Interlude: Restitching Writing, Persuasive Pillars, and Preprint Reviews
Earlier this week, I was talking with one of my students about practicing and building confidence in your writing. She shared an incredible analogy for how she thinks about the process (thank you, Tracy!).
She said that she likes to think about practicing the craft of writing like practicing the craft of crocheting. You need to take time to practice and not worry if you make a mistake—because you can always go back, pull out a few stitches, and correct the mistake.
That's exactly what we do in writing. When you notice something isn't working in your draft, you can go back, undo what you wrote, and refine the text to make the piece stronger.
So the next time you sit down to write, I hope you'll remember Tracy's analogy and that you don't have to get it right on the first pass. Just show up, put the stitches in, and trust that you can always undo and revise until you are happy with the result. And with every stitch, you're strengthening not just your prose, but also your confidence in your writing.
Now onto this week's round-up...
Round-up
From My Desk
The 3 Pillars Behind Persuasive Scientific Writing
Persuasive writing is not about promotional words like “novel,” “innovative,” and “cutting-edge.” It’s about supporting your writing with three pillars of persuasion. In this video, I share what these pillars are, what you can do to build them in your writing, and what is the foundation that underlies everything you need to consider for persuasive writing.
Reading
Career effects of preprints get mixed reviews from biomedical researchers
”Nearly half of biomedical scientists worry preprints could spread shoddy research and misinformation. . . [R]esearchers on average do not believe publishing preprints enhances their career advancement. But many acknowledge benefits, such as spreading their findings more quickly than peer-review journals do and helping them find collaborators.”
Physicians Are Not Providers: The Ethical Significance of Names in Health Care: A Policy Paper From the American College of Physicians
“The words physician and provider are not interchangeable. Provider undermines the physician’s ethical obligations, clinical integrity, and accountability, as well as trust in the patient–physician relationship. The term should not be used to describe physicians, nor should physicians use it to describe themselves, their team members, or their trainees.”
Tools
Aligning numbered lists in Word
Do you ever get annoyed by the default way that Word aligns numbered lists? My colleague Melissa Bogen shared a great mini-tutorial on how to fix this problem.
Quote
“Working smart isn't the opposite of working hard. It's the result of working hard. You have to put in the hours before you can see the shortcuts. You have to learn the details before you can know which ones matter. You have to do the work wrong many times before you discover how to do it right.” –Shane Parrish
Thank you so much for reading.
Warmly,
Crystal
