Skills for Scholars
Did you spot the birds and bunnies in this paper collage? How about Winston Churchill, glowering behind the rose-colored glasses?
Sometimes we rush so quickly through our daily lives that we forget to pause, look, listen, and learn. In Steve Covey's memorable metaphor, we resemble woodcutters laboring to fell a tree with a dull-bladed saw, when what we really need to do is stop to refresh our gaze and sharpen our saw.
For this WriteSPACE special event held on March 22 , I invited three saw-sharpening experts to help you refocus on honing your writing skills by telling us about their recently published books on workplace writing, grant writing, and book proposal writing, respectively:
Martha B. Coven introduced Writing on the Job, a compact guide to professional writing that covers workplace genres from emails and slide decks to proposals and cover letters.
Betty S. Lai talked about The Grant Writing Guide, a practical guide to effective grant writing for researchers at all stages of their academic careers.
Laura Portwood-Stacer discussed The Book Proposal Book, a step-by-step guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal and seeing your book through to successful publication.
We also heard from Matt Rohal, the acquisitions editor for Princeton University Press's Skills for Scholars series. Launched in 2021 and aimed at a new generation of scholars from diverse backgrounds, the series encourages "a fresh viewpoint, a honing of skills, a way of combining established principles with new practices, a burst of inspiration, and a thoughtful perspective on academic and professional pathways."
Below is WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ first-person account of the live event.
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Hearing from our wonderful special guests about cultivating diverse writing skills was extremely motivating. This session highlighted the impressive range of depth, flexibility, and agility of the books in the Skills for Scholars series. We talked about several touchstone texts to come back to again and again.
A few standout quotes from this session:
“Books are tools, companions, and resources that energise you in the rest of your work.”
“Everybody has the chance to get support for important ideas. This now means we will hear better ideas and can think more clearly about problems that affect all of us.”
“When giving feedback, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!”
Matt Rohal introduced the series and talked about how to expand the boundaries of what might constitute ‘core’ skills for writers. These books are not just for academic scholars, he noted; they unearth new perspectives and uplift underrepresented voices to offer well-rounded advice for writers of all kinds.
The architecture of the series covers four main areas: communication (which includes writing), research, teaching and learning, and professional development. The books of our three guest authors each tackle different areas of professional writing and how to get your work supported from day one.
Martha Coven’s Writing on the Job really is a book for everyone—it traverses how to write professionally in wide-ranging private sector communications, from the basics to the nitty-gritty writing of presentations, speeches, press releases, resumes, and more. I loved Martha's rejection of the ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ to writing; her book abounds with diverse options and templates to suit all writers and writing cultures. Martha also shared her number one fundamental skill for writing: “Bottom line up front.” In other words, don’t wait until the final paragraph or the tenth slide to reveal the key message. You’re writing a business communication, not a mystery novel!
Laura Portwood-Stacer’s The Book Proposal Book aims to erase the anxiety from writing book proposals. I found her thoughts on giving motivating, constructive feedback very insightful. Laura’s book is not just for scholars but will help all non-fiction authors. She encouraged us to think about the presentation of our work (in a meta way!), not just the content of it. There is an art to making complex ideas translatable, so spend some time considering your project's marketing.
Betty Lai’s The Grant Writing Guide demystifies the grant-writing process and charts some of the ethics and politics of getting funding. Betty revealed some hard truths about the necessity of grant writing, and how her own experiences helped her gain access to this skill. In fact, accessibility has always been a key consideration for her. It’s no secret that funders worldwide have unconscious biases, including race, gender, and age. Increasing access for all writers to this skill has been very fulfilling for her, and it was inspiring hearing her speak with such passion.
In the second hour, Helen guided us through a workshop with some exercises suggested by the three guest authors. Feel free to try them yourself!
Martha suggests an exercise for staying true to the work and not overreaching when pitching your ideas:
Consider your audience - answer these questions: (1) who are they; (2) what do they know; and (3) what do they care about?
Use your voice - if you're feeling stuck, tell another person what it is you're trying to write about.
Write an elevator pitch - to hone in on the essence of what you're trying to communicate, draft the 1-minute (120-150 word) speech you'd give if you were riding in an elevator with someone you wanted to inform or influence on this topic.
Betty recommends a writing exercise that she learned from Dr. Emily Lattie, a researcher at Northwestern University. Emily says start small and ask:
What is the outcome of this work?
And if everything goes well, what’s the biggest potential impact of that outcome?
And if that outcome happened, what’s the biggest impact of that outcome?
Laura offers some fundamental free-writing (or free-thinking!) prompts:
What made you interested in writing about this topic in the first place?
What people, places, and things do you describe in the book?
Why do your research findings matter?
Who should read this book? How will they benefit from doing so?
What’s the main thing you want readers to understand when they finish your book?
How did you conduct the research for this book?
What does this book add to current scholarly conversations or even conversations happening beyond the academy?
What makes this book special?
Why are you the right person to write this book?
What’s the most interesting story from your research? Why is it interesting?
This guided workshop certainly gave us many writing challenges to feel inspired by and to shape the way we think about our potential and emerging projects.
A big thank you to Matt, Martha, Laura, Betty, and Helen for sharing their intellectual biographies, their passion and expertise, and their advice so openly during this special session.
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A recording of this two-part WriteSPACE Special Event is now available in the WriteSPACE Library.
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