Hi. I m Karen McKee. And today I'd like to talk about a few insights that helped me when I first
started writing. When I started my master's research in 1973 studying coastal marshes,
I had no clue that a successful career in science required good writing skills.
But over time though, I realized that I had to develop these skills if I wanted to be a scientist.
Eventually, writing became second nature, and I relied on the process to help me
sort out my thoughts, both scientific and personal. I can t tell you how to reach
this state because each person is different. But here are a few insights that helped me.
Anne Lamott tells a story in her book on writing, Bird by Bird, about her brother
who as a ten-year-old was trying to write a school report on birds. He had been given three months
to write it but waited until the day before it was due to start writing. Lamott recalled
that her brother sat at the kitchen table in tears, paralyzed at the thought of the huge
task ahead of him. Their father came over, put his arm around her brother's shoulder and said,
Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. This is great advice for
students overwhelmed with the task of writing their thesis or dissertation.
Ignore the flock and focus on one bird. Write one small section at a time and don't
think about the rest. You can even write sections in no particular order.
Once you have them all written, reorganize them into a coherent sequence.
One day in graduate school, I was sitting in a committee member's office.
I was there to talk about my thesis. But what I remember is that he picked up a thick sheaf of
pages bound with a giant clip and said, This is the type of writing that makes a professor
put his feet up on his desk, lean back in his chair, and let out a sigh of pleasure.
He was talking about the dissertation of one of my fellow graduate students. Not my thesis.
I remained silent but thought, one day I want someone to say that about my writing. That
thought stayed in the back of my mind for years as I worked to hone my writing style. Each time I
sat down to write, I saw that professor with his feet planted on his desk and reading my paper.
Having an imaginary reader like him spurred me to do my best. You can do the same.
Before personal computers were common, we wrote the first draft of a paper by hand on a legal
pad. There were lots of cross-outs and text inserted in the margins. A second draft might
also be written by hand to clean up the manuscript so that it was in a more readable format.
The handwritten text was finally transcribed using a typewriter.
This is how I wrote my thesis and my dissertation. No one ever showed the messy,
handwritten versions of these manuscripts to anyone. There was no reason to.
So, in writing out our initial thoughts, we felt free to jot down any idea that came to mind.
There was no worry that our graduate committee or editors or reviewers would
ever see our initial attempts full of punctuation and grammatical errors.
Today, with computers, we often try to write and edit at the same time because it s easy to erase,
cut and paste, and rearrange paragraphs.
But word processing programs are constantly highlighting spelling and grammatical errors,
which stops the flow of ideas as we pause to make the suggested correction. Such interruptions are
a problem if you are struggling to organize your thoughts into a coherent narrative.
Whenever I have this problem, I go back to pen and paper. If you get stuck, give this a try.
Are you trying to write about a topic you know little about? You may be putting off writing your
thesis or your first journal paper, thinking that with a little more time, you'll somehow acquire
the necessary insights to explain your data. I understand how you feel because I've been in your
shoes at one time or another. Contrary to what you might expect, initial ignorance about a topic
can be an advantage in writing. When experienced researchers sit down to write a paper,
they often have difficulty viewing their data with a truly open mind. Their thinking may be
clouded by the prevailing paradigms in their field or their own experiences or, for some scientists,
their own pet theories. I once faced such a situation in writing a paper about stable
isotopes, a topic I knew little about. Lacking in-depth knowledge about stable isotopes, however,
I had no preconceived notions about what our data might say. I had an open mind about the outcome
and methodically set out to consider alternative explanations for the results. In the process of
reviewing the literature, I acquired the necessary background information to bring me up to speed on
the topic and to see how other researchers had used stable isotopes. The point I want to make,
though, is that I was not deterred from writing the paper because I lacked expertise in the topic
of stable isotopes. And in retrospect, that lack of expertise turned out to be an asset
since I was unbiased about the stable isotope data and what it meant. That is an important message
for new authors: If you keep an open mind, you can tackle any topic and write intelligently,
accurately, and fairly about it. And my paper? It turned out to be one of my best.
Well, those are a few lessons I learned over years of writing. They helped me to stop worrying so
much and to eventually love the writing process. I hope those of you just starting out find my
lessons useful as you transition from consumer of science information to scientific writer.
Thanks for watching and please don't forget to like my video or subscribe to my channel.