Category Archives: Writing resources

Write on! Increase your productivity with a web-based writing group

Academic Writing, AcWriMo, Deadlines, Dissertation writing, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Productivity, Social media, Time management, Web-based writing groups, Writing groups, Writing resources

By Madeline Walker with Kate Turner

Kate Turner is a SSHRC post-doc student at the School of Environmental Studies at UVic.

When Kate Turner’s husband got an academic job in Bogota, she knew she would need some help finishing her dissertation. Writing a dissertation is challenging in familiar surroundings with supportive colleagues, but accomplishing this goal in an unfamiliar city with few local contacts is even more difficult.  Help, however, was closer than she imagined. When Kate heard that her friend, Daniel, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale, had committed to daily writing with another friend, Marieka, she asked to join them. Daniel and Marieka called their initiative “DiMoWriMo,” short for “dissertation to monograph writing month.” Taking their inspiration from novel writing month every November (https://nanowrimo.org/ ), Daniel and Marieka’s goal was to turn their recently completed dissertations into books. Kate’s final goal was slightly different from Daniel’s and Marieka’s, but her objective—to write a lot every day—was the same.

The three writers entered a period of intense productivity.

Here’s how it worked: Daniel, Marieka, and Kate committed to write or revise 1,000 words per day for a month, posting daily word counts on Facebook and Twitter and keeping a record in Google Sheets. On Fridays, they chatted on Skype.  The penalty for not reaching the goal? A $50 donation to an organization you don’t agree with.

Kate was part of the DiMoWriMo group for January and February 2016, and during that time she wrote and revised 55,000 words. Yes, you read the number correctly: 55,000 words!   Kate reflected that “writing a thesis is really hard and can feel isolating and disempowering. You are flooded with this bulk of information. It can be helpful to know how others are going through it and deal with it in a practical way.”  She credits goal setting, daily writing, frequent sharing, and friendly competitiveness for her stellar productivity.

picture of spreadsheet
Kate and her friends used Google Sheets to track their progress.

Kate finished her article-based dissertation at the University of Manitoba, and is now a SSHRC post-doc student at the School of Environmental Studies at UVic. She is working on a study about rural development and food heritage on the Pacific Coast of Colombia under supervisor Ana María Peredo.  Continuing to commit to regular writing with friends, Kate uses this method to keep her accountable for her academic writing goals. Although the rules may have relaxed a little since the initial group was formed (for example, writers may write several days a week rather than every day), the key idea persists—if we harness the power of social accountability, we are likely to be more productive and feel more supported than if we write in isolation.

As November approaches, perhaps you are thinking of ramping up your writing to meet a goal.  Check out Academic Writing Month, a month-long web-based writing event held every November for all academic writers. You can join in a supportive network, declare your goals, share your progress, and post results—all the while learning tips and strategies from other writers.

If you would like to start your own web-based writing group, here are a few tips from Kate to get going:

  • Groups of three to six people work best.
  • Set daily or weekly goals in words or hours.
  • Use social media and/or Google Groups to connect daily or weekly and post achievements publicly.
  • Agree on a penalty (that hurts!) for goals not met.
  • Encourage each other: Finding ways to support others will have a positive effect on your own productivity—for example, share any useful resources you find.
  • Keep things moving—even on low energy days you can work on less demanding tasks related to the project, such as preparing appendices or references.
  • At the end of each session, plan your writing for the next day.

If a web-based writing group doesn’t appeal to you, perhaps you would prefer to join a facilitated group where people meet face to face: check out the Thesis Completion Group facilitated by Counselling at UVic.

Daniel’s blog: http://www.tubb.ca/blog/2015/12/31/dimowrimo

About Academic Writing Month; http://www.phd2published.com/acwri-2/acbowrimo/about/

About Novel Writing Month: https://nanowrimo.org/

Thesis Completion Group: https://www.uvic.ca/services/counselling/groupsworkshops/thesis-completion/index.php

The Thesis Writing Starter Kit has practical guidelines for starting a writing group.

And a great little book on how to be prolific:

Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Write on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The abstract is “an argument, writ small”

Abstracts, Academic Writing, Blogs and blogging, Centre for Academic Communication, Dissertation writing, EAL graduate students, Graduate student writers, International graduate students, Structure, Tutoring, Writing process, Writing resources

By Madeline Walker

The word abstract is a bit confusing.  When I looked up this word in the dictionary, I found the first definition is for the adjective, to do with “thought rather than matter, or in theory rather than practice; not tangible or concrete.” Thus an abstract concept, such as love, good, or evil, has no physical referent. The noun definition is “a summary of or statement of the contents of a book.” When you write an abstract for an article, thesis, or conference, you are “abstracting” (a rarely used verb form of the word, meaning to extract or pull out) some key bits from the whole. Yet contrary to the adjectival meaning of the word (non-concrete), it’s a good idea not to be too “abstract” when writing your abstract! An abstract abstract is likely to be ineffective because your goal is to deliver a clear picture of your research in your reader’s mind, and abstract language won’t do that. When you have only a few words to say a great deal, you had better be as concrete as possible in order to deliver your purpose to the reader directly.

I am a big fan of Thomson and Kamler’s four-move abstract described in Detox Your Writing: Strategies for Doctoral Researchers (available as an e-book in our library). Their model works well for all types of abstracts, and it can also be used to kick-start your writing. Thomson and Kamler write that the abstract is not a summary—it’s actually an “argument, writ small,” and it must contain your central argument in abstracted form.  You might say, “Well mine is a computer science article—I don’t really have an argument.”  I imagine T & K would respond that any piece of academic writing can be abstracted into an argument. You are trying to persuade the reader that your computer science finding/development/algorithm contributes to the research/makes a difference in some way. And that’s an argument. Here are Thomson and Kamler’s moves; please refer to the chapter “Learning to argue” (pp. 83–106) in Detox Your Writing for more information and samples of ineffective/effective abstracts.

LOCATE: this means placing your paper in the context of the discipline community and the field in general. Larger issues and debates are named and potentially problematized. In naming the location, you are creating a warrant for your contribution and its significance, as well as informing an international community of its relevance outside of its specific place of origin.

FOCUS: this means identifying the particular questions, issues or kinds of problems that your paper will explore, examine and/or investigate.

REPORT: this means outlining the research, sample and/or method of analysis in order to assure readers that your paper is credible and trustworthy, as well as the major findings that are pertinent to the argument to be made.

ARGUE: this means opening out the specific argument through offering an analysis. This will move beyond description and may well include a theorisation in order to explain findings. It may offer speculations, but will always have a point of view and take a stance. It returns to the opening Locate in order to demonstrate the specific contribution that was promised at the outset. (Thomson & Kamler, 2016, p. 92)

The authors encourage you to keep writing and rewriting your abstract throughout the broader writing process; each time, you will  refine it further. Try preparing a draft abstract of your article/thesis, regardless of the stage you are at. You’ll be surprised at how it focuses your writing and cements your motivation.  I’ve had more than one student tell me it worked to get them writing again after a dry spell.

Call for graduate student blog post writers!

A huge thank you to all of our student writers so far this year: Kaveh Tagharobi, Russell Campbell, Kate Ehle, Marta Bashovski, Cindy Quan, Jonathan Faerber, and Arash Isapour.  Your writing resonated with so many of your fellow graduate students. Thank you for taking the time to craft wonderful posts and share your experience.

We need more student writers for the 2017/2018 academic year, so please consider writing for us.  We need students from different disciplines and backgrounds and at various stages of study to volunteer to write for the blog. Your topic can be anything related to academic communication and graduate students; see the guidelines here. If you feel uncertain that your writing skills are sufficient to the task, please make an appointment with me cdrcac@uvic.ca  I’ll be happy to coach you on how to improve your draft until we are both happy with it.  As Peter Elbow says, “Everybody can write.”

Additionally, we need some specific topics covered this year, and perhaps one of these attracts you:

  • The “thesis by publication” or article-based dissertation. This model, popular in the sciences and social sciences, requires that you write three or more “publishable” articles (plus weave them into a whole with intro/conclusion). Although the book-length dissertation is still with us, the article-based version is definitely a trend in our university, and I’d love somebody to write about it. Are you a student who is following this model or considering it?
  • Writing in different disciplines. Perhaps you are writing an interdisciplinary thesis, dissertation, or article and you need to negotiate with supervisors from various faculties. How’s that going for you? We would love to hear from you if you’ve had this experience or you have written in different disciplines (say, you did your MA or MSc in one area and are doing your PhD in a different one).  What have you learned about disciplinary differences in writing?
  • Communicating with your supervisor.  Okay, this may seem elementary, but some of us have struggled for hours to craft communication with supervisors or other professors.  EAL students unfamiliar with the Canadian university context may find this especially difficult. Would you like to write about this challenge and some strategies that have worked for you?

Don’t want to write, but want to read about something in particular? Please email me to suggest a specific blog post topic: cdrcac@uvic.ca.

We are taking a break for August, and the next post will be published in mid-September. Happy summer everybody, and thank you for reading the blog.

 

 

 

First diary entry of “The Little Prince” who just arrived in Victoria from his far home planet

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, EAL graduate students, Graduate student writers, International graduate students, Reading, Theatre history, Tutoring, Vocabulary, Writing resources

By Arash Isapour

New Ph.D. student Arash Isapour arrived in Victoria only six months ago.

The moment I received my admission letter from UVic, I experienced a weird feeling of anxiety, which was a combination of happiness and stress. Right off the bat, I can continue my educational career at the Ph.D. level, but at the same time, this Ph.D. fella felt the duty to come to grips with his academic flaws which are gathered under one title: language.

As a Theatre History student, I am aware that everything I’m dealing with is under the shadow of my English language abilities, including academic and literary writing, reading (not just journals or mathematical articles), speaking (not just at parties or for dating but for being a part of the interaction in a methodology class), and listening (not to Roger Waters’ new album but to a fast speaking English professor whose tongue takes you to the 18th century). And by the way, language is not just language, it is considered as a conveyor of culture.

As you can see, during my first days at UVic, I encountered all the aforementioned challenges at the same time with not even an epsilon of exaggeration. It was not just at the university but everywhere else I went. The neighborhood I am living in looks like a Hobbit village (Oak Bay). Not only were the people smiling at me but also the dogs. In public places, from groceries to banks, from standing at bus stops to sitting in non-stopping buses, people started conversations, and what I gave back was a smile, pretending as if I deeply got what they said, but I did not. The interesting thing was that they were not surprised by seeing me speak like a Martian, in other words like E.T. So, unexpectedly, I saw myself plunged into all these states. My first class was a methodology course in which the sweet, energetic professor wanted us to read books and essays by critical thinkers from Frye to Nietzsche, from Freud to Kristeva, from Hegel to Marx (my beloved), from McLuhan to Fredric Jameson (The reader killer, even for English speaking folks). I not only had to read and grasp all these frameworks but also had to discuss my opinions on them in class, each session. For the first days, the phrase “HOLY SMOKES” kept playing in my mind. I started recording the prof’s voice in class and tried to talk during class, despite the fact that I knew most of my words would make no damn sense, and those people were really looking at me as if they were saying “What in heaven’s name is he talking about!?” My self-esteem started to tremble as “The Earth Trembles” (My favorite Italian Movie).

In this dilemma, I had to choose either the easy way—let it go to any direction it wants to like the  wind—or the hard and better way—stand still and choose my own path even if it is against the stream. I might still be a successful Ph.D. student in the arts and humanities if I select the first, but I would definitely be a prosperous and industrious scholar from the beginning if I choose the second. In other words, when you find yourself in the uncomfortable zone, you either choose to surrender and pull back or challenge whatever jams you up. The first would be like a boring love story movie, and the second would be like an unpredictable romantic movie, such as “La La Land.”

So what I did was a bunch of silly sounding stuff that works:

  • I asked my sweet landlady to correct me whenever I speak, and she happily accepted to be my home teacher (which is free). And because she is from the 70s, I have learned a lot of nice expressions and am still learning. An example would be what people said when it was the first of May starting with “Hooray, hooray, it’s the first of May . . . . ” As you can see, I am learning a new culture, not just language in a technical way.
  • I carry a notebook with me wherever I go to write down whatever I hear from people in public places, see on the walls, hear from movies, TV series, and everything I need to learn while I’m reading something, from a book to an article, even if it is about my own country’s political and social news.
  • I make ten sentences with the new words to memorize them.
  • I read novels and stories in English that I have always wanted to read but never had time to. Now it has become a constant five-gold-star mandatory pleasure.
  • I go to the Centre for Academic Communication at the McPherson Library and try to learn everything I know about writing based on the papers I write. I share whatever I am confused about the language and ask as many questions as I need to ask, even if they make me look like a dummy, which might be cute.
  • I try not to meet too many people from my own nation, obliging me to speak English in order to keep the dynamic of my training zone. Remember, the more you are in the training zone, the more you improve in your career.

If you keep doing all these in an organized manner, gradually you will see yourself overcoming barriers. And you move to the next level of improvements. Yeah! It is exactly like a video game. But keep it steady and be patient. Some of these things are not new; you just have to deal with your daily jobs (e.g., reading news, watching movies, going out with friends), but you ought to use only the secondary language for all of these, except in one case: when you are speaking with your parents.

Arash Isapour arrived in Victoria in January 2017 from Tehran. He is a PhD student at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre. Besides being literature-crazy, he is a film buff, in other words a walking movie database.  

How to write a dissertation when you’re really busy and love to travel

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Conferences, Dissertation writing, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Graduate student writers, Political science, Procrastination, Productivity, Time management, Tutoring, Writing process, Writing resources

By Marta Bashovski

It’s the end of April, the end of another academic year, and the beginning of another summer. This can be a tricky time for “senior” PhD students like me. On the one hand, my usual sources of funding and the duties that take up most of my time – teaching, TAing, and tutoring at the CAC – are on hold until the fall. On the other hand, we’re now in the midst of “conference season,” and since defending my dissertation proposal, committing to writing conference papers has been how I’ve found time to write the chapters of my dissertation. The “perks” of attending conferences – travelling to interesting places, catching up with old friends, and seeing new work in my discipline – are not bad either!

What I hope to offer in this post isn’t suggestions for how to approach conference abstracts, networking, papers, or presentations. There are many excellent guides already out there. See here, here, and here, for instance. Instead, I would like to share some reflections on the dissertation writing benefits I’ve found to regularly attending conferences.

Writing to a clear deadline

I need deadlines to be productive. The daily life an ABD PhD student with non-writing duties and commitments often means that writing gets pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. The long-term, amorphous deadlines of a dissertation project also mean that, for better or for worse (usually worse), writing happens very slowly and in tiny chunks. This is where I’ve been able to make strategic use of conference deadlines. Since the conferences I attend have application deadlines six months to a year in advance, I am able to plan when I’ll be forced, by the stress of necessity, to draft a concise version of a dissertation chapter that I can later develop further. The commitment to submit a paper draft and the accountability to a group of colleagues has helped me to prioritize scheduling – and following through on – writing time.

comic from Piled Higher and Deeper
“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham (published with permission)
www.phdcomics.com

Clarifying the project

If your dissertation proposal was anything like mine, you quickly found that your aims were far too broad to make for manageable dissertation chapters. Taking your chapter outlines – and your ambitious plans to cover all of the relevant literature for the questions you address – and making them into conference papers is an excellent way to focus your argument to emphasize only the most important themes. I’ve found that for a typical conference paper, I write about a third to half of what I had originally planned to cover in a given dissertation chapter – and this is fine! I have the opportunity to complete a skeleton draft and can always supplement and revise this later. I have found that my original ambitious plan did not serve the purpose that I hoped to achieve in the chapter. (This post offers some more specific suggestions on writing a conference paper in a limited time – in a mere two days!)

Writing for an audience

As writers generally, and PhD students in particular, we are often told to consider who our readers will be when we write. As with elusive dissertation deadlines, though, our audiences can also be vaguely defined (our committees? other scholars in our field?). Writing for a conference comes with a built-in audience –even if that audience ends up being not many more people than your discussant and fellow panel members. Writing for a particular conference and panel, you now have a sense of the themes expected of your paper, the concepts you will need to explain, and the debates to which you hope your work will contribute. I have also found that writing for a specific, tangible audience also helps me to personify my usually densely theoretical work – it helps me to cut the jargon and focus on the takeaway I’d like the audience to remember from my talk.

Feedback and revisions

As we complete our highly specialized dissertation projects, most of the feedback we receive as we go along comes from readers who know us and our projects well – supervisors, committee members, and if we’re lucky a few friends or department colleagues. These people are mostly “insiders”: they have a sense of the orientation of our projects, our goals, and the conceptual vocabularies that frame our writing. I have found it very helpful to receive feedback from people who are interested in my project – and may be experts in the field – but do not necessarily begin from the same assumptions (and, relatedly, institutional background) as I am. Feedback from outside our own “bubbles” can offer new perspectives, new reading suggestions, or even reframe major aspects of the dissertation. The latter happened to me when a particularly conscientious discussant asked whether I would pursue a particular concept later in my dissertation – I hadn’t planned on it, but now this discussion forms the last chapter of my dissertation.

Possible caveats

Directing your dissertation writing through conference papers – and conference attendance in general – comes with several caveats, of course. First, you might find that the feedback you receive on your work is sparse or not at all helpful. Second, you might find yourself writing papers or participating on roundtables not related to your dissertation work at all. This could be a downside or not. Working on other projects might seem like a waste of time, but it might also be a welcome distraction from dissertation burnout, and an opportunity to develop new ideas for future projects and meet a new network of scholars.

I have two more conferences this summer – the British International Studies Association annual meeting in Brighton, UK and the Gregynog Ideas Lab in Newtown, Wales. At both, I’ll be presenting parts of the last chapter of my dissertation – yet to be written! In Brighton, I’m excited to be on a panel that both fits my research well and includes scholars I am eager to talk to further. In Wales, I’m looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and both sharing my own research and getting inspired by their research. In the meantime, I’ll be taking part in another long-honoured academic writing tradition – the writing retreat, in my case my brother’s sunny apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria. Have a wonderful summer and happy writing!

Marta Bashovski is a tutor at the CAC and a PhD Candidate in Political Science and Cultural, Social and Political Thought at UVic. She is most enthusiastic about food, travelling, and her cat.

 

Comma chameleon: Transforming punctuation and grammar in your writing

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Editors and editing, Graduate student writers, Grammar and punctuation, Posts by Gillian, Reading, Tutoring, Writing resources

By Gillian Saunders

It wasn’t so long ago when I found out that I didn’t really know how to use a comma. I mean, I knew how, but I didn’t really, really know. I could put them in the right place about 95% of the time, but not explain why I was adding them or choosing not to. Sound familiar?

I wasn’t a poor writer, making word salad with a careless handful of commas tossed in; I’d been admitted to a graduate program in English Language and Literature. And I didn’t know how to begin to fix this problem. At this point, the finer points of punctuation seemed mysterious and probably unlearnable.

As an English as an Additional Language Specialist at UVic’s Centre for Academic Communication and as an instructor, I meet a lot of students experiencing this same frustration. Writers who learned English as an additional language may be at an advantage: for the most part, they have been “taught” a lot of what they need to know to be able to master the use of commas and other fun and useful things like colons and semicolons with relative ease. In order to know whether you need a comma in any given situation, you need a functional range of metalanguage: relative clause, dependent clause, conjunctive adverb, etc. Native English speakers under a certain age, however, were mostly just told to throw a comma in when they “felt like they needed a pause,” which, unfortunately, isn’t a real rule of comma usage. As adults pursuing graduate degrees, not having been taught real rules isn’t doing us any good now. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing.

“What am I supposed to do about it now?” you might be wondering. Here’s the abridged version of how I’ve filled my own vacancies in the punctuation and grammar puzzle: first and foremost, my education is in a very reading- and writing-heavy field. I studied writing and linguistics with some very inspiring and knowledgeable instructors, and then I started teaching grammar and composition myself. At that point, I had to learn everything there was to know, or else risk being shown up by students who had mastered not only their own first languages, but mine as well, and better than I had. I completed a Certificate in Editing by distance. I read books like Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage, Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style, and everything by Kate Turabian and Diana Hacker. I Googled. A lot. “Which vs. that?” “What is an appositive?” I tugged at the knots of obscure grammar forum threads until I was satisfied that I could explain when and why you need a comma before “such as.” I started reading my work, and the work I edited, aloud, with verbalized punctuation: “The semicolon has two main uses COLON it separates long items in a list COMMA which may also contain commas COMMA and it joins two independent clauses that are closely related PERIOD.” I questioned my identity as a writer, as a native English speaker, and in other areas of my life. Had I also been singing the wrong words to my favourite songs at the top of my lungs in the car all along? (I had.)

Learning the “right way” to use punctuation (and the correct lyrics to all my favourite 80s and 90s songs) clearly took time and the kind of dedication that may not be available to you when your literature review is due next week. Thankfully, there are other options available. First, get a diagnosis from someone who knows a lot about these things. Maybe you’re guilty of conjunctive adverb abuse because you’ve got them confused with subordinating conjunctions. Maybe you’ve never thought about restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Half the battle is just knowing what to Google.

It may seem painful at first, but picture yourself at some point in the future when it pays off: your perfectly punctuated cover letter just got you your dream job. You didn’t have to hire an editor before you submitted your article for publication. You’ve met the girl of your dreams online; her profile said she only dated people who texted with correct punctuation, and she really meant it. Good punctuation matters to a lot of people, more than you might think, but at the end of the day it’s up to you how accurate you need your writing to be and how much you are prepared to invest in your writing practice. Like doing yoga or learning how to knit a sweater, it takes time and dedication to develop the skills and ability you need in order to have a practice you’re satisfied with. A good practice requires a good instructor that you trust, clear instructions, the ability to detect errors, the skills to be able to fix them, the confidence to take risks, and the humility to ask for help when you’re not sure what you’re doing. Who can you ask? The CAC. We’re here to help!

Gillian is an English as an Additional Language Specialist and Business English and Communications instructor at UVic, and has taught in Canada and South Korea. In her spare time she can be found reading about grammar and English language teaching and patting herself on the back for not pointing out every single writing error she encounters during her day.

 

 

How writing fiction helped me write my dissertation

Academic Writing, Computer science, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Editors and editing, Fiction writing, Goal setting, Graduate student writers, Productivity, Time management, Writing coaches, Writing process, Writing resources

By Russell Campbell

Somewhere in my academic career I started trying to write novels. It wasn’t a decision I can pinpoint. It crept up on me through multiple fronts: my sister working for the Greater Victoria Public Library; a past girlfriend who had a sister married to the brother of epic-fantasy author Brandon Sanderson; free lectures for writing fiction by Brandon Sanderson on YouTube; a past roommate on the autism spectrum whose life revolved around fiction; and many friends who dabble with the idea of writing stories. Combine all this with my unending curiosity, and the result is years of my dissertation developing in parallel with multiple creative writing projects.

Underneath the curiosity, I felt that if I could write a novel, then a dissertation would be that much easier because I would have full command of the written English language. I should point out that my research area is in the sciences. If I could find a way for my brain to run a marathon, creative writing seemed like a healthy exercise.

As the years marched on, and my commitment to learn the craft of storytelling grew more earnest, I came to the realization that most authors spend at least four dedicated years in a degree program writing essays to refine their skills—which I don’t have—so there’s probably still a long way for me to go here. Upgrade my efforts to an ultra-marathon after bench pressing 500 lbs. Probably not healthy.

So I can save you the troubles I’ve been through and point you in the right direction if, like me, you also want to push your brain to its limits. If you are in the sciences, my suggestions are overkill, but still have benefits, and if you are not, then they might just be a nice addition to your skill set. Perhaps you want to write novels. In my present case, a wonderful surprise turned out to be how much easier it is to write documents of any kind, especially career oriented ones such as cover letters and teaching statements. It also made getting feedback from my supervisor much more tolerable.

The best piece of advice I can give is to make writing a part of every day. The easiest way to do this is to combine it with whatever entertainment you consume. Take notes on the shows you watch. I use Google Drive for this and all my other notes on writing. Most shows out there have commentary by YouTube podcasts and I look for those that grow my vocabulary.

There’s no shortage of videos online and books you can get on becoming an author. I found many of them to be repetitive. However, sadly, much of the advice is not helpful, and I have been fortunate to find the few sources that can actually prove it with science. A great place to start learning how to write fiction properly, no matter what your skill level, is a book called Story Genius, by Lisa Cron. She debunks the useless advice, and gives you a plan that avoids the big editing mistakes that waste time.

I’ve spent a lot of my education using formal logic, so I was delighted to see that writing approached from the perspective of journalism makes heavy use of logic. Finding topics is a matter of exploring logical patterns in everything you observe and proving their existence. Trying to refine this skill has helped me in my research, since this is creativity in a nutshell. This process is explained robustly in A Writer’s Coach, by Jack R. Hart.

Actually, I do have course credits with a superb textbook for grammar, and I still reference it often: Understanding English Grammar, by Martha Kolln and Robert Funk. I consider this the resource for word and sentence-level expertise only. Beyond this, if you want to know the impression your writing leaves, then Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark brings a large set of available skills. If you need advice at the story level, a freelance editor named Ellen Brock on YouTube provides not only videos, but organizes a novel boot camp on occasion. On her blog, she gives feedback on story submissions, and I find this is a good gauge to compare myself with other wannabe authors.

Creative writing course lectures for Brandon Sanderson’s BYU class are on YouTube. There are multiple iterations of it, each on different channels, but the most recent one for winter 2016 on Camera Panda really is the best one to watch, both in terms of video quality and content. Ignore the advice on the spectrum between plotting a novel or free-writing one. There’s no way around planning your writing if you don’t want to throw away much of what you write and you want an effective outcome.

I’m looking to connect with other fiction writers to form a support group. If you are interested email me at: ctrain79@uvic.com

Russell Campbell is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and has completed a Master of Science in discrete mathematics, both at the University of Victoria, as well as a Bachelor of Science in mathematics at the University of the Fraser Valley.