Academic writing is a rather painstaking affair

I guess it feels more real than ever before now. It certainly feels more like Master’s than it ever has since I started my doctorate.

I am finding myself putting the teeny pieces together, slowly… tiny bit by tiny bit, and it’s like a gazillion-piece jigsaw puzzle! I’ll be wasting my time if I rush or if it doesn’t make sense – so there’s no point in writing rubbish.

So, to ensure that I don’t write rubbish, my sequence goes a bit like this:

1. Look at my research questions
2. Say a quick silent prayer that I actually finally have approved research questions!
3. Scratch my head and rub my temples
4. Put the kettle on to boil water for coffee
5. Sit down and think really hard; if this was a story that started with ‘Once upon a time…’ what would catch my attention? Hmmmm…
6. Scribble a very rudimentary story line
7. Repeat steps 4 to 6
8. Decide on an argument to start with, something captivating… decide on the words, then Google the words to see who said something like that already
9. Type that sentence
10. Reference it. Spend 10 minutes looking for the university reference guide again
11. Once I find the university reference guide, go boil water for coffee again
12. Add the reference to my reference list
13. Decide on the next supporting sentence
14. Reference the next sentence
15. Put the words of the counter argument into Google because I feel it needs to sound balanced
16. Make the coffee
17. Start reading about the counter argument
18. Stumble upon an interesting new word in the text. Decide to look up that
19. Start reading a different but related topic
20. Check Facebook
21. Read my work again and think to myself ‘What on earth am I doing?’
22. Change the structure of the first two sentences
23. Read my work and think to myself ‘I got this, I know what I’m doing!’
24. Fix the mistake I made in the original reference
25. Read my work and think to myself ‘I don’t have a cooking clue what I’m doing!’
26. Type the third sentence
27. Reference it
28. Check my blog and pluck my eyebrows /or take a shower/ or water the plants and drink some cold coffee
29. Start with Step 1 again
30. Repeat a gazillion times

I am sure that after the gazillionth time, hopefully about two years from now, I will be sitting with an
absolute “beaut” and masterpiece.

As long as I keep this up, of course!

On a slightly different note, Happy New Year everyone! May 2016 be an auspicious one for you all. I will share that my new year started off well, as the minions and I accompanied the parentals on a tour of Robben Island this weekend. Long overdue for us. What a magnificent enriching experience! And the cherry on top was lunch with the rest of the “Femilyum” after the tour. Boy, it’s great to have the minions back home! Happiness prevails.

Bronwyn Swartz is a Lecturer and postgraduate research supervisor at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in the Western Cape, South Africa. This story was published on January 6, 2016, on Bronwyn’s blog (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.