The Writing Roundabout

// Academic Coaching & Writing

Contents
Preface

// Page 01

Introduction

// Page 02

The Writing Roundabout

Prewriting
Writing

// Academic Coaching & Writing

// Page 03

// Page 05

// Page 10

Postwriting

// Page 15

Free ACW Consultation

// Page 21

Preface

Academic Coaching and Writing (ACW) is a group of professional academic coaches and
consultants dedicated to supporting your academic writing and academic coaching needs.
Our mission is to help you discover the tools you need to succeed in academia.
Our Academic Writing Coaches help you formulate
and communicate your ideas to master the craft of
academic writing and research. They work with you
at each stage of the writing process.
When you are in the early stage of Generating Your
Ideas, they help you clarify and articulate your ideas;
get a clear sense of audience, genre, and purpose;
and identify the specific problem or issue you will
address and why it matters.

During the Writing stage, our writing coaches help

you create a plan or structure for your manuscript,
develop a logical progression of ideas, use sources
judiciously, write clearly and directly, use a consistent
tone and style, write with a compelling strong voice,
and develop mechanical competence.
During the Editing of your project, our coaches
help you decide when your project conforms to
the standards of academic writing and is ready
to submit to your readers for review. Our Writing
Coaches specialize in developing you as an
academic writer and/or helping you get your
work published.

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Introduction

Writing is an integral part of what academics do, and yet many have never
considered what the act of writing involves.

Academics are not taught about the writing

process, and those who learn about the stages
of writing learn about it accidentally from an editor,
or mentor, or colleague along the way. This ebook
explains the stages in the writing process and is
written for those less fortunate academics who
have not had that special teacher who shared this
knowledge with them.
There are a number of stages in a writing project.
In this ebook, they are grouped into Prewriting,
Writing, and Postwriting.

Prewriting. In the earliest Prewriting Stage,

you find yourself generating your idea, reading

about it, and narrowing the focus of your idea for
a particular writing project.

Writing. When you are ready for the Writing

Stage, you decide on a plan or structure, begin

drafting your document, and then revise your
content to clearly convey your idea in a logical
and consistent manner.

Postwriting. Finally, in the Postwriting Stage,

you have to shift your thinking from articulating

your ideas to thinking about what the audience
needs to know to understand the argument you
are trying to convey. Postwriting involves numerous
rounds of editing, dialogue with your readers,
and more revisions.
These are stages in the writing process that you
cant skip, yet you often revisit previous stages over
and over again during the course of completing a
writing project.

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The Writing Roundabout

Academic writing is a recursive process that involves prewriting, writing,

revising, and postwriting.

As a writer, you may loop back to previous steps

again and again, revisiting the idea, the research,
and the focus over and over during the drafting,
revising, and editing phases.
In the Writing Roundabout graphic, the Prewriting
Stage consists of Generating the Idea, Reading the
Literature, and Focusing the Topic.

The Writing Stage includes Planning, Drafting, and

Revising the manuscript.
The Postwriting Stage involves Editing, Submitting,
and Revising and Resubmitting the writing project.

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04
03

Prewriting:

The Prewriting Stage involves generating your idea, reading the literature
to see how your idea fits, and narrowing the scope of your idea for a particular
writing project.

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Prewriting

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03

Idea: Generate the big idea.

The first challenge is coming up with an idea for your writing project.
Consider all the possibilities for your project and select the one that
best matches your interests and research agenda.

Be creative. At the beginning of a project, allow

yourself to brainstorm all sorts of ideas. Some people

enjoy using mind-mapping techniques to help them
generate novel ideas.

Be strategic. Once you have some possibilities,

choose an idea that matches your goals and your

resources. If you are writing a dissertation, think about
developing an idea that you can leverage to further
your career ambitions. If you plan to continue in the
academic realm, try to generate a dissertation idea
that is part of a larger research agenda, which will
sustain you throughout your early career and will help
you obtain the kind of position you are targeting.

If you are a junior faculty member, you may already

have a research agenda that provides a broad outline
of the direction your scholarship will take. New
faculty members often begin by repurposing their
dissertations, but fairly early in your journey toward
tenure, you may need a new direction that either spins
off from previous research or tackles a new area.
Think about your goals for publication and be
strategic. Do you need to complete a manuscript
fairly quickly to get it rapidly into the pipeline? If so,
choose a project that will not require extensive
data collection. Do you have a chance at a summer
research grant? Choose the project that is the
strongest candidate for the grant proposal.
Consider, too, external constraints that might
influence your research time, such as teaching loads,
new course preparations, service commitments, or
funding limitations.

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Read: How does my idea fit with the literature?

Once youve come up with an idea, the next challenge is to find out
what other scholars have written on your topic and how your idea fits.

Whats the fit? The first step in focusing your

topic idea is to generate a review of the literature for

your thesis, dissertation, book, or research article.
Your goal is to determine where your idea fits into the
existing research and to identify how it will go beyond
what we already know about your topic.

Broad to narrow. To begin, read more

broadly about your topic. Narrowing your focus too

soon might lead you to overlook an important aspect
of your topic. Try to remain open to modifying your
original idea as you review the existing research. Some
of the reading you do will become part of the literature
review for your article, dissertation, or book, so keep
track of complete citations. You may need to look
outside your own field for related research if your initial
searches yield few results.

Where are the gaps? Use your reading to

identify the gaps in research and tweak your idea so

that it addresses one or more of those gaps. At this
stage, its not too late to shift your topic if you find that
your initial idea has been thoroughly investigated or
if the research literature indicates a stumbling block,
such as inherent methodological problems.

When to stop? Continue searching the literature

until you keep turning up the same sources. Once you

have discovered which references are cited over and
over again and have collected articles most relevant to
your topic, it is time to move on to the next challenge.

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Focus: Limit the scope of your topic.

The next challenge is to convert your big idea into a researchable

question by focusing on one aspect of your topic and situating it
within existing scholarship.
In this step of the writing process, the task is to
narrow down your big idea into a researchable
question within the larger topic. One strategy for
narrowing your topic is to ask yourself: who, what,
when, where, why, and how? By making specific
delimitations, you define the scope of your research.
For example Facebook and Friendship is too
broad a topic for your writing project.
Whose Facebook use will you study?
What posts will be relevant?
How long will you monitor Facebook use?
Where will you get this information?
Why would Facebook help maintain friendships?

As you bring your research question into focus, shape

it so that it ties into and expands on existing research.
For instance, if most research on social media has
focused on college students, you may choose to
study high school students. If most research on
friendship has focused on girls, perhaps you will look
at boys use of Facebook. From your reading of the
literature, you know that theories regarding friendship
suggest male friendship is built around activities,
so you expect Facebook postings to focus on that
aspect of relationship-building. Now you have a
research question: Does boys use of Facebook
serve primarily as a way for them to learn about and
participate in their friends activities?

09

Writing:

The Writing Stage involves creating a plan or structure and identifying the parts
of your project; drafting the project without critically reviewing it as you go; and
revising it to strengthen the argument, including deleting unnecessary material;
and adding the missing transitions that connect the pieces of the project.

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Writing

11
03

Plan: Break down your project into

small assignments.

Now that you have identified your research question, your challenge is
to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the large writing project. Create a
project plan with specific goals, small manageable tasks, and a timeline.
Most experts agree that the best way to approach
scholarly writing is to devote regularly scheduled time
each day and to limit your writing sessions to no more
than 90 minutes each. To do so, you need to break
your large project into smaller segments and then into
even smaller tasks so that you can focus on one small
assignment at a time. How you choose to do that
depends on your personal preferences and work
habits. You may want to outline your project using the
guidelines provided by your target journal or dissertation
guide, beginning with the introduction and moving on
to the literature review, methods and so on. Perhaps
you already have detailed notes on your topic, so you
need to organize the notes and pull related information
together. Organizing before you begin to write makes
your writing project seem manageable.
It is too easy to get discouraged if you sit down and
say to yourself, Today Im going to work on my
research project. Learn to break your project down
into SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals to focus your writing.

Specific. Small, specific goals are those that you

can accomplish in a short amount of time.

Measurable. Make your goals measurable

in terms of output such as number of words,
paragraphs, or pages.

Attainable. Your goals should also be attainable.

Ask yourself if the goal is realistic. For example,

you cant write about a topic before youve read the
literature on that topic.

Relevant. Ensure that your goal is relevant.

Does it move your project forward? If not, replace it

with one that does.

Time-Bound. Finally, you goal should be

time-bound. Give yourself a deadline for each

SMART goal.
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Draft: Dont be overly critical of your drafts.

When you are ready to write, use your first draft to sketch out your ideas
without revising and polishing the prose as you go. Leave that for later.

Just write! As you begin to write, move through

your paragraphs and sections, trying not to revise and

edit as you go. Your dissertation, research article, or
academic book will need to be a polished, scholarly
piece of writing when you submit it, but it does not
need to start that way. You sabotage your progress
when you second guess your ideas and agonize over
every word choice. By letting go of the need for instant
perfection, you can produce a quick and dirty version
of your manuscript that has most of the parts in place.
You may want to reread the last bit of what you
wrote in your last session, but do not get caught up
in reworking a section you have completed.

Perhaps later you may throw out some of your work,

but recognize the value of writing as an exercise that
helps you get your thoughts on paper. Its discouraging
to stare at a blank page. Once you have a text, you
have ideas to play with.

Quiet negative thoughts. If you are beset

with negative thoughts during the drafting stage, many

writers find it helpful to use the techniques of mindful
meditation. Become aware of thoughts and worries
that distract you from writing (Should this part go
later? I need to look up this citation now. I ought to
be grading papers.). Instead of giving in to these
thoughts, acknowledge them, and then let them
go. If necessary, jot yourself a note to review the
organization, look up that citation, or schedule time
for grading. Then get back to your writing.

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Revise: Revisit your main idea and argument.

Once you have a draft, your next task is to review your sections and
paragraphs for consistency and reorganize, cut, expand, or condense
to focus your argument.

Coherence. When you have drafted a complete

manuscript, the challenge is to revisit the main idea

and the argument you have developed by reviewing
the sections, paragraphs, and sentences to focus on
consistency and coherence and to tighten your
argument. This stage is a conceptual task, not an
exercise in proofreading.

Relevance. Read through the entire manuscript

and think in terms of how each element relates to

the others and to the overall goal of the project.
Cut material that is not relevant to your thesis, expand
or condense sections as needed for the development
of your key points, and reorganize material for a logical
progression of ideas.

Connections. Do not focus on sentence-level

issues such as punctuation and grammar until the

final editing stage. When you are satisfied with the
organization, review the transitions between the
paragraphs and sections so the reader knows how
your ideas are connected.

Adjustments for readers. Dont assume

the reader knows everything that you do about your

topic. You may have used the draft to get down your
ideas and your argument, and now you need to shift
to thinking about what the audience needs to know to
follow your argument. Figure out whats missing and
make the adjustments necessary for your reader.

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Postwriting:

The Postwriting Stage involves the line-by-line, detailed-oriented

proofreading, letting go of the manuscript to allow for the readers review
and feedback, and the final round of revisions and resubmissions until
the project is accepted for publication.

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Postwriting

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03

Edit: Shift the focus from the ideas

to the sentence-level details.

You need a fresh pair of eyes for the editing process and
a mental shift from thinking about the big idea to focusing
on the sentence-level issues.
Editing is a different process than drafting or
revising. The editing process requires you to distance
yourself from your own writing and approach your
work as an observer. You need to shift from considering
the big picture idea to concentrating on style and on
sentence-level issues of grammar, spelling, and word
choice. This is the time to check references and
citations and formatting issues.
Take time to read aloud one sentence at a time so
you dont miss things. Look for ways to rephrase
awkward sentences and to improve sentence clarity.
Eliminate wordiness and redundancies. Replace
weak verbs (the moon came out) with strong verbs
(the moon rose).

Change passive constructions (the data will be

collected) to active sentences (I will collect the data).
Choose words appropriate for your academic audience.
Double-check your spelling and punctuation. You may
fail to see all your mistakes because your mind
automatically sees what should be there, rather than
whats actually on the page.
Dont shortchange this part of the process. Editing is
what makes you appear professional. Writing that
is full of errors reflects badly on you and distracts the
reader from your content. As a final check, before
you submit your manuscript, ask someone else
to proofread your work to find anything that you may
have missed.

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Submit: Let go of your manuscript.

Many writers have a hard time letting go of a writing project. When its
time to stop editing, send your manuscript to your readers for review.
Deciding when a manuscript is finished and ready
for submission is a challenge for writers, especially
if youre a perfectionist. Although you need to
have a polished work, you also need to be realistic
about when your work is ready to receive feedback
from others.
Until now your writing process may have been a
private experience, and you may feel some
reluctance to make your writing public. Yet, if you
aim to finish your degree or to publish, you need to
take the next step. One reason you need to let go
of a manuscript is the lengthy peer review process.
In addition, if your research is of a timely nature,
you do not want to wait so long that your research
is outdated.

If you are submitting an article, many journals have

a backlog of accepted manuscripts, which can delay
publication even further. If you are a new faculty
member, consider your tenure clock in terms of your
scholarly productivity. It is best to have research in the
pipeline (articles out for review). Many universities do
not let you count a journal article until it is accepted
for publication. And published is always stronger on
your curriculum vitae than accepted for publication.
Before sending your work out to be read, make
one last check to see that your submission meets
the requirements for length, documentation style,
and format. The act of letting go is challenging,
but now is the time to send your project out to your
reviewers and wait for their feedback.

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Resubmit: Accept criticism, revise, and move on.

Its hard to receive criticism, but most scholars will be asked to
revise their work and resubmit it (R & R). Use feedback constructively
to revise and strengthen your writing.
In the world of academics, it is the graduate students
committee that makes the determination about whether
the dissertation is finished and the academic journals
editor, with the help of peer review, who decides
whether an article will be accepted for publication.

Find the middle ground. Look for the value

in the criticism and move forward. If you can defend
your work, do so. If you think the comments are valid,
address the concerns.

Accept, reject, or revise and resubmit.

to get your document back to the readers. If you

receive a No, thank you response, use the reviewer
comments to correct the flaws in the manuscript
and target another journal. Keeping your publication
objective in mind will help you through the revise
and resubmit process.

In academic publishing, one of three outcomes

is possible. One, your manuscript is accepted for
publication. Two, you are asked to revise your
manuscript and resubmit it for consideration. Three,
your manuscript is rejected. After all of the hard
work on your manuscript, it can be crushing to get
anything less than a note reading, Your manuscript
has been accepted for publication. This outcome is
infrequent so prepare yourself to receive a response
that asks you to revise the manuscript and resubmit
it for consideration.

Receiving feedback. One response to reader

comments may be to reject the criticism by arguing that

the reviewers do not understand your research area well
enough. Another response is to overreact to criticism,
decide the project is unsalvageable, and abandon it.

Moving on. Work through the revisions quickly

It may seem like a long time from your initial enthusiasm

for your idea, to the actual writing of your document, to
the endless edits and revisions, to the final publication.
You will eventually be rewarded with the satisfaction
of seeing your idea in print. Now may be the time to
consider the next writing project. With experience, the
writing process may become more familiar, but there
is no way to shortcut the nature of the process: idea
generation, writing and revising, and editing.
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How an Academic Writing Coach Can Help You

Many academic writers go round and round the Roundabout, losing sight of their
destination or simply not knowing how to stop looping. An experienced coach can help
you determine when to move from prewriting to writing, when to stop writing and
start revising, and when its time to submit your work.

Working with an Academic Writing Coach, you can expect to:

Brainstorm novel ideas for your writing project

L
 earn more about your own writing process

E
 ngage in a dialogue about your ideas to help
you identify your focus

Identify issues that support and hinder the

writing process

Develop a book plan or a structure for your

dissertation, your chapter, or your article

G
 ain a sense of compassion about yourself
as a writer

Discuss how your idea fits with the literature

L
 earn to interpret criticism in a dispassionate way
that does not impact your self-esteem

Receive help breaking your project down into

small assignments
Receive constructive appraisal and developmental
editing of your drafts

C
 reate an accountability structure that will help
you achieve your goals
Receive support rather than writing in isolation.

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Learn more about working with an academic

writing coach. Click here for a free ACW consultation.

T H E Writing

Roundabout
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