Academic Writing: Getting Started

How to get started on a piece of academic writing

One of the most challenging aspects of academic writing is how to get started. In this newsletter, I will share with you strategies that will help you get started on your academic writing project be it be it a seminar paper, a journal article, or a dissertation.

The most important thing about academic writing is that it's a product of reading, reading, and then reading some more. But it's not any ordinary kind of reading — it's active reading.

Often grad students and dissertations writers struggle because they haven't read enough in their field. On the other end of the spectrum are folks who read to avoid writing — something called productive procrastination. You want to stay somewhere in the middle.

One of the best ways of doing it is to read in a manner that feeds directly into your writing. How?

Start by reading widely in your field/subfield especially when you're starting out in grad school. Try to find a canonical text that you vibe with.

Once you've figured it out, read the text closely. For example, of all the texts I read in grad school, Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities is by far my favorite. Not a day goes by that I don't reread a page or two of this book.

The first few times when you read a canonical text, it may not even make much sense to you. That's okay. Keep at it.

Imagine having a dialogue with the author.

Take a notebook. On the right-hand page, write down what the author is saying. On the left-hand page, write down your impressions and questions. What do you mean by X? I don't understand Y.

Keep reading the same passages over and over. Keep writing your impressions and questions.

This exercise will do two things — both crucial for any type of academic writing:

First, it will teach how to read and process academic prose patiently. Second, you will learn how to give your take on a given work.

Repeat the process with another text. And then another.

Do this exercise everyday for a week or two. At the end of it, you will have written quite a few pages. Now you may not think of it that way, but you have already started writing.

All you have to do now is keep writing.