Hello everyone.
This year, I am celebrating 11 years of teaching research writing! It has been a busy, chaotic, sometimes stressful, but mostly joyful ride. I have gotten to work with 1100+ Phd candidates, mostly from economics, but also from business schools and a few other programs here and there.
The Newsletter
In this substack, I want to share with you what I have learned and what I am currently thinking. I will mostly write about research writing with some forays into policy and business writing. I will share tidbits I have picked up from working with people from 30+ universities in the US and abroad. I will also share some thoughts about the big picture: the context we are all writing in. There is no getting away from this context; people can only write as well as the context will allow. So, brace for some of that.
Building A Writing Community
One of the things I have tried, so far unsuccessfully, to create is a writing community that goes beyond the courses I teach. Writing is not only more fun but also much better when it has been produced in a collegial setting. Even a quick chat with someone who does not know us or our writing can result in a surprisingly large improvement in our drafts.
So, I am hoping to capture something of that collegiality here: to begin with, I want to hear from you: questions you have about writing, how you feel about writing, what you like about it, what is difficult...really anything you have to say about writing, I want to hear it. And down the line, if people are active enough, I will set up ways for us to interact about writing through chats or even Zoom writing sessions; tell me if you have ideas.
Next Steps
To that end, please subscribe and get your friends to subscribe. We need a critical mass to build that sense of community. If we have enough people, one dream I have is to have an open write-a-thon every so often: people sign on and either write quietly or request quick peer feedback. We do something like this in the courses I teach, and I am pretty sure it is one of the reasons students' output has doubled. You just get a lot more done when you are part of a writing group.
OK, that is all by way of hello. Thank you and look out for my next post in the coming week!
Varanya