Sooner or later, you’ll hear this common piece of thesis writing wisdom…
But be warned, it is terrible advice. They mean well, but must be ignored….
If anyone tells you to “just get words down on the page, because you can always sort it out later“, well I think that’s just about the worst advice anyone can give you.
Why?
Because the process of “sorting it out”, or editing, is 99% of the whole exercise!
If you leave clarifying your thoughts till last, you’ll end up will thousands and thousands of words, in “rough form”, but it’ll be unusable. You won’t have anything finished. And you’ll end up in a horrible situation of trying to edit your writing, working with stream-of-consciousness mess of a structure having forgotten what it was you were originally trying to say.
Instead, do it this way…
Edit as you write
The aim of your writing is to get an idea out of your head and onto the page in a way that will make sense to the reader.
The aim should always be clarity, but you need to clarify the idea in your own head before you can communicate it effectively to someone else.
When you write, the words will usually come out in a bit of a jumble because you’re thinking and clarifying ideas at the same time.
So the first version of a sentence will need some revision before it’s good enough to use.
The following point is vital.
Ready?
Here goes…
When you’re explaining a complex idea, you must take the time to clarify your thought on the page, while it is still fresh in your head.
Give the thought the time and care it deserves. You must stop and edit the sentence to express yourself clearly before moving on, because if you just fill pages and come back to edit days or weeks later, the thought will be gone and it will be incredibly hard to sort out the mess of writing.
How to edit
The first version of a sentence will rarely be very good. But knowing that frees you from the pressures of perfectionism. You can write that sentence knowing that it’s just a first attempt.
Whatever you want to say, there are a huge number of ways you could write it. A huge number of possible solutions to the problem of communication:
- The cat sat on the mat
- The cat was sitting on the mat
- The mat had the cat sitting on it
- The cat was on the mat, sitting
- Sitting on the mat was the cat
And that’s just a single sentence describing one simple idea. So there are always alternatives, just by moving a couple of things around.
So if you aren’t happy with what you’ve written, just try structuring the sentence a slightly different way.
Look out for;
- Very long sentences. Shorter sentences are usually better. Only make them longer if it makes your point clearer.
- Repetition of the same words in a single sentence
Here’s an example of a sentence I edited in this very blog post…
“Now, what usually happens is that as you write, the words come out in a bit of a jumble because you’re thinking as you write.”
The repetition of “as you write” is unnecessary, as is the use of “what usually happens is that…” when “usually” is enough. So I moved “as you write to the start of the sentence and tidied it up a bit to give….
“When you write, the words will usually come out in a bit of a jumble because you’re thinking and clarifying ideas at the same time.”
Again it’s a simple idea, but there are many alternative solutions. It’s not about finding the perfect one, because that doesn’t exist. It’s just about looking at each sentence as you write and making it better if you can.
Try to get to the third version of the sentence quickly. The first version might be rubbish, the second OK, then the third will probably be quite good.
Flow and structure
Each sentence has to stand in context with everything around it.
But the order in which you think of things might not be the best order to present them.
So when you right a sentence you didn’t expect or plan, you need to look at how it fits in with everything around it and ask yourself:
- Does the sentence look OK on it’s own?
- Does it fit where you have put it?
- or should it go somewhere earlier in the section?
- or does it need another sentence before it to help it make sense?
- Or should you cut it?
Modify, move or cut. Those are your options! This is the hardest part of writing, but that’s exactly why you have to do it while the idea is still fresh in your head.
The flow will, to some extent, emerge as you write as it’s inevitable you will get new ideas as you go. But focus on one idea at a time, and give it the attention it deserves to express it clearly, then move on to the next idea knowing that you’ve taken care of it.
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I appreciate what you are saying, but I think there are some nuances that need to be considered.
First, not all projects or people will write all their documents the same. I’ve published over 90 peer-reviewed articles and I don’t have a fixed style for writing. Some are meticulously outlined and organized from the start, and others are organized well in my head and flow easily out onto the paper. But, most result from me just jumping in and writing down my thoughts. Initially I do more writing than editing until the manuscript starts to take form, then I get to a point where I do more editing than writing. So, yes, editing is an important part of the writing process, but there is a point where writing dominates editing.
Second, sometimes the stream of consciousness writing can help open the floodgates that an author needs to get writing and get writing well. When I was writing my book Eloquent Science, it often took an hour or so to get into the mood to write after sitting in front of the keyboard. The first hour may not have produced much usable text, but it served the purpose of getting my ass in the chair and my brain in the right gear to produce more usable text later. If I worried about every little bit of text that I was creating and obsessed about its quality, I wouldn’t have been as productive. What I got out of 8 hours of effort was 7 hours of useful text and the first hour of warm-up text.
Third, a concept I talk about in my book is the writing/editing funnel. At the top of the funnel is the largest-scale issues: organization (chapters and sections). This is the first aspect to the document that an author needs to get in place. There’s no sense writing the perfect chapter of your thesis if it doesn’t fit into the framework that you’ve set for it. Then, going down the funnel, the writer should next focus on the paragraphs. Do all the paragraphs flow in order from one to the next? Do they make sense on the paragraph-scale? Then going down the funnel, you get to the sentences and then words, then small-scale stuff like grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
The idea of the funnel is to get authors to focus on the big picture first. Again, there’s no sense spending an hour crafting the perfect paragraph, if there is no place for it in the structure of the paper.
When in editing mode, it’s the same thing. No sense on fixing grammar and typos if the whole structure of the section of the thesis is rubbish. Fix the big issues at the top of the funnel first, then delve down to fix the little stuff.
So, when you say that you must ignore the advice to “just get it down on the page”, I think you need to qualify that. I guess it depends on the level of detail that you consider editing. In your example about the cat on the mat, the idea is down on paper. All of those examples would suffice for me to construct my argument through the stream-of-consciousness writing that often generates the greatest volume of text in our scientific papers. If after 70-90% of the manuscript is written, I didn’t like the first sentence, then I could change it one of the other sentences. It doesn’t bother me that it’s not perfectly crafted because the idea is serving a great placeholder for the eventual way I wish to say it.
Thanks David for the detailed reply.
Yes, everyone does write in a different way, and clearly you know what you are talking about.
The problem though, and it happens again and again, is when people end up with a HUGE amount of unedited work. When they come back to it days or weeks (or months or years) later, is that they often can’t remember what they were trying to say. The result? They get depressed because they put all that effort in, and it’s unusable.
Because the concepts people write about in a PhD thesis are complex and hard to express clearly, it takes thought and care to find the right phrasing.
By following the “just get words on the page approach”, there is pressure to just write more, meaning you take all the low-hanging fruit and run out of steam very quickly. That then leads to the horrible inconsistency that thesis writers find so depressing.
It is not about perfection! It is simply about taking the time to express yourself clearly before moving on.
Maybe we are arguing about the same thing. I agree that writing science is complex, which is why you need to take the time to organize your thoughts and what you want to say first.
My experience with working with undergraduates is that they tend not to organize their thoughts in a big picture way, so the essay lacks clear structure. In contrast, my experience working with graduate students is that they can organize the writing on the chapter/section level, but their writing within paragraphs tends to be a bit disorganized. Rarely have I seen the production by either undergrad or grad students of a lot of unusable text that is worthless. It is usually just poorly organized or not saying precisely what they need to say.
So, I think we both agree that the author needs to get the big picture written down first. Once you are reasonably pleased with that as a working organization or a framework, then start writing specific chapters of your thesis.
Once you start writing on a specific topic within that framework, then be free to write more freely, capturing your thoughts as they flow, but making sure that you still do editing along the way to keep it sure that it makes sense.
The percentage of time that you spend writing versus editing at different stages of your writing will depend upon how you best like to write. I am advocating more writing then more editing, whereas you seem to be arguing for a more balanced approach. I guess we can leave that up to the reader to determine for themselves. I am comfortable with that.
I guess if I had to sum it up, I would say that writing IS editing.
Students come to me because they are in pain. Because the process isn’t working, and because they can no longer “just get words down”. It might work sometimes, but it is advice thrown around with such careless authority when actually, as you yourself said, there is more nuance to the process.
Well, I am all for challenging the conventional wisdom we offer our students, so kudos to you for raising it and allowing this discussion to take place!
Yes I agree with you.
“Just write”, “one page a day”, “500 words a day”, “Start writing since day 1 of the phd period”. – that’s the advice that many told me so many times. That’s simple advice I started to be aware as a mere way to sharpen writing skills. Editing is indeed worse that get things written for the first time.
I agree that to complete the advice is to write with purpose, to be very clear in what way the piece of writing could support argument in the thesis. Only then you can write and edit well.
I just took days to edit a small piece of my work
.
Whew– and here I was, thinking I was “doing it wrong” because I couldn’t bear to just write-write-write all at once and edit later.
Heck, my usual workday begins with reviewing and editing part of what I last wrote, if it isn’t as clear as it could be. This starts my momentum, and I eventually flow forward into new writing, which I revise to ensure it is reasonably clear before I move on.
I do occasionally have to remind myself that each sentence doesn’t have to be perfect, because more editing can happen later, but every one really does have to be good enough or else I can’t build off of it.
you aren’t doing it wrong if you’re producing work you’re happy with!
You are doing it wrong if you end up with a scrambled mess of half-baked chapters to sort out later…
About simplifying your text, the book “On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction” by William Zinsser gives great advice on that. It is a book recommended by Tim Ferriss
Thanks, I’ll check it out!
Hey James,
A thought provoking post, nice!
I like the idea of not leaving the editing for other time, do it today. The chunk of text you edit can vary from one sentence like you suggest to 1000 words for Ben.
In my case I like to put one idea per paragraph. Just dump it in there. Once I have a paragraph, I go over it to improve the reading. What I might leave for other time is connecting the different paragraphs so a section has a good flow.
Cheers,
Julio
I did some editing as I went along I also had some chapters where I just got stuff down on paper. The problem was that when I came back to it half the time i had no idea what I had been thinkning / writing about so the editing took twice as long and working out why i had used certain references was also a nightmare.
As ben says you have to pick and approach that works for you but one thing to think about is if you do just get words down on paper don’t wait too long until you come back to them
Great post James. I don’t disagree with your approach at all, but I am an advocate of “getting words down on a page”.
First of all, I agree that editing makes a piece of writing and it is no easy task. However getting started it also very difficult and sometimes, I think you have to do whatever it takes to get the words down. I honestly find that editing each sentence as I go along disrupts my flow. However I accept that this is a personal thing and many people may not feel this way, although I think some people probably will.
However, the stream of writing approach does have a serious limitation that you highlight. You’re right, you can’t just say “edit later on” you do need to have a good and serious plan for editing.
For me I like to edit my writing in larger chunks, maybe 1000 words at a time. I find this helps me to put sentences in to context more effectively because I’m editing them at the same time.
Editing an idea while it is fresh in your head certainly has a lot of merit. However there is also merit in editing later on, when an idea has had a chance to settle and you look and your writing with more objective eyes.
Overall I believe that it is a case of “horses for courses”.You have to pick an approach that works well for you. However whichever approach you use, give editing serious time and thought.
Again, just to say this is a great and thought provoking post.
If you stop and edit after 1000 words, fair enough. Too many people though write 1000s of words then come back days later.
This approach means everything ends up “60% done”, but never finished.
If another approach works, use it. But 1000s of words of crap is false progress. I’d rather have 500 words I can actually use!