Not All Writing is Created Equal

When I think of what it means to write, I envision a kind of artful and expressive manner of communication - the kind of communication that acts as a screenshot of the writer's mind at the time of writing. This kind of writing normally flows really well, isn't devoid of emotion, and may or may not be opinionated. And even if it isn't opinionated, there is usually a distinct hint of personality weaved into the writing. This is the case for the majority of writing that I have done up to this point in my life. 

So for me the main issue then was coming out of that frame and resisting the urge to write "creatively", which for me, consists in large part, of saying more than needed. I tend to be verbose in my writing, and my writing also tends to be a lot more free-flowing than what is expected in scientific communication. I use anecdotes, similes, and analogies to connect disparate ideas. The majority of the difficulty I faced was in maintaining the discipline to say only what is necessary and relevant,  ensuring that my work was not only concise, but also accurate.

Additionally, I tend to add in filler language in an attempt to improve the flow of my writing, which probably works fine for creative writing. But for scientific writing, chances are that if you are adding filler language, you are either adding a claim that is irrelevant to the central point, a claim that seems true, but due to the language used isn't quite correct, or a correct claim that you have failed to provide evidence for. So, throughout the course of my scientific communication career, I have started to try to be very deliberate about what I say for fear of introducing unsubstantiated claims, or of straying from the point.

There was also the slight issue of having to combine all the constituent parts of the data summary into one cohesive project. I understand and appreciate the fact that we do the data summary in bits and pieces in order to get feedback, and also to ensure that we don't have a monstrous task when it comes time to actually submit the data summary, but for me it was very hard to recombine all those parts and then "ligate" them into one functioning "strand".

I like to see the big picture and then work on the project from there, which was my intent with the data summary, but due to the nature of the deadlines for submissions, it is almost like I'm compiling work from multiple different authors. This is, in some way, due to the fact that my scientific writing is not as precise, concise, and standardized (or constant, I guess) as it should be. It is affected by my mental state, how tired I am, the time of day, or even the day of the week in the same way that my creative writing may be. That is something I need to work on improving.


- Clinton Reid


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abstracting an Abstract

Grappling with scientific writing was quite the challenge. I typically love to embellish my essays and revel in every little detail, so working to cut that out was different, to be sure. Nevertheless, eventually I felt comfortable enough to write the summary in a way I felt good about. I figured, after having worked through the rest of the data summary, the abstract would follow logically. After all, I’d delved into excruciating depth for each portion, so I definitely knew enough to write the abstract, right? Well, therein lies the issue. My first go at the abstract was horribly detailed, truly an essay in itself. Clearly, that wouldn’t do. I tried again, attempting to strip the abstract down to its bare essentials. After having worked on one project for so long though, my definition of ‘bare essentials’ was a tad skewed. Needless to say, it was still longer than ideal. I then resolved to just look to other papers for inspiration, after all, they’d had plenty of experience writing abst
Read more

The Art of Science - Module 1

Creative writing and/or writing for fun is certainly different than science writing! I think I'm used to essays flowing smooth as silk, waves on sand, gel pens on paper, brushes on canvas, but this assignment seemed to try and combine many rigid elements into a greater idea. Like ligating the sticky ends of DNA fragments... or something like that.  The process of revising, editing, and iterating is all the same! The hardest part for this assignment was in the end trying to craft a message that really expressed why the reader should care! Not what the focus of our project is, but more, now that everything is said is done, and we have results, data-driven conclusions and figures, why should anyone care? What did we accomplish? Any breakthroughs? Did we push the envelope of knowledge in our field, and does it have any relevance to readers outside of that field? I guess I spent most of my thought and work into figuring out how to frame the broader implications of our research.   I felt
Read more

When do you stop rewriting?

The hardest part of scientific communication for me is figuring out exactly how I want to word things. For more structured outlines, I'm wholly dependent on outlines as scaffolds for my ideas. I always have ten thousand considerations racing in my mind, constantly ruminating on which phrases to include and what the perfect word for a concept is. It's less sentences and more fragments, which is amazing for outlines. I can build off of these blocks and find the right bit of logic to use in each place. But when I construct a sentence, when I polish that meaning, I find myself second-guessing each word and trying to make the structure more fluid. The tricky thing about scientific communication is that there's always a more concise, more purposeful way to elucidate your rationale. The data summary is about learning how to write in this way, but I don't know the jargon. I can reiterate the lectures and understand the purpose of our experiments, but when positioned as the auth
Read more