Writing is the work

I used to think that ‘writing up your results’ was something you do after the real work was done. When the project is over, when the data is analysed, then that’s when I’ll just write it all up.

There are two main problems that emerge when we think in terms of ‘writing it up’ as a final step.

1. It reduces writing to a single step that, at least psychologically, feels easy. You’ve done the work, and now you just need to describe it. And we all know that writing isn’t that easy.
2. Writing is thinking, and having a poor conception of a project is never clearer than when you try to put words on a page. Writing every day helps you to identify where your thinking is fuzzy.

Writing is not a straightforward “final step” of transcribing completed thoughts. Writing is an iterative process that’s interwoven with thinking and analysis at every stage of a project. From the first notes we take to the final pre-submission editing, writing is how we grapple with knowledge and sharpen our ideas.

Read: Writing to understand.

Some of the most insightful academic writing emerges through the very process of trying to write, not after the fact. And engaging in some form of daily writing practice can help identify gaps or fuzziness in our thinking. For academics, writing is not the outcome of completed work – it is the work itself, an integral part of our process of analysis, synthesis and knowledge creation. Approaching it as such can unlock more productive and insightful writing practice.

Notes on paper, or on a computer screen do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavor easier, they make it possible … no matter how internal processes are implemented you need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.

Levy, N. (2011). Neuroethics and the Extended Mind. In Illes, J. & Sahakian, B.J. (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics.

Writing up your results isn’t something you do when the work is done. Writing is the work.