Academic Writing Coach - Yes, it's a Thing!

How an Academic Writing Coach Can Ease Your Life

Consider these scenarios:

1. You have a PhD, are employed in academia in a research position, and find that writing is still a struggle. You feel very negative towards it. You put off writing as much as you can, citing a busy schedule, as you watch your peers start with their first publications. Why can’t you just start writing? Why are you stuck?

2. You are an early career researcher and are working with a team of co-authors. When you write and share your work, your co-authors tend to rewrite your sections. Why are they doing that? Don’t they think your contribution is useful?

3. You find yourself working on a solo research project and after months (years?) of rewriting and restructuring, you can’t see the woods for the trees. All the different versions and directions are melding in your head, and you can’t think clearly anymore. If only someone could show you a way forward and could evaluate your ideas for their usefulness in structuring and telling a good research story.

4. You are part of a team of co-authors and the team can’t agree on the direction forward. What’s worse, they are unable to stick to the agreed upon schedule. The deadline for the special issue is looming. How can you get them to keep working, and to a schedule?

Any of these situations sound familiar to you?

Academic writing is a tough game. It is a specific and demanding genre of writing, and not everyone is comfortable with the intense demands it makes on them.

Often, years of work in an area obscures the researcher-writer’s overall vision and their ability to tell a story about the research. Because they are familiar with every nuance of the topic, they are unable to pick which threads to weave together to create a story within a logical structure. It’s definitely a tough ask, and no wonder so many people feel so overwhelmed by it.

This is where a writing coach can help you.

Here are the main things a writing coach can help with:

• Guide you with a methodical approach to writing,

• Analyse your writing for problematic patterns and show you ways to overcome them

• Set deadlines to boost your writing dedication and productivity, and

• Provide writing and organisational tips to take that burden off your shoulders.

Let’s see more specifically how a writing coach can help, based on the scenarios described above.

WHY CAN’T I WRITE?

If you are someone that writes in circles, never really advancing, always procrastinating, claiming a heavy teaching and admin load as the impediment to writing, then it may be time to get a writing coach.

You are probably harbouring some very negative feelings towards the act of writing, and the root cause of these negative feelings could be a lack of confidence. Perhaps the task seems overwhelming, perhaps you have never fully developed the ability to synthesise materials for the literature review. Or you don’t have the academic vocabulary, and academic writing seems repetitive and boring. Or you don’t know how to create a coherent structure.

Doing a task in which we lack confidence and which makes us feel less than adequate can quickly become something we prefer to avoid.

To overcome this negativity towards our writing, it is crucial to explore our feelings in a non-judgmental way and to find strategies to address our specific issues.

A writing coach can help create a safe neutral space in which to explore these feelings and can guide you through a writing process with strategies that specifically address your concerns.

OTHERS REWRITE MY WORK

When your writing is repeatedly rewritten by others, your words are effaced off the page and your presence and voice are taken over by your co-authors. In this situation, you may feel angry, upset and confused. If no clear explanations are offered for why they rewrite your words, you may be left at sea to figure out what is wrong with your writing.

A writing coach can help analyse your writing to show you problem areas that you may not be aware of. They can also help advise you about writing strategies, pointing you to useful resources, such as books or worksheets, or instruct you in the approach to academic writing.

WORKING SOLO AND LOST

Working alone on a project can have its advantages, but because of the long journey that first the research and then the writing process engender, you may begin to feel like you are in an echo chamber. Co-authors are great to bounce ideas off, to push you to think in new ways, to help see what’s working in your writing and what isn’t.

Without that second pair of eyes, you are always working with the ghosts of past versions of your manuscript, which cloud your clarity. It is easy to lose your way and your objectivity about the direction you are taking.

A writing coach can provide that second pair of eyes. They can play the role of the editor/reviewer, showing you areas that lack clarity, questioning the storyline or even the research question, helping you organise and rewrite the literature review to bring you naturally to your findings.

They also help move the project along, which may have been sitting on the back burner for years.

Through regular scheduled sessions, they direct you to dedicate yourself to the manuscript once again, as you work towards a self-imposed deadline to a clear publication date.

FRICTION AND A TEAM OF CO-AUTHORS

Teaming up with other researchers can be invigorating – the exchange of ideas, the push to get things written, and the clarity and new direction your exchanges produce for your research data.

Sometimes, however, you may find yourself at odds with your co-authors, your way of interpreting the work may just not be making sense, communication may be fraught, and in some rare instances, they may just ghost you.

What then? To whom can you turn to mediate this relationship so that the project can keep moving forward?

A writing coach can play the role of the mediator in these situations. As long as all parties are willing to come on board and work together, a writing coach can help articulate the problems being faced, create a safe space for the researchers to voice their feelings, provide clarity for the workspace and help chart a clear path forward for work to proceed.

Once again, the coach can also help set project deadlines for all parties to submit their work, with the final aim of publication.

FUNDING COACHING SESSIONS

Your first thought may well be – that sounds nice, but I certainly don’t have the money to hire a coach; getting a writing coach sounds like a bit of a luxury.

But before you put it off, consider these:

• Departments may have budgets for training and development that are not well publicised. You should consult with your head of department to seek out this information.

• Due to a lack of spending on conferences and travel last year (2020 Year of the Pandemic), many departments have excess budgets that they are willing to offer to their faculty for training purposes. You could apply to spend some of this on coaching.

• Some grants have specific categories for consultants to come on board – you could hire a writing consultant under this umbrella in your grant funding.

• Lastly, consider that payments can be made per session. This system allows you to maintain good cash flow without having to make a big investment upfront.

REACH OUT

If you are considering whether a writing coach could help you, reach out today for a 15-minute Zoom conversation with me at mehtatext.com.