📖 Write for Your Ideal Reader

Read time: 4 minutes

In his 1983 book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson writes that in the 18th century, large communities started getting imagined through two products of print-capitalism: the novel and the newspaper. He calls them "imagined communities."

An imagined community is a community in which even though a person has not met other members of the community, they still believe in the existence of these other members. It's because one imagines the existence of other members.

Anderson uses "imagined communities" to explain the idea of a nation.

For example, an American woman will never meet all the 332 million Americans and yet she believes in their existence.

How do we use Anderson's insights to become a better, confident academic writer?

For starters, every writer (academic or otherwise) writes for an imagined audience. Even though a writer hasn't met their (potential) readers, they believe in the existence of such readers.

Your writing style and voice depends a lot of the type of reader you imagine.

If you imagine your reader to be generous and patient, you'll feel confident and that sense of assurance will show through your prose.

But if your imagined reader is judgmental and fault-finding, you'll feel defensive and that insecurity will also show through your work.

For example: when I write my newsletter, I imagine my ideal reader to be someone who patiently reads my work. This helps me stay motivated.

But if I were to imagine my reader as someone impatient and judgmental, I'll start justifying and explaining my positions. That will make my work unreadable at best and insufferable at worst.

And I do not want that.

I see this very often with PhD folks working on their first journal article or dissertation chapter. They imagine their reader as overly judgmental.

This leads them to over-justify their positions and they end up burying their argument in a plethora of citations.

It is very difficult to develop a confident scholarly voice if you don't imagine your reader to be generous and patient.

If you want to develop a confident scholarly voice, kill the judgmental monster of your imagination.

Instead, imagine your ideal reader as someone warm, generous, and patient.

Researcher Life All Access Pack

Speaking of developing a confident scholarly voice, the good folks over at Researcher Life have put together a set of tools that serves as your personal research assistant. They call it the “All Access” pack.

It’s an industry-first subscription of AI-powered academic tools and services designed to empower you at every step of your research journey.

The All Access pack costs $25/month and offers unlimited access to the best AI-powered tools for research including:

• Paperpal: an AI-powered assistant for academic writing. I have been using Paperpal for my own work and have found it to be very helpful. It helped me edit a 5,000-words draft in 5 minutes.

• Mind the Graph: an AI-powered app that helps you create scientific illustrations.

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The subscription also includes free webinars on academic writing and discounts on manuscript editing services.

Click here to buy a subscription to All Access pack.

Become an Efficient Academic Writer with AI Apps — Webinar, 10 June 2023

Quick reminder that registration for webinar “Become an Efficient Academic Writer with AI Apps” is still open. Below is a list of the topics I will cover in the webinar:

1. How to brainstorm research questions with (AI-powered app) Elicit

2. How to use AI-powered search engines

3. How to do literature review with (AI-powered app) Research Rabbit (Zotero/Mendeley Integration)

4. Inciteful-Zotero Integration for literature review

5. How to stay up-to-date with (AI -powered app) R Discovery

6. How to supercharge your reading with (AI-powered apps) Scholarcy and SciSpace

7. How to take notes with (AI-powered app) Lateral

8. How to write zero drafts and get them "cleaned" with ChatGPT

9. How to use (AI-powered app) Jenni to write your first draft

10. How to edit your first draft with (AI-powered app) Paperpal

11. How to take your research to the next level with (AI-powered app) Scite

12. How to use ChatGPT and Bing Prompts for academic writing and reading

You can register for the webinar by clicking here.

The registration fee is $108.54. You can use the code “Efficient25“ for a 25% discount.

Free tutorial: Registration fee includes free access to my tutorial containing 250+ slides (worth $49.99).

Video recording: If you can’t make it for the webinar, I will record it for you so you can watch it whenever it’s convenient for you.

That’s it for this week. I’ll see you next week.

Until then, keep writing.