analysis with around 30 chapters. (I’m delighted to say that is now in production and will be published in early September.)

    Even so, selecting the chapters to include in the Policy Press Handbook was tough. Then I had a brainwave! I hadn’t replied to Maria at Bloomsbury because I couldn’t decide whether to accept her invitation. So, I emailed back and told her I had too many good proposals to fit into the Handbook I was doing with Policy Press, and asked whether I could pivot some of them into the Handbook she wanted to commission for Bloomsbury. She said ‘yes!’ so I ended up being sole editor of one Handbook and lead editor of another at the same time. 

    I do not recommend this course of action unless you have, as I had then (and I’m glad to say, have again now), a solid, competent, and reliable support worker or other assistant. I could not have edited this Handbook without my support worker’s help. But editing it meant I was able to offer publishing opportunities to people who deserved them, including some people from marginalised groups. I’m glad I could do that, even though it meant working for a publisher who screws royalties down to the bone, lower than any of my other publishers, while earning a massive profit by selling books at prices that most people can’t afford.

    So, to redress the balance a tiny little bit, I am offering a free copy of the Handbook to one of my blog followers. If you’re not a follower yet, you should be able to see a ‘Follow Blog Via Email’ notice with space to enter your email address. Any blog follower who wants a chance of a free copy needs to comment below and check back here a week after this blog has been posted to see who has won. My support worker will put all the names in a hat and pick one at random, then add a comment stating who will receive the free copy. I will post a book to that person, wherever they are in the world. 

    Congratulations to Lucia 🎉 our winner of the prize draw for a free copy of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods!

    Write Your Doctoral Research Differently

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    When I wrote my doctoral thesis, nearly 20 years ago now, I wanted to write it creatively. I was already a professional writer and I could see the potential for creative approaches to help me communicate the points I needed to make. Also, I gathered data in the form of stories, so to me it made sense that my thesis should be made up of stories too. But my supervisors were resistant. After some discussions, they allowed me to write one chapter creatively, as long as I wrote the rest of my thesis in a conventional style.

    The difference between then and now is that back in the mid-2000s, the literature on writing creatively in academia was very limited. Laurel Richardson’s seminal Fields of Play was available, but it was on its own at that time; there was no body of literature from which to build a rationale for using creative techniques in academic writing. And of course that was exactly what I needed to do to reassure my supervisors about the merits of my intended approach.

    But now there is such a body of literature! In this post I share four particularly useful books, all published in the last couple of years. Also, they are all well referenced, so you can use them to find other literature, if you wish. Then you can create a cogent, evidence-based argument for using creative techniques in writing your doctoral dissertation or thesis.

    I also want to recommend Fields of Play. Although it was written late in the last century, it is still highly relevant today. Laurel Richardson dismantles the rationale for the norms of conventional academic writing such as passive voice and authorial authority. Then she creates a new rationale for using fiction techniques, poetry, drama and other creative approaches in academic writing. And she practises what she preaches within the text, to excellent effect.

    Reimagining Doctoral Writing (University of Colorado Press, April 2022) is edited by Cecile Badenhorst, Brittany Amell and James Burford. This edited collection is all about doctoral writing. Authors come from around the world, and they investigate doctoral writing from a range of perspectives and in a range of contexts. They also consider some potential futures of doctoral writing. This book is available as an open access ebook through the WAC Clearing House.

    Doing Rebellious Research: In and Beyond the Academy (Brill, May 2022) is edited by Pam Burnard, Elizabeth Mackinlay, David Rousell and Tatjana Dragovic. This edited collection has four parts. The second part is called ‘Rebellious Writings Written Differently: A Manifesto’. It contains seven chapters and a set of reflective questions, and overall is designed to encourage and inspire a radical approach to academic communication.

    Refining Your Academic Writing (Routledge, December 2022) is by Pat Thomson. This short book treats revision as not a boring mechanical process but a creative, imaginative craft. It is part of the Insider Guides to Success in Academia series which, in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out is co-edited by Pat and me. But I am recommending this book here, not simply because it’s in our series, but because it is as useful and radical as the others in this post.

    Creative Writing for Social Research (Policy Press, January 2021) is by Richard Phillips and me, with 14 tremendous contributors who put the principles set out in the book into practice. We have received excellent feedback on this book, such as: ‘The text is well written and engaging… I would recommend this book to all qualitative researchers.’ Thank you Ruthi Margulis for your heartwarming review in Research Matters (Dec 2021, p 13), the quarterly magazine for researchers published by the Social Research Association.

    These books are in general a pleasure to read. They are well written and full of ideas, encouragement, and inspiration. And it’s not only the books – if you want more personalised support with your thesis writing, you can always come on one of my writing retreats (if there are still places available). Whatever resources you draw on, I wish you joy of your doctoral writing.

    This blog and the videos on my YouTube channel are funded by my beloved Patrons. Patrons receive exclusive content and various rewards, depending on their level of support, such as access to my special private Patreon-only blog posts, bi-monthly Q&A sessions on Zoom, free e-book downloads and signed copies of my books. Patrons can also suggest topics for my blogs and videos. If you want to support me by becoming a Patron click here. Whilst ongoing support would be fantastic you can make a one-time donation instead, through the PayPal button on this blog, if that works better for you. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

    Writing Retreats And Courses

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    I ran my first academic writing retreat in 2015, over a weekend, for doctoral students at Staffordshire University. It was very enjoyable for me and, judging by the feedback, for the students too. Since then I have led many retreats and courses, mostly for doctoral students and/or university staff at institutions around the world. My standpoint is that all writing is creative, writing is a research method, and writing can be fun.

    This month I ran an academic writing retreat over three days for Cumbria University in a delightful rural venue; a welcome change from the gritty urban spaces I usually go to for such gigs. This one had a transdisciplinary flavour with people from health and criminology, fashion and social care, media and education, and no doubt other departments I have forgotten. I never mind working with people from a single discipline, school, or faculty, but I do find that transdisciplinary groups have richer discussions. And the feedback I got was very positive.

    I also get rich transdisciplinary discussions and good feedback when I run my four-day creative academic writing course for the Methods@Manchester summer school, which this year is from 3–7 July online. The people who come on the course are always from a wide variety of disciplines and professions, and every year it is exciting to find out who I will be working with. (There are still some tickets available if you’re interested.)

    And I run creative thesis writing courses for various universities, doctoral training partnerships, and other clients such as Guild HE. In fact I am running a creative thesis writing course next week for Liverpool John Moore’s University.

    I love these parts of my work. I really enjoy demystifying the writing process, seeing the light-bulb moments people have, and witnessing their satisfaction in the progress they make. So I have taken the big step of booking other delightful rural venues for three independent residential retreats in 2023–24, one of which will be co-facilitated. In brief:

    16–19 October 2023: creative thesis writing for doctoral students, at Northern College near Barnsley.

    4–8 December 2023: creative research writing, at Gladstone’s Library near Chester, with Dr Lucy Pickering.

    20–23 May 2024: creative research writing for publication, at Northern College near Barnsley.

    My retreats are supportive, with some taught sessions, plenty of breaks, lots of time to write, and optional one-to-one chats with me. Costs are inclusive of accommodation and catering. The venues are delightful. More information here and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments or email enquiries@creativeresearchemethods.com.

    This blog and the videos on my YouTube channel are funded by my beloved Patrons. Patrons receive exclusive content and various rewards, depending on their level of support, such as access to my special private Patreon-only blog posts, bi-monthly Q&A sessions on Zoom, free e-book downloads and signed copies of my books. Patrons can also suggest topics for my blogs and videos. If you want to support me by becoming a Patron click here. Whilst ongoing support would be fantastic you can make a one-time donation instead, through the PayPal button on this blog, if that works better for you. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

    How To Edit Your Writing

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    When I teach creative academic writing, students sometimes ask: ‘How should I edit my writing?’ It’s a good question. There are lots of books and courses to teach you how to write; far fewer to teach you how to edit, which is a key part of the writing process.

    Editing is really quite straightforward. The first step is to make a list of the editing tasks that need to be done. This list will be different every time, and for different writers, and for different pieces of work. It will also be different if you are editing your own first draft into a second draft, or if you are editing in response to reviewers’ comments.

    In producing different drafts, it may help to consider that in the first draft you are telling the story for yourself, to figure it out and get it clear in your own mind. Then in the second draft you are re-telling it for other people, to help them understand the story you have to tell. When you have a complete first draft (and have celebrated your achievement and taken a break from your writing), you can read it through and make your list of editing tasks based on what you find that needs attention. My list for a journal article might look something like this:

    1. Pull out sub-headings to check that structure is OK – revise if necessary
    2. Make sure tenses are used consistently
    3. Find over-long sentences and split them up into shorter ones
    4. Check that conclusion is effective
    5. Make sure all literature cited is in reference list
    6. Make sure everything in reference list is cited

    Your list might need to include different tasks. Mine doesn’t say anything about spelling because the Spelling Gods blessed me with champion spelling abilities. But it does mention consistent use of tenses and over-long sentences, because I know that in first drafts I don’t always use tenses consistently and sometimes I forget to use punctuation where I should. As an experienced writer, I can often write my editing to-do list without re-reading my work (or maybe just re-reading a bit of it), because I know my failings and what I need to do at the second draft stage.

    You may also notice that the list above doesn’t include polishing tasks such as reading carefully line by line to check for errors. This is because those are end-stage tasks, for the third draft, but editing is a middle-stage task, for the second draft. The distinctions are not hard-and-fast – some people would leave tasks 5 and 6 above for the third draft, and that would be fine – but the general point is sound.

    If you are working with reviewers’ feedback on a journal article, your list may include things like:

    1. Revise abstract for clarity
    2. Include work of X in literature review
    3. Expand methodology section
    4. Delete all references to Y as it is beyond the scope of the article
    5. Take a more critical analytic approach to findings – don’t just describe
    6. Ensure article is as culturally sensitive as possible

    When you have your list, the second step is to do each task in turn. Don’t try to do them all at once as you work through your draft because you will inevitably miss things. It can become tedious to keep on going through the draft again and again, so take plenty of breaks, or aim for a certain amount each day. This is particularly important if you are working on a long piece of writing such as a dissertation, thesis or book.

    As you work on your text, you may notice another task that is needed, in which case go right ahead and add it to your list.

    And that’s it! Simple, yes?

    This blog and the videos on my YouTube channel are funded by my beloved Patrons. Patrons receive exclusive content and various rewards, depending on their level of support, such as access to my special private Patreon-only blog posts, bi-monthly Q&A sessions on Zoom, free e-book downloads and signed copies of my books. Patrons can also suggest topics for my blogs and videos. If you want to support me by becoming a Patron click here. Whilst ongoing support would be fantastic you can make a one-time donation instead, through the PayPal button on this blog, if that works better for you. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!